My aim is to show the role of the concept of beauty in Italian books of manners (galatei), through the analysis of the notions and ideals that they propose explicitily or implicitly. The corpus inlcudes the prototype, i.e. Galateo by Della Casa (1558) and many texts from Melchiorre Gioia’ s Nuovo Galateo (1802) to today’s dictionaries of manners. Galatei are valuable documents in casting light on the system of values, ideas and customs of a given historical time; and therefore even more so on its ideals of beauty. As galatei are prescriptive texts about politeness, my analysis will be carried out from the perspective of the relationship between beauty and politeness and will deal with the historical variability of the notion of beauty in relation with the deep transformations that the notion of politeness has also undergone; the differences related to the genre of readers to whom galatei are addressed; the loss of importance of the theme of beauty during the stretch of time under consideration, which might be explained by drawning upon “the absolute and unstoppable politeism of beauty”, a contradiction typical of the twentieth century (Eco, Storia della Bellezza, Milano, Bompiani 2004: 426-8).
The “second beauty”: ideas of politeness and beauty in Italian books of manners
ALFONZETTI, Giovanna Marina
2019-01-01
Abstract
My aim is to show the role of the concept of beauty in Italian books of manners (galatei), through the analysis of the notions and ideals that they propose explicitily or implicitly. The corpus inlcudes the prototype, i.e. Galateo by Della Casa (1558) and many texts from Melchiorre Gioia’ s Nuovo Galateo (1802) to today’s dictionaries of manners. Galatei are valuable documents in casting light on the system of values, ideas and customs of a given historical time; and therefore even more so on its ideals of beauty. As galatei are prescriptive texts about politeness, my analysis will be carried out from the perspective of the relationship between beauty and politeness and will deal with the historical variability of the notion of beauty in relation with the deep transformations that the notion of politeness has also undergone; the differences related to the genre of readers to whom galatei are addressed; the loss of importance of the theme of beauty during the stretch of time under consideration, which might be explained by drawning upon “the absolute and unstoppable politeism of beauty”, a contradiction typical of the twentieth century (Eco, Storia della Bellezza, Milano, Bompiani 2004: 426-8).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
