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Assumed Simplicity and the Critique of Nobility: Or, How Castiglione Read Cicero

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jennifer Richards
Jennifer Richards*
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne
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Abstract

In book 1 of Castiglione's II libro del cortegiano Lodovico da Canossa's sprezzatura — embodied in his pretended inability to teach us how to be perfect courtiers — is usually seen as consonant with the treatise's aristocratic bias, especially among its Anglophone readers. In this essay, I argue that study of Cicero's use of dissimulatio — or “assumed simplicity“— in De oratore helps us to understand the importance of indirection as a critical tool. I apply this insight to Canossa's apparently conservative treatment of nobility, and show how his sprezzatura demystifies (rather than mystifies) the source of noble self-expression. Canossa's sprezzatura reveals how imitatio can replace heredity as a means to elite status.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , Summer 2001 , pp. 460 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2001

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