The Lady in the Tower: Medieval Courtesy Literature for Women

1985 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Jonathan W. Nicholls ◽  
Diane Bornstein
Keyword(s):  
Courtesy Literature

Merit in Courtly Literature: Castiglione, Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, and Le Caron

1988 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ullrich Langer
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Marguerite De Navarre ◽  
Courtesy Literature ◽  
The Ideal

Spesse volte mi viene un dubbio, s'é dato dal nascimento (come nell'altre cose ancora) ch'i Principi siano propitii & favorevoli verso questi, iniqui & crudeli verso quegli altri, o se pure è posto nella industria nostra…. (Francesco Sansovino,Propositioni in materia di cose di Stato, Vinegia, 1583, fol. 110)Castiglione'sLibro del cortegiano(1528) and Renaissance courtesy literature in general chart an uneven course between the description of an illustrious courtly ideal never fully incarnate and the establishment of a set of rules enabling courtly practice and prescription. These two intentions, one roughly Platonic and the other roughly Aristotelian, are in the end contradictory, for the more substantial the ideal becomes, the less can it accommodate varying experience and therefore practice. The impulse to set forth an ideal as something outside of variety through which experience is to be judged is incompatible with the production of that ideal through the experiential mean of varying extremes.

scholarly journals Isabel of Aragon (d. 1336): Model Queen or Model Saint?

2006 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 668-692
Author(s):  
IONA McCLEERY
Keyword(s):  
The Relationship ◽  
Courtesy Literature

Very little work has been done on Iberian queens and even less on Iberian saints. This study of Isabel of Aragon (c. 1270–1336), wife of King Dinis of Portugal (1279–1325), who was venerated as a saint from shortly after her death, aims to explore the relationship between Isabel's queenship and her sainthood. It engages with recent research, and critiques obvious comparisons between Isabel and her great-aunt St Elizabeth of Thuringia. Isabel may also be compared with numerous other medieval European queens and her main vita displays striking similarities to royal courtesy literature found elsewhere.

Fanny Burney and the Courtesy Books

PMLA ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 65 (5) ◽  
pp. 732-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce Hemlow
Keyword(s):  
Young Lady ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fanny Burney ◽  
Novel Of Manners ◽  
Courtesy Literature

Fanny Burney's diaries and the reading lists to be found in her unpublished notebooks and memorandum books yield many references to the courtesy writers and to the courtesy books and allied works widely read in her age. The date of Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, often taken as the culminating point in studies of the courtesy literature for men, marks the beginning of an accelerated production of courtesy books for women. In 1759 Thomas Marriott, the author of Female Conduct, was rejoicing that “such an agreeable Theme” should have been so long reserved for him. As far as he could remember, “very few [had] touched this Subject in Prose, and None in Verse” to any appreciable length before him, so that he was able to appropriate, as he thought, an uncultivated “Spot of Ground in Parnassus.”1 In the following decades, however, the problem of the conduct of the young lady was investigated so thoroughly that the lifetime of Fanny Burney, or more accurately the years 1760–1820, which saw also the rise of the novel of manners, might be called the age of courtesy books for women.

Spenser's Theory of Courtesy

PMLA ◽  
1932 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. Judson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Faerie Queene ◽  
The Faerie Queene ◽  
Courtesy Literature ◽  
The Ideal

Professor H. S. V. Jones in his recently published Spenser Handbook (New York, 1930) has an interesting and valuable chapter on Book vi of The Faerie Queene. Much of his discussion is concerned with the so-called courtesy literature of the Renaissance, which offers striking parallels to Spenser's illustration of the virtue of courtesy. According to Professor Jones, Spenser's object in Book vi is “to exhibit in his allegory certain articles in that familiar creed of courtesy which had been stated and expounded in many doctrinal treatises of the Renaissance, and to oppose to the ideal of the gentleman the forces which were hostile to its realization.”

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