Talk:The Book of the Courtier

King of France

Can someone provide a source that proves that the King of France distributed copies of the book to his courtiers? Kingmundi 05:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Italics

I'm going to remove the italics from the "the" towards the end of the article on the grounds of unencyclopaedic tone. Leon... 00:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

name spelling

In my edition (Norton Critical edition) of The Book of the Courtier Baldesare is spelled with only one 's' and no 'e' at the end, which changes the way one searches this author.{unsigned}

Typo

It is not apparent to me how to edit the caption for the associated image. The word "courtier" is spelled "couriter."{unsigned}

Date it started to be written

According to the july 14-15th Wall Street Journal Personal Journal on page P12 the Courtier began being written in 1507. (66.108.62.137 13:39, 17 July 2007 (UTC))

Undue Weight

In my opinion undue weight is given to the views of one scholar here, Wayne Rebhorn. Other scholars view things differently.Mballen (talk)

This article makes it appear that the Courtier is solely concerned with rhetoric, which is far from the case. One has very little idea of who the interlocutors are, the setting of the book, and mosst importantly the actual content of the discussions of the role of women, the importance of art and music, complaints about the French, the proper topics of humor, and the role of Platonic love, which occupies about a third of the book. Mballen (talk) 03:40, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Merely a "courtesy book? I don't think so.

In a 1996 review of The Fortunes of the Courtier, in the London Review of Books, Renaissance scholar Anthony Grafton wrote of his surprise at how much his students related to and were interested in The Courtier, despite its manifest dull passages:

When Castiglione is read and interpreted with care ... his charm and depth overcome not only the alienation of students but also the dullness of their teachers. He offers, first of all, a bath in one of the central emotions of literature: nostalgia, evoking the court at Urbino not as a present model but as a lost paradise.

Here, then, gentle discussions and innocent pleasantries were heard, and on everyone’s face a jocund gaiety could be seen depicted, so much so that the house could be called the very abode of joyfulness. Nor do I believe that the sweetness that is had from a beloved company was ever savoured in any other place as it was there ... we all felt a supreme happiness arise within us whenever we came into the presence of the Duchess. And it seemed that this was a chain that bound us all together in love, in such wise that never was there concord of will or cordial love between brothers greater than that which was there among us all.

Castiglione succeeds in convincing us, first and above all, of how much we have missed. We have not sat in the Duchess’s room after dinner, listening to music, dancing and trying to survive in the court’s favourite games. We have not regained our senses after a night’s passionate discussion of love, realised with a jolt that the light is beginning to come through the castle windows, and returned to our rooms as ‘a soft breeze seemed to come that filled the air with brisk coolness and began to awaken sweet concerts of joyous birds in the murmuring forests of the nearby hills.’

From this it can be seen how inadequately reductive it is to describe The Courtier as a mere "Courtesy Book."

Translations

I've read in the article that The Book was translated into 6 languages. Can anybody tell me what was the languages ?

Piotr Dąbrowski — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trombonolog (talk • contribs) 18:40, 3 January 2018 (UTC)