Article: Discorso sopra la corte di Roma.(Review)

Discorso sopra la corte di Roma. By GIOVAN FRANCESCO COMMENDONE. Ed. by CESARE MOZZARELLI. Rome: Bulzoni. 1996. 144 pp. 20,000 lire.

While literary (or sociological) critics continue to produce ephemeral speculations about courtly literature, historians on a parallel track produce the facts from which the theorists respin their gossamer webs. It was a famous historian, Father Pier Antonio Serassi, who, during the last half of the eighteenth century, produced enough of Baldesar Castiglione's obiter scripta to reveal their author's practical aims in writing the Libro del Cortegiano, which was finally edited by Serassi himself (Padua, 1766). Men ambitious for social ...