An exploration of how readers over the years have responded to
a well-known Renaissance text, the Courtier by Castiglione.
"The Fortunes of the Courtier is an important contribution
to intellectual history and to the history of the book. It demonstrates
how bibliography, textual criticism, and library history can illuminate
the mentality of an age."Magill's Literary Annual 1997
Castiglione's Cortegiano, or the Courtier, is one
of the best-known texts of the Italian Renaissance. When it first
appeared in 1528, the Courtier was widely read as a guide
to contemporary conduct. Its popularity led to its publication in
six languages in twenty different European centers in the sixteenth
century alone. While the text itself has been studied very carefully
in recent years as the embodiment of the spirit of the High Renaissance,
its multitude of readers, spread over the world, has received much
less attention. In this engaging study Peter Burke explores how
readers over the years have responded to the Courtier.
Because it was read so widely in Europe, the Courtier affords
Burke an ideal test case for the diffusion and reception of ideas.
From Poland and Hungary to England, Portugal, and even the New World,
he takes us on a fascinating tour of the courts, libraries, and
reading rooms of Europe in search of Castiglione's idea of the perfect
courtier. He shows how changing responses to the Courtier,
both positive and negative, reveal changing social values and how
regional variations in its reception reflect the emerging cultural
map of early modern Europe. His evidence includes printing history,
translations, marginalia, and records of sale and possession. He
concludes with a discussion of the later fortune of the Courtier,
including its role in the "civilizing process" and its curious appeal
to writers as different as Samuel Johnson and W. B. Yeats.
Informed by Burke's considerable knowledge of printing and publishing
history, this book contributes to our growing understanding of the
history of the book and to our knowledge of the Renaissance and
its reception. |
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| Peter
Burke is Reader in Cultural History at Emmanuel College,
Cambridge. His numerous books include Popular Culture in Early
Modern Europe (Harper & Row, 1978) and, more recently, The
Fabrication of Louis XIV (Yale, 1992). He is also the editor of New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Penn State, 1992). |
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