Editing Decorum (section)

==In theatre==
In continental European debates on theatre in the Renaissance and post-Renaissance, decorum concerns the appropriateness of certain actions or events to the stage. In their emulation of classical models and of the theoretical works by Aristotle and Horace (including the notion of the "[[Three Unities]]"), certain subjects were deemed to be better left to narration. In Horace's ''[[Ars Poetica (Horace)|Ars Poetica]]'', the poet (in addition to speaking about appropriate vocabulary and diction, as discussed above) counseled playwrights to respect decorum by avoiding the portrayal, on stage, of scenes that would shock the audience by their cruelty or unbelievable nature: "But you will not bring on to the stage anything that ought properly to be taking place behinds the scenes, and you will keep out of sight many episodes that are to be described later by the eloquent tongue of a narrator. [[Medea]] must not butcher her children in the presence of the audience, nor the monstrous [[Atreus]] cook his dish of human flesh within public view, nor [[Procne]] be metamorphosed into a bird, nor [[Cadmus]] into a snake. I shall turn in disgust from anything of this kind that you show me."<ref>{{cite book|author=Horace|chapter=On the Art of Poetry|translator-first=T.S.|translator-last=Dorsch|title=Aristotle/Horace/Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism|location=London|publisher=Penguin Books|year=1965|page=85|isbn=0-14-044155-7}} (corresponding to lines 164–193 in the Latin version)</ref>

In Renaissance Italy, important debates on decorum in theater were prompted by [[Sperone Speroni]]'s play ''[[Canace (play)|Canace]]'' (portraying incest between a brother and sister) and [[Giovanni Battista Giraldi]]'s play ''[[Orbecche]]'' (involving patricide and cruel scenes of vengeance).<ref>See {{cite book|first=Timothy|last=Reiss|chapter=Renaissance theatre and the theory of tragedy|title=The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism|date=1989 |volume=III: The Renaissance|pages=229–247|publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-30008-8}}</ref> In seventeenth-century France, the notion of decorum ({{lang|fr|les bienséances}}) was a key component of French classicism in both theater and the novel, as well as the visual arts.

{{See also|17th-century French literature|Hierarchy of genres}}