Italian courtesy-books: Fra Bonvicino da Riva's fifty courtesies for the table

This volume presents Fra Bonvicino da Riva's *Fifty Courtesies for the Table*, a vivid witness to the moral and social discipline of medieval Italian urban life. More than a manual of manners, it belongs to the broader tradition of courtesy literature, where etiquette, religious instruction, and civic order converge. The bilingual Italian-English format, supplemented by translations and elucidations, makes the text especially valuable: readers encounter both the crisp didacticism of Bonvesin's verse and the cultural meanings embedded in its prescriptions concerning speech, gesture, cleanliness, and communal dining. Da la Riva Bonvesin, or Bonvesin da Riva, was a thirteenth-century Milanese lay religious writer deeply shaped by the devotional and civic culture of Lombardy. His works consistently reveal an interest in moral formation, vernacular instruction, and the regulation of everyday conduct. Such concerns help explain the composition of a text like this one, where the table becomes a site for teaching discipline, hierarchy, and Christian decorum in a rapidly developing urban society. This book will reward scholars of medieval literature, historians of daily life, and general readers interested in the genealogy of manners. It is especially recommended for those who wish to see how seemingly ordinary acts—eating, serving, speaking—were invested with ethical and cultural significance.

© 2026 Good Press (E-bog): 8596547902959

Oversættere: William Michael Rossetti

Udgivelsesdato

E-bog: 28. juni 2026