Discourse to Lady Lavinia His Daughter Concerning the Manner in Which She Should Conduct Herself When Going to Court as Lady-in-waiting to the Most Serene Infanta, Lady Caterina, Duchess of Savoy (review)

This edition appears as part of a series started in 1996, with 68 volumes scheduled so far, that aims to make important but hard to find Renaissance texts on issues relating to women available in scholarly English translation for university courses. The general editors are distinguished literary scholars rather than historians. This colours the same general introduction that appears in each volume. The cultural assumptions that they present are those of the literary canon rather than the more nuanced reality that historians have been identifying. While useful, it needs, perhaps, to be taken with in conjunction with historical work. Historians would treat the assertion that the humanist programme of the sixteenth and seventeenth century produced for the first time the voice of the "other" with caution. The editors identify the themes of this voice as concerned with the virtues, particularly chastity, and with the exercise of power, the right to speak and the right to the knowledge that makes speech meaningful.

Guasco's text presents no particular textual problems. The daughter to whom it was addressed, required by her father to produce a fair manuscript copy, was instead able – probably since she was a pre-teen child, with the assistance of her mistress – to get the work printed. The editor provides not only a short background and context, but also a postscript in which she uses Guasco's printed letters to tell us the fate of his daughter and her family.

The text is particularly appropriate to the theme of the series, since Guasco has chosen to educate this daughter in particular although he had other sons and daughters, and to teach her many skills that would normally be confined to males probably hoping from the start to obtain for her a position in one of the few quasi-professional careers available to an aristocratic lady, that of lady-in-waiting to whoever became the duchess of Savoy, which was the local kingdom. Works of this sort tend to follow long established topoi. Half a century earlier in 1528 Castiglione had published a book of advice for courtiers, mainly focused on the men, Gausco is concerned with the conduct and decorum appropriate for women and his advice is very similar to that written by Anne of France for her daughter Suzanne in 1504. Guasco modifies this familiar path, and uses that ambiguous word virtù for her female achievements, thus putting her on a par with male courtiers. The role was potentially influential and in the same degree difficult and dangerous. The opportunities for offending were numerous, and might make perilous enemies. Guasco advises prudence urgently in such matters. Speech must at all times be well-considered before it is uttered.

Guasco's writings enlighten us about the model for good behaviour, both male and female, in the culture of his time. His recommendations are sensible, orthodox and conservative. They start with his daughter's duty to God and her family, continue with her duty to herself and finish with her duty to her employer. For the historian, they provide illumination on the way in which the process of social hierarchy reproduced itself and made itself acceptable to those involved. The complex structure of family and state can only be maintained by the active obedience of all participants and here the service of a lady-in-waiting only replicates in the public domain, the service of any individual in a family. Service is the key to the whole chain, and should teach how to command as well as how to obey.

From other letters, we can see...