41 pages • 1 hour read
Baldassarre CastiglioneThe Book of the Courtier
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1528A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaDedicationChapter Summaries & Analyses
Dedication Summary
Tasked with writing a book “on courtly life and behavior,” Castiglione writes that he wished to do so while “the court of Urbino was still fresh and vivid” in his memory. Yet Castiglione was “never able to bring the work to the state that would satisfy [his] judgement” (31). When some early drafts inadvertently entered circulation, he decided to revise the drafts himself for publication.
Castiglione begins with praise for several of the “outstanding men and women who used to frequent the court of Urbino” (31). Castiglione calls the book a “portrait of the court of Urbino,” but modestly claims that he is but a “worthless painter […] who cannot adorn the truth with pretty colors or use perspective to deceive the eye” (32). He does not write in Tuscan like Boccaccio, but chooses the modern language of Lombardy, explaining: “if my language falls short of the ideal, then it will be all the easier for courtiers to approach in real life the end and goals set before them” (36). Castiglione does not agree that “it is pointless to teach what cannot be learned” (35) and will leave it to posterity to judge his book’s worth.
Dedication Analysis
The time that Castiglione spent in service to Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro at the court of Urbino was the inspiration for The Book of the Courtier. In his opening dedication, Castiglione follows his own rule of courtly nonchalance by claiming that his literary achievement is flawed, resigning judgment of the work to posterity. This sets up an immediate parallel between the ideal courtier and the book. The book was instantly and enduringly successful, but the opinions Castiglione sets forth are hardly groundbreaking. In many ways, the book’s highly conservative nature allowed it to penetrate into the heart of the Early Modern literary canon. As Castiglione writes: “familiarity often causes the same things to be liked and disliked” (39).
Despite the characteristic style of imitation found in Renaissance humanist texts, Castiglione makes claims in the Dedication that his style is naturalistic. This is exemplified in his choice to write in the local language of Lombardy, since “it is always wrong to employ words which are not current” (33). Castiglione evidently intended that the work be used as a handbook of manners from the outset, in the vein of Plato’s didactic Academy, to which Castiglione refers on Page 35. Denying that his intention was to “offer [himself] as a model,” Castiglione’s portrait of courtly manners imitates the life of the court of Urbino, just as it would be imitated throughout Europe for centuries to follow.
