Book Four of Castiglione's Courtier: Climax or Afterthought?

Abstract

is singularly free and independent. The theory of well-bred love-making, set forth in the third book, is full of delicate psycholop;ical observation, which perhaps would be more in place in a treatise on human nature generally; and the magnificent praise of ideal love, which occurs at the end of the fourth book, and which rises to a lyrical elevation of feeling, has no connection whatever with the special object of the work.l