ABSTRACT
Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Libro del Cortegiano (1528), Giovanni della Casa’s Galateo (1558), and Stefano Guazzo’s Civil Conversazione (1574), respectively translated by Thomas Hoby (1561), Robert Peterson (1576), and George Pettie (1581) are analysed in Cathy Shrank’s chapter. Some distinctions, however, must be made among the three works with regard to style, local ambience, and different ways of communicating with the reader. While Castiglione’s interlocutors are all courtiers and their conversation takes place in a room of a palace, Guazzo and especially della Casa have a more extensive setting. Guazzo’s dialogue is also more wide-ranging and his interlocutors belong to a more quotidian ambience of mercantile audience in both the domestic and public spheres, quite unlike the exclusive ambience of Castiglione’s court palace in Urbino. Conversely, della Casa’s Galateo addresses a wider audience, “a worke very necessary & profitable for all Gentlemen, or other”, as the title-page of the first English translation states. Also, Galateo differs from the other two works in its focus on male readers, in the perspective of an old man addressing a younger, whereas both the Courtier and Civil Conversation offer extensive discussions of female behaviour. Other crucial differences pertain to form and style. While Galateo is monovocal, addressed from an older to a younger man, the Courtier and Civil Conversation are dialogues, in the form of a well-devised conversation, “in which ideas are not merely propounded, but are also debated”.
