After having prescribed in the first book of // libro del cortegiano that the courtier include among his accomplishments a mastery of elegant and effective language, in Book 2 Castiglione focusses on the need to display an appropriate use of verbal wit in order to arouse laughter. The courtier must "con una certa dolcezza recrear gli animi degli auditori e con motti piacevoli e facezie e discre-tamente indurgli a festa e riso" (2.41.182), or, in other words, according to a further statement in

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... he text, he is required to employ a "parlar piacevole per in-durre riso e festa con gentil modo" (2.42.182). What emerges from the charac-ters' theoretical pronouncements that are subtly woven into the conversations being narrated and from the multitude of examples that are cited during the course of the lengthy discussion, is a comprehensive and profound treatment of humour.' It has not always been recognized as such, however. Toffanin had dismissed Castiglione's discussion of humour as being relatively unimportant and fundamentally non-philosophical (134), but modem readers, rightly discounting his assessment, have studied it closely, often from the point of view of the sources to which the various ideas can be traced, and also with the aim of determining the role that this substantial section of the text on humour plays in the context of the treatise as a whole.