ABSTRACT
Urbanus magnus has repeatedly been placed at the beginning of medieval courtesy literature through a retrospective approach to the genre. The result of such an approach is that scholarship of later courtesy texts has looked backwards in an attempt to find its beginnings. Consequently, Urbanus magnus has been sorely neglected in scholarship in its own right until the last two decades. It is vital that we question whether Urbanus magnus can rightly be called a courtesy text by investigating what it actually means: its validity as a genre; the range of texts under that term; and the teleological interpretation of courtesy as a civilising process from the medieval to the early modern period. In addition, the sources and influences on Urbanus magnus prompt questions about the legitimacy of its attribution as a courtesy text. Ultimately, I do not aim to cast aspersions on the validity of the courtesy literature genre per se; rather, I argue that while Urbanus magnus reflects the early burgeoning of the courtesy literature genre, it also mixes it with ethical and moral literature to form a composite type of didactic literature.
