Decorum and indecorum in the Seconda redazione of Baldassare Castiglione's Libro del Cortegiano.

Between the Seconda redazione (1520-21) and the third manuscript (i524, published 1528) Castiglione rewrote almost half of the Libro del Cortegiano. Where others have examined changes in socio-political and cultural references, this study focuses on dialogue interaction and on the specific use of decorum in opening and closing sequences of the debate in the Seconda redazione. The rebellious behaviour of several characters and the general concern in Book III to guarantee them a fair and equal treatment point towards an open, informal, horizontal type of interaction, which will be swept away by the strict politeness rituals of the Cortegiano.

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   Alora madonna Emilia: 'Non bisogna' 
   disse 'che voi vi excusiate [...]' 
   (Baldassare Castiglione, La seconda redazione, 
   II. 94) (1) 

When in 2000 the Centro studi sulle societa di Antico Regime 'Europa delle Corti' published volume 100 of the Biblioteca del Cinquecento, they celebrated with a study by Amedeo Quondam, 'Questo povero Cortegiano': Castiglione, il libro, la Storia, (2) which in turn is a celebration of the text that laid the sociocultural foundations of the ancien regime. As the subtitle indicates, the volume celebrates not only the Libro del cortegiano itself, but also the lifelong effort of the author, who dedicated at least twenty years to it, and his lucidity in analysing the repercussions that the Italian crisis (la Storia) had on the ruling class. About thirty years after the philological studies of Ghino Ghinassi, which resulted in a critical edition of the Seconda redazione of the Libro del cortegiano, (3) Quondam offers a new interpretation of the long and laborious construction of the Libro del cortegiano, explaining the major changes between the Seconda redazione (1520-21) and the third version of 1524 (published in 1528)--Castiglione rewrote almost half of the dialogue--as a consequence of his acute awareness of the socio-political changes in Italy. However, Castiglione's sharp perception of the political ruin of the elite still made him look for a positive solution to the crisis. Only by focusing on their cultural predominance would courtiers be able to perform a role in the history of Europe. The Libro del cortegiano needed to be a model of a superior culture, and therefore, somewhere between 1521 and May 1524, the date signed by the copyist on the manuscript of the third version, the author subjected Book III of the Seconda redazione to a major revision, not just of its style, but of its cultural references, its theoretical framework, and its dialogue strategy. It would take an earthquake, a 'terremoto' (Quondam, p. 104), to produce the new Books III and IV. Castiglione kept, albeit with some changes, the discussion about the prince and the courtier-philosopher, but he wrote two completely new sections, Giuliano il Magnifico's description of the donna di palazzo and Pietro Bembo's Platonic monologue on true love. On the other hand, much of the heated discussion about women was to disappear. Most of the recent studies on the Seconda redazione--which can be counted on the fingers of one hand--focus on the problem zones in the original Book III, the zones in which Castiglione seems most undecided, such as Bembo's discourse on true love (4) and the debate about the formation of the prince. (5) But these are partial approaches; only Quondam makes an attempt to interpret the specific changes to Book III and the rest of the dialogue as the outcome of a single aim, the search for a new superior form, a new model for the cultural elite of Europe that would show them how to speak, how to write, even how to reason.

I have attempted to test Quondam's hypothesis for very specific sections of the dialogue, those that are strictly interactive and turn the theoretical material of what could be a treatise into a genuine dialogue between characters who interfere with one another's opinions. In a previous study I discussed interactive argumentation devices in the Seconda redazione. (6) I looked at the rhetorical techniques the interlocutors use to express a specific degree of agreement or disagreement between their respective opinions. For each intervention in the dialogue, I tried to establish the logical connection with the previous one and the rhetorical device, a figura sententiae, used to express it (e.g. laughter, irony, rhetorical question, wit, concession, correction, interruption). The dialogue interaction in the Seconda redazione can be quite aggressive in specific sections (especially in Book III), and the overall conclusion was that it is definitely less formal than in the final version. In the present study I wish to consider the validity of this hypothesis for the preliminary sections of the dialogue, in which, before entering the argumentation process itself, interlocutors set out to negotiate their respective positions for the debate that is to come. Very often in opening and closing sequences the reader can catch a glimpse of the underlying social ideal, which in turn determines the kind of ethos the author wants to mount on the dialogue stage. To construct a particular ethos for his characters, the author of an early sixteenth-century dialogue had at his disposal a wealth of classical and humanistic examples (in dialogues, lectures, sermons, speeches, letters), but he could also turn to the rules of decorum and deference in general. In the case of the documentary dialogue, which adopts historical characters instead of literary fictions, it is obvious that the decorous representation of the characters was crucial to the author: speakers were chosen specifically because of their exemplary role as civil interlocutors. Even if we set aside the fact that more often than not the choice of specific historical figures was part of a rather blunt commerce of honour and ingratiation, it is still true that the characters' dignity would establish the 'social and intellectual credentials of the work'. (7) All the more so from the point of view of Castiglione, whose final aim was to celebrate the most prominent representatives of the Italian cultural elite of his time.

In the light of my earlier study on argumentation strategies, which pointed to a more aggressive type of interaction in the Seconda redazione, I expected to find here less attention to deference rituals, which then in the final version would have to be substantially enhanced. At first this was confirmed by a few surprising cases in which the politeness patterns are overtly disrupted by rebellious members of the group, with a behaviour that would be totally inexcusable in the final version of the Libro del cortegiano. In fact these cases were to disappear in 1524. The first two cases are part of the initial proposals for a game in Book I. Castiglione eliminates several games, reducing them from twelve to seven. The original Chapter 12 (which was to be eliminated together with 13 and 14) is chaotic, almost anarchic. The Duchess has ordered that ...