Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books
    Unavailable
    The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books
    Unavailable
    The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books
    Ebook642 pages6 hours

    The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books

    By Harry Berger Jr.

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Absence of Grace is a study of male fantasy, representation anxiety, and narratorial authority in two sixteenth-century books, Baldassare Castiglione's Il libro del Cortegiano (1528) and Giovanni Della Casa's Galateo (1558). The interpretive method is a form of close reading the author describes as reconstructed old New Criticism, that is, close reading conditioned by an interest in and analysis of the historical changes reflected in the text. The book focuses on the way the Courtier and Galateo cope with and represent the interaction between changes of elite culture and the changing construction of masculine identity in early modern Europe. More specifically, it connects questions of male fantasy and masculine identity to questions about the authority and reliability of narrators, and shows how these questions surface in narratorial attitudes toward socioeconomic rank or class, political power, and gender.

    The book is in three parts. Part One examines a distinction and correlation the Courtier establishes between two key terms, (1) sprezzatura, defined as a behavioral skill intended to simulate the attributes of (2) grazia, understood as the grace and privileges of noble birth. Because sprezzatura is negatively conceptualized as the absence of grace it generates anxiety and suspicion in performers and observers alike. In order to suggest how the binary opposition between these terms affected the discourse of manners, the author singles out the titular episode of Galateo, an anecdote about table manners, which he reads closely and then sets in its historical perspective. Part Two takes up the question of sprezzatura in the gender debate that develops in Book 3 of the Courtier, and Part Three explores in detail the characterization of the two narrators in the Courtier and Galateo, who are represented as unreliable and an object of parody or critique.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStanford University Press
    Release dateOct 1, 2000
    ISBN9780804779869
    Unavailable
    The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books
    Author

    Harry Berger Jr.

    Harry Berger, Jr., is Professor Emeritus of Literature and Art History and a Fellow of Cowell College at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the author of fourteen books, most recently Harrying: Skills of Offense in Shakespeare's Henriad (Fordham University Press, 2016).

    Related to The Absence of Grace

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Alison Hearst

      May 1, 2019

      Alison Hearst
      4 min read

    • Article

      Other Workers Will Follow

      Sep 8, 2020

      Other Workers Will Follow
      2 min read

    • Article

      City of Images

      Sep 4, 2018

      City of Images
      11 min read

    • Article

      Looking Anew

      Jul 1, 2018

      Looking Anew
      6 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Dec 5, 2023

      Reviews
      6 min read

    • Article

      Dale Frank

      Feb 28, 2018

      Dale Frank
      9 min read

    • Article

      Between Art and Function

      Dec 6, 2022

      Between Art and Function
      6 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Mar 7, 2023

      Reviews
      5 min read

    • Article

      Ten Books Every Creative Person Should Read

      Jul 3, 2019

      Keep them on your desk for those times you need to be reminded that though the creative life might be lonely, you are not alone. The post Ten Books Every Creative Person Should Read appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      On Being Young

      Mar 2, 2018

      On Being Young
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Companion to Curation

      Nov 4, 2020

      If there was ever a book that should be top of the bibliographic list for students studying art institutions and curatorial practice(s) of the past, present and future, this is it – A Companion to Curation edited by well-known Australian artist acade

      6 min read

    • Article

      Semi Formica

      Aug 13, 2021

      Semi Formica
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Sage Of Red Wing

      Nov 1, 2021

      The Sage Of Red Wing
      11 min read

    • Article

      Ken Lum: Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991–2018

      Dec 15, 2019

      Concordia University Press, 2020 The most remarkable thing about this generally remarkable anthology of writings by Ken Lum is that it took so long for such a book to appear. In one of the essays collected here, Lum’s now-classic “Canadian Cultural P

      4 min read

    • Article

      Journey Of discovery

      Sep 1, 2020

      Journey Of discovery
      5 min read

    • Article

      Agenda

      Jun 8, 2021

      Agenda
      2 min read

    • Article

      New York Was Very Heaven

      Dec 1, 2021

      New York Was Very Heaven
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Classicist

      Apr 1, 2022

      The Classicist
      6 min read

    • Article

      Monument

      Jun 10, 2019

      Around the editorial advisory table at C Magazine, we had long been mulling over the idea of an issue on public art or public space. Last year we finally landed on “the monument” as one of the most consequential areas of discussion to be had around a

      3 min read

    • Article

      How Not to Be Forgotten

      May 1, 2019

      How Not to Be Forgotten
      8 min read

    • Article

      Double Vision

      Oct 1, 2021

      Double Vision
      7 min read

    • Article

      Action, Gesture, Paint

      Mar 1, 2023

      Action, Gesture, Paint
      4 min read

    • Article

      Staci Boris

      Apr 28, 2020

      It seems silly to argue that painting is alive and well: it has held a prominent place in art making for millennia now. The hundreds of submissions for this issue of New American Paintings are evidence of its continued allure and relevance. The varie

      3 min read

    • Article

      Abstract’s Second Act

      Nov 1, 2020

      Abstract’s Second Act
      8 min read

    Reviews for The Absence of Grace

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words