Although the term salon was not applied to literary assemblies until the early nineteenth century (Madame de Staël, 1807), actual meetings of the elite of society for the purpose of intellectual exchange have been a cultural phenomenon of significance in Europe since the Renaissance, with prototypes going back to Pericles’ times (Aspasia’s circle, ca. 440 B.C.). Baldassare Castiglione (1498-1529) memorialized the regular assemblies attended by the nobility and the intelligentsia at the court of Federico da Montefeltre at Urbino in his famous book Il Cortegiano [The Gentleman, 1518], a manual that sets forth norms of courtesy to be observed in cultured society. Among the Renaissance …
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Citation: Hoffmeister, Gerhart. "German Literary Salons 1770-1830". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 February 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1713, accessed 23 April 2024.]
