Civilizing Process

The NYT Book Review has a review of Giovanni Della Casa’s Renaissance etiquette book, Galateo: Or, The Rules of Polite Behavior . The reviewer, Judith Martin sums up some of the wisdom: “Don’t be disgusting. Pretty much everything that comes out of a bodily orifice meets his definition of disgusting — so much so that the mere sight of someone washing his hands would upset people, as their minds would leap to the function that had necessitated that cleansing. Spittle is not the only unpleasant thing emerging from the mouth, he warns. People who recount their dreams or brag about their children or sing off key are also offensive. Other unfortunately surviving etiquette problems he mentions include checking mail when in company, monitoring what others are eating, grooming in public and joking about disabilities.”

The book appears to be a fine illustration of Norbert Elias’ classic The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations , yet another reminder that the habits we now take for granted once had to be learned and taught.