The rhetorical and ethical values of conversation, decorum and moderation—all inherited from Greco-Latin antiquity—became instruments of conflict prevention, containment and resolution in the literary Classicism of sixteenth-century Italy, particularly in the canonical genres of the treatise on behavior, the epic poem and erudite comedy. The subject of this volume is not comedy that questions, challenges and destroys established measures and values. Rather, this book looks at comedy that, without relinquishing its critical and desecrating impulse, seeks to mend the social and cultural fabric. Not, therefore, anarchic and revolutionary comedy, but a moderate and moderating one: affirmative and not negative, forgiving and not aggressive, always an agent of reconciliation and—often—of a happy ending.
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