English 4620
Reading guide
Prior to the excerpt in the Norton, a group of gentlemen and women have gathered
in the home of Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino. As happened often they are challenged
by the Duchess, Lady Elizabeth, and her friend Lady Emilia to define the perfect
Courtier.
Count Lodovico Canossa begins the definition with a long list of attributes
to which the others add. At one point he talks about Grace: a natural, easy
manner which he suggests, contrary to the proverb he quotes, can be learned.
Below are key points in the discussion.
1. How great men have used great teachers to learn skills they wanted to have.
2. What this grace looks like: Sprezzatura: the ability to do everything
one does with ease. All the toil that goes into learning and perfecting an
art must be hidden and the art appear to come naturally (as it does in some
people).
After this discussion, the Norton jumps from Book 1 to Book 4 to take up the discussion of love that occurs there.
3. The misogynistic Lord Gaspar poses the question: one quality of a courtier that has been suggested is that of lover. But since the Courtier should be an adviser to his king, he needs the wisdom that comes with age. How can an old man be a lover?
After several of the
noblemen try to answer this, the future cardinal, Peter Bembo, answers with
a treatise on the nature of Platonic love.
4. He begins with reminding the reader of the three ways of knowing:
a. sense knowledge gives rise to appetite or desire; this is shared with lower animals.
b. Reason gives rise to judgment or choice; this is proper to humans
c. Understanding gives rise to will; this is proper to angels
Humans in the Great Chain of Being share sensory knowledge with the animals and understanding with the angels.
5. Bembo then goes into
an argument that men can have a spiritual type of love that reaches out to
the Beauty in all creation.
6. After his argument, Bembo delivers an apostrophe to the Platonic Idea of
Love in its spiritual form, culminating in the contemplation of God who is
Love. Bembo's prayer echoes that of St. Augustine.
When Bembo attests that he can say no more than he has said so far about the
nature of love in this rarefied form, the misogynistic Gaspar claims that
such love is difficult for a young man, but impossible for a woman.
7. The Lord Julian points out the many women who have been contemplative after
which the Duchess ends the discussion when, to the wonderment of all, the
Lord Cesar points out that they have spent the entire night in their "reasonings."