Revising Manners: Giovanni Della Casa’s 'Galateo' and Antoine de Courtin’s 'Nouveau traité de la civilité'

Abstract

This article undertakes a cross-cultural comparison of Giovanni Della Casa's Galateo Ovvero Trattato de’ Costumi e Modi che si debbono tenere o schifare nella comune conversatione (1558) and its seventeenth-century French heir, Antoine de Courtin’s Nouveau traité de la civilité qui se pratiquent en France parmi les honnêtes gens (1671) in light of the Renaissance concept of imitation. Courtin’s text functions in some ways as a “translation” of Della Casa’s Galateo but it is less a faithful reproduction than an adaptation with distinct differences in approach and authorial perspective. A close reading of each text reveals how Galateo both invites and resists imitation by Courtin and how the courtesy book form shapes this imitation.

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