The Decameron: First Day in Perspective edited by Elissa Weaver (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS109 anaylsis ofthe pre-Galfridian Arthurian texts. When Warren writes 'every category becomes a border' (16), this will appeal to many adherents of postcolonial literary criticism, and make some historians nervous. Similarly, the drawn out sword metaphor—swords write borders and borders write swords—at times seems forced. But overall, this is a novel and needed approach to the Arthurian historiographie texts that offers much for both historian and literary critic alike. CHRISTOPHER A. SNYDER Marymount University Elissa weaver, ed., The Decameron: First Day in Perspective. Volume One of the Lectura Boccaccii. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 2004. Pp. viii, 270. isbn: 0-8020-4454-9. $60. The present volume, edited by Elissa Weaver, is a long awaited collection of critical readings of Boccaccio's masterpiece sponsored by the American Boccaccio Association. The series, called the Lectura Boccaccii, takes its name and format from the academic tradition of reading and lecturing on individual cantos of Dante Alighieris Divine Comedy. Applying this practice to the Decameron alreadypresumes a certain critical supposition, namely, that each of the ten days may be treated like a canticle, as a thematic entity and, more specifically, that the Proem, Introduction, and ten tales ofDay One, constitute a thematic unitysimilar to a canto. The present volume treats each ofthe tales as part ofa complex structure as well as individually. Each ofthe essays addresses the Decameron as a whole, as an integral work, while acknowledging how its extraordinary complexity makes it difficult, and perhaps not advisable, to draw any totalizing generalizations. Readers of the Decameron have in various ways acknowledged the special importance of Day One as a metanarrative that may serve as an interpretive key to unlocking the rest of the work. Boccaccio's steady concern throughout the work with the act of reading and with his critics' reaction to his works, along with his theoretical musings on narrative strategies, in particular, allegory, and his sustained, although never explicit, dialogue with Dante ask us to gauge self-consciously our interpretations against his narrative process, which aims to remain free ofany absolute interpretive system. In addition, the author's ironic distance from his storytellers and from his readers would seem to deny us any one exegetical code breaker. The essays in this collection manage to illuminate, without limiting our understanding of the tales, by considering the stories in the context of the entire work, highlighting structural parallels, inter-textual connections, and textual associations both verbal and thematic. By juxtaposing tales in the fitst day, as well as to other days, we see how each functions in the larger narrative; and by following context preparations and extensions from one story to another through close readings, we gain a fresh perspective on tales that have been the subject of critical study for decades. Several ofthe essays carefully trace the context and function ofthe narrators' comments with respect to the tales they tell and reveal their careful strategy. These comments are structural rather than interpretive and may also be compared to Boccaccio's descriptive headings. This sort ofcareful reading, ofeach tale in relation HOarthuriana to what preceeds and follows it, the day in which it is told, its structural similarities to other days, as well as the teller and his audience and the teller's comments, along with Boccaccio's own synopsis and his narrative and literary concerns is thorough but not exhaustive. The Decameron's special appeal, its true character as a masterpiece, is its ability to yield a wealth of meaning and pleasute to the most demanding critical examination. Many of the scholars begin with summaries of previous studies relevant to the tale and, thus, locate their own particular readings within the tradition ofBoccaccio scholarship. The bibliography provides extensive reference to Boccaccio scholarship in both English and Italian. Ofspecial interest to this reader is Robert Hollander's reading ofthe Ovidian and Dantean subtext ofthe Proem and Thomas Stillinger's essay, which once and for all claims the Introduction's importance to the whole of the work. Of special pleasure, those essays that soberly and carefully examine rhe lesser known stories of Day One, often overlooked because of their apparent simplicity, brevity, or transparency. These diligent and fresh readings not only...