This is a study of male fantasy, representation anxiety, and narratorial authority in two 16th-century books, Baldassare Castiglione's "Il libro del Cortegiano" (1528) and "Giovanni Della Casas Galateo" (1558).

Part One examines a distinction and correlation the Courtier establishes between two key terms, (1) sprezzatura, defined as a behavioral skill intended to simulate the attributes of (2) grazia, understood as the grace and privileges of noble birth. Because sprezzatura is negatively conceptualized as the absence of grace it generates anxiety and suspicion in performers and observers alike. In order to suggest how the binary opposition between these terms affected the discourse of manners, the author singles out the titular episode of Galateo, an anecdote about table manners, which he reads closely and then sets in its historical perspective. Part Two takes up the question of sprezzatura in the gender debate that develops in Book 3 of the Courtier, and Part Three explores in detail the characterization of the two narrators in the Courtier and Galateo, who are represented as unreliable and an object of parody or critique.

Preface
Introduction
Part I. Falling from Grace: Sprezzatura, Suspicion and the Perils of Mastication: 1. Sprezzatura and the absence of grace
2. Count Ricciardo's tiny defect
3. Galateo and the civilizing process: a short history of table manners
Part II. Losing Control: The Woman Question in The Book of the Courtier: 4. A perfect gentleman: performing gynephobia in Urbino
5. A perfect lady: Pygmalion and his 'creatura'
Part III. Missing Hercules: Unreliable Narrators in The Book of the Courtier and Galateo: 6. Internal distance: at home and abroad with Castiglione's author
7. Narratorial sour grapes: reading Galateo
Notes
Bibliography
Index.