Conduct books are a genre of books that attempt to educate the reader on social norms. As a genre, they began in the mid-to-late Middle Ages, although antecedents such as The Maxims of Ptahhotep (ca. 2350 BC) are among the earliest surviving works. Conduct books remained popular through the 18th century, although they gradually declined with the advent of the novel.
Famous quotes containing the words conduct and/or book:
“... so far from entrenching human conduct within the gentle barriers of peace and love, religion has ever been, and now is, the deepest source of contentions, wars, persecutions for conscience sake, angry words, angry feelings, backbitings, slanders, suspicions, false judgments, evil interpretations, unwise, unjust, injurious, inconsistent actions.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“The so-called paradoxes of an author, to which a reader takes exception, often exist not in the author’s book at all, but rather in the reader’s head.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)