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Article published In:
Politeness in and across Historical Europe
Edited by Annick Paternoster, Gudrun Held and Dániel Z. Kádár
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 24:1] 2023
► pp. 32–48

Facetus and the birth of “European” politeness

| Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

This paper aims to contribute to the study of the first stages of the development of European politeness, through the analysis of the metalanguage of politeness used in two Latin poems with the title Facetus (Facetus: cum nihil utilius and Facetus: moribus et vita), both dating from the twelfth century. These two texts established a fertile genre of behaviour manuals, developed during the Middle Ages both in Latin and in vernacular languages, and illustrate an intermediary moment of transition from ancient conceptualisations of politeness (given that they heavily draw on Roman ideas and literature) to early modern ones. The semantic analysis of the Latin politeness meta-terms used in those poems, such as facetus, decorus, mos or decus, allows us to get a glimpse, through the emic perspective offered by these meta-terms, of the moral order underlying the code of courtly behaviour.

Keywords: courtesy books, Facetus , middle ages, metalexicon, politeness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The poems
    • 2.1The facetus genre
    • 2.2 Facetus: Cum nihil utilius (cnu)
    • 2.3 Facetus: Moribus et vita (mv)
  • 3.The meta-lexicon of politeness
    • 3.1The ethical aspect
    • 3.2The social aspect
  • 4.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00063.unc
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