Reconsidering Boccaccio: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts

Abstract

This volume collects essays that resulted from the centennial conference Boccaccio at 700, held at Binghamton University in 2013. As such, it joins a flurry of publications that recorded the conversations of that anniversary year, as scholars here and abroad focused their collective eyes on this most alluring of Italian writers. Like other volumes, this one offers up an eclectic group of essays, ranging from the minutiae of textual practice to social and cultural themes in Boccaccio to intertextuality. As Boccaccio gives us much to think about, so do these studies.The editors have divided the fifteen essays into five unequal groups, following a defensible rubricating logic. Sometimes a single essay will intersect fruitfully with another within its group and, at other times, with an essay outside its group. Three texts remain foundational here: the De mulieribus claris; the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, and the Decameron. The essays on the De mulieribus join with others that address, directly or indirectly, Boccaccio's Neapolitan experience and, in particular, his relationships with Niccolò Acciaiuoli and Mainardo Cavalcanti, as well as his evolving representation of Queen Johanna and her legacy.The studies by Jason Houston and Todd Boli are biographical in nature and examine the relationship with Acciaiuoli and Cavalcanti. The former is famous, by Boccaccio's account, for having treated him poorly after inviting him to Naples; the latter was a young acolyte to whom Boccaccio would eventually dedicate the De casibus. Together they raise questions about Boccaccio for which, sadly, we will never have full answers: whether he was in fact the “uomo di vetro” that Acciaiuoli acidly claimed he was, and whether he preferred the company of slavish younger devotees to less devout contemporaries. Those who want to see the best in Boccaccio will find these essays unsettling in a salutary way. The De mulieribus claris finds its way into several essays, including those that focus on Christine de Pizan. In the latter category there is Mary Anne Case's essay, which examines Christine's treatment of women as human beings before turning to a different case, that of Madonna Filippa in Decameron 6.7; Kevin Brownlee's essay on Christine's citations of the De mulieribus; and Lori Walters's study of how Christine models her Queen Ysabel on Boccaccio's Johanna I. Finally, there is an incisive essay by Elizabeth Casteen that details Boccaccio's uneven treatment of Johanna in the De mulieribus and other texts; the essays on the Fiammetta including Alessia Ronchetti's, which explores how Boccaccio puts the experience of compassion into play in this text, and Filippo Andrei's dissection of the relationship between the Fiammetta and the Celestina.The volume opens with an essay on the Decameron by K. P. Clarke, which details Boccaccio's use of catchwords in the Hamilton 90 autograph. Sadly, there are no plates, which would have been helpful. Other essays on the Decameron address Boccaccio's use of sources. Among these are Grace Delmolino's brilliant study of how Gratian's Decretum informs Decameron 2.10, and Franklin Lewis's essay detailing the Persian and Arabic analogues to Decameron 7.9, which exposes many of the complexities of Boccaccio's compositional approach when dealing with received tales. Katherine Brown takes a similar approach in her essay on Decameron 8.5 and 8.6, both of which have roots in the same French fabliau.Finally, there are some outliers that do not conform to the model I have developed here, which I should add is not the one adopted by the editors. These include Rhiannon Daniels's essay “Reading Boccaccio's Paratexts,” a somehow misleading title since not all the paratexts studied are those written by Boccaccio: Daniels compares his own dedicatory letters to those written by sixteenth-century editors. Finally, Sara Díaz offers a fresh reading of the Trattatello in laude di Dante, arguing for a distinction between misogyny and misogamy which, in the context of the little treatise, she relates to Boccaccio's attitude toward the vernacular.These essays thus apply a variety of perspectives to the questions and problems they address. As well, they fill out details of Boccaccio's life as an itinerant writer, a keen social observer, an ingenious manipulator of textual material, and a thinker who often seems more taken with problem than bent upon a solution. The year 2013 was busy with conversations about Boccaccio, but they are far from over.