
Writings on the Sober Life: The Art and Grace of Living Long
© 2014
Alvise Cornaro (c.1484–1566) was the son of a Paduan innkeeper with presumed ties to the patrician Cornaro family of Venice. Highly ambitious, he acquired a name for himself as a businessman, architect, and patron of the arts. Critically ill around age 40 – likely with diabetes and gout – he resolved to abandon his intemperate lifestyle. The strict rules regarding food and drink that he adopted and which led to his recovery are outlined in his most famous treatise, the Vita Sobria (1558). The work, which featured prescriptions for living to 100 years – stressing healthy lifestyle, proper diet, and avoidance of excess –became an international success.
This edition offers the most comprehensive and faithful version of this early modern classic ever available in English, and includes Cornaro’s Aggionta (“Addition”), translated here for the first time. An introductory essay by the late Marisa Milani offers biographical background and analysis and discusses the work’s publication history. The volume also presents letters by Cornaro’s contemporaries commenting on the treatise as well as his Eulogy, now viewed as having been written by Cornaro himself. A foreword by award-winning health journalist Greg Critser speaks to the continuing relevance of Cornaro’s fascinating and seminal work.
Product Details
- Series: Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library
- Division: Scholarly Publishing
- World Rights
- Page Count: 288 pages
- Dimensions: 6.3in x 1.0in x 9.2in
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Reviews
‘The volume provides a useful service by making these materials available in English.’
Linda L. Carroll
Renaissance Quarterly vol 68:04:2015“Students of the early modern period, literary scholars, anthropologists, and historians will be eager to have a taste of Writings on the Sober Life. This excellently executed volume will introduce them to Alvise Cornaro, a figure moving among the important members of Paduan and Venetian academic and courtly life. The general reader who is interested in folklore and foodways will also find Cornaro’s Writings on the Sober Life satisfying, for it offers a glimpse into an early modern common-sense approach to bringing order to the chaotic life most of us lead most of the time.”
Dennis Looney, Department of French and Italian, University of Pittsburgh -
Author Information
Hiroko Fudemoto is a translator based in Los Angeles. -
Table of contents
Notes on the Translation
‘Introduction’ by Marisa Milani
Letter to Bishop Musso by Bernardino Tomitano
Cornaro’s Treatise on the Sober Life
Addition to the Sober Life
Brief Compendium
Letter to Daniele Barbaro
Loving Exhortation
Glossary
Notes to Cornaro (pp.1-64)
Eulogy
Sperone Speroni: Letter Against Sobriety
Sperone Speroni: Letter In Favour of the Sober Life
Selected Letters
Letter by Alvise Giacomo Cornaro Piscopia
Notes on the Texts (pp. 81-127)
Essay by Marisa Milani:
‘How to Attain Immortality Living One Hundred Years,
Or the Fortune of the Vita Sobria in the Anglo-Saxon World’
Notes to Essay ‘Immortality…’
Bibliography
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Subjects and Courses