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Title: The Book of the Courtier (Penguin Classics)
ISBN: 0140441921
Author:
Baldesar Castiglione
Publicate Date: 1976-10-28
Publish: 1976-10-28
List Price: $15.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $4.99
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.30
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.20
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| Customer Review: |
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1: There was a Camelot
There really was a Camelot. But it was in Italy. Urbino in northern Italy to be exact, in the 1500s. Perched on top of a couple of hills in the region Le Marche, Urbino was ruled by the Montefeltro family. From 1444 to 1482 Federigo de Montefeltro skillfully steered his tiny domain through the rough storms of Italian Renaissance realpolitik. Federigo was a successful soldier of fortune yet maintained one of the largest libraries in Italy, spoke Latin, read Aristotle, helped orphans and in general earned the love of his people. He built a beautiful fairy-tale palace and had Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca decorate it.
His less fortunate son Guidobaldo inherited this charming and well-run dukedom. Guidobaldo married the cultivated Elisabetta of the Gonzaga family from Mantua. He was an invalid and not made of his father's stern military stuff. A victim of the brilliant military campaigns of Cesare Borgia that so enchanted Machiavelli, Guidobaldo was temporarily deposed. When the Borgias (Cesare and his father Pope Alexander VI) died, the people of Urbino rose up, drove out Borgia's soldiers and cheered Guidobaldo and Elisabetta upon their return.
For the next few years the court of Elisabetta and Guidobaldo was the most beautiful, enlightened, genteel place on earth. They attracted musicians, scholars and artists. Conversation was honed into a fine art. Into this paradise strode our Lancelot, Baldassare Castiglione, a diplomat descended from minor Italian nobility. He loved Elisabetta, but as far as we know the devotion remained platonic
It is because of Castiglione that we believe we have a sense of what the court of Montefeltro was like, or at least how they would have like to have been remembered. His "The Book of the Courtier" (Il Cortigiano) painstakingly analyzes the attributes of a gentleman through conversations (probably highly idealized) of refined visitors to Urbino.
It's a long, slow, but thoroughly enjoyable book. It is a window into the renaissance mind. It does not describe how the Italians of the sixteenth century were, Machiavelli and Cellini are probably more useful there. But it tells how they wanted to be. The book was read and studied by nobility all over Europe.
It's also how I wanted them to be. Urbino is one of my favorite places. It's a crowded student city now. But on a quiet morning when only a few people are about and the sun has made its way over the hills from the Adriatic, I can imagine that I can see the ghosts of Elisabetta and Guidobaldo walking on the cobbled streets outside their beautiful palace. Fussy, snobbish, yet kind and gentle Castiglione and his wonderful book help make that fantasy more real.
Oh, and for you bike people, Castiglione married Ippolita Torelli.
- Bill McGann, author of "The Story of the Tour de France"
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2: great read
This book is a wonderful treatise on the correct way for a courtier to behave in Renaissance Italy, and indeed in court life in general throughout Western Europe. Many of Castiglione's rules of behavior were applicable for the English or French courtier as well, so by no means should we look at this work as applying merely to Italian court life.
Also, from what I understand, Castiglione wrote the Book of the Courtier in 1528. That puts it in the fifteen hundreds, otherwise known as the sixteenth century.
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3: Observations about life
Observations of life from an old world Italian gentleman.
Interesting aspects of life's nuances and the corrective measures people need tot ake according to the author.
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4: Enlightening look into Renaisance Society
Castiglione's "Courtier" is one of many books outlining protocol and proper behavior of the sophisticated elite. It might suffice to say that he was in some way the Emily Post of his era however, it seems that this work was more far reaching than this. The Courtier is a fascinating book that is actually more useful in studying the renaissance than Machiavelli's "The Prince" (which I do recommend as well) since its detail on why people should act as proscribed is directly taken from real events and people and it is less a work of philosophy and more a work centered about real action in living. I recommend this work highly to everyone wishing to learn more about this age. This version is far better than the one I first read and it offers decent commentary to help elucidate the reader.
Castiglione was extraordinarily fond of Federigo the duke of Urbino with whom he fictitiously converses in this work. I am inclined to believe, though possibly naively, that the fictitious conversations outlined in this work, though not actual, may have been a summation of actual conversations that Castiglione and Federigo actually had. We should remember that Federigo was a model duke and Urbino was the model court of renaissance Italy. Federigo was a lover of learning and the arts and an able ruler willing to give audience to any of his subjects. He also was a more than able military commander who was just in to his men and equally just to those whom he fought against. In short he was the finest example of a renaissance prince. Urbino, though far smaller than Florence, Venice, Genoa or Rome was a very well organized and lovely court that was a favorite place, not only for Castiglione, but also for many artists including Leonardo Da Vinci. Putting all of this in context it is understandable why it made sense for Castiglione to use Federigo as his model in writing this book and it also explains one reason why it was such an immediate success among all of the Italian nobility. Naturally they read it for different reasons than you will but this book had lasting appeal and should be regarded as a classic work.
One reason this book is so interesting is that it is the outline of protocol for courtiers of the Italian Renaissance. Pondering this one might ask the question "why did Castiglione feel he had to write this work?" I can assure you his aims were quite different from those of the handbag maven Kate Spade who has recently issued a series of books along the same vein as The Courtier for today's yuppie elite and their "wannabee" counterparts. I surmise simply that this book needed to be written because their was an essential break in culture of the nobles of the Renaissance and those of the Middle Ages. However this break was by no means sudden and the crudeness and bad manners of the Middle ages did not die quickly especially among the rural nobility. Even so Castiglione saw a benefit from everyone "working off of the same page" and thus he wrote that page.
If you are studying the Renaissance it is probable that you will read some short excerpt of this book. While enlightening as that small cut may be it pales in comparison to the entire work. Sociologists, historians, scholars, and interested people will all get something out of reading this book. It is not imposing and dry as it may appear. Though the language may be dense at times Castiglione is kind to his readers by making the work enjoyable and easy to read. Modeling the work after conversations naturally lightens the work and it really is not that long of a work anyway. I rate this version as the best I have seen and think that you will do a great service to yourself in reading this.
-- Ted Murena
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5: Readable and fresh-- not dry at all.
The Book of the Courtier is one of those books that you hear frequently cited, but rarely actually read. It seems a shame to me if it remains unread. I expected it to take me a while to wade through it. I expected it to be dense and difficult to penetrate. Instead, it read very quickly and easy. The prose was modern, lucid, and nearly compulsively readable.
The book is structured as a conversational game carried out the court of the Duke of Urbino in the rooms of his wife Elisabetta Gonzaga. In four books, different members of the court sketch out the ideal Courtier and the ideal Lady. The books treat various subjects, including the nature of grace, love, humor, gender equality, and necessary skills. The unfamiliar details of the time are mixed with the quite familiar and recognizable human foibles that are still relevant today.
Castiglione is perceptive and witty and quite loving in the way he draws the people in the book. Both the "real" people having the conversation, and the imaginary ideal people being described are well developed.
I enjoyed it, and I recommend it. You don't need to be a scholar to enjoy it as well.
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