Giovanni Boccaccio Research Articles

Imagining women working stone: the ancient sculptor Marcia in Boccaccio’s De mulieribus and responses in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art literature

This article confronts the widespread stereotype of the supposedly natural inability of women to work stone through an analysis of the iconographic tradition of the ancient sculptor Marcia. A small corpus of fifteenth-century manuscript illuminations shows the ancient artist at work. This case study allows us to trace the memory of a woman artist working in stone that was already circulating at that time. The textual basis for the iconography under discussion was introduced by Giovanni Boccaccio in his biography of Marcia, part of his De mulieribus claris. Boccaccio’s text was received by subsequent generations of authors and reprinted in an Italian version four years before Giorgio Vasari published his account of the life of Properzia de Rossi in his Lives. The article introduces a fresh perspective on the relationship between Boccaccio’s Marcia and Vasari’s Properzia and provides new evidence for connections between the querelles des femmes and sixteenth-century art literature.

КОНЦЕПТ ФОРТУНИ У ЗБІРЦІ БІОГРАФІЙ «DE CASIBUS VIRORUM ILLUSTRIUM» ДЖОВАННІ БОККАЧЧО

The cult of the goddess Fortune dates back to ancient tradition. In the Middle Ages the allegorical image of Fortune remains popular in literature and everyday life. Authors such as Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio used in their works the allegorical image of Fortune, which has special verbal and visual characteristics. The main attention in this paper is focused specifically on the study of Fortune symbolism in the collection of biographies «De Casibus Virorum Illustrium» by G. Boccaccio. In the preface to the collection the humanist outlined the task he set for himself. It consisted in depicting the misfortunes, difficult and fatal fates of legendary and famous figures in history from Adam and Eve to the writer Fr. Petrarch he was contemporary with. In the biographies it is constantly emphasized that Fortune can be unpredictable. The text of «De Casibus Virorum Illustrium» is full of negative characteristics of Fortune, which repeatedly emphasize her fickleness and treachery. The visual representation of Fortuna also has negative connotations, which creates a formidable halo around the allegorical figure. In G. Boccaccio’s description, Fortune appears as a tall woman with a stern look and a gloomy face. On miniatures of the 15th century the goddess is depicted with closed eyes, wings (sometimes multi-armed), a staff, the Wheel of Fortune (Rota Fortunae) or a ship’s rudder. It is important that the characteristics of the humanist do not include the attributes of the goddess of fate. They appear later on miniatures for translations of G. Boccaccio works, which indicates the process of formation of iconographic tradition around the image of Fortune (by the 15th century the Wheel became its main attribute). The collection «De Casibus Virorum Illustrium» was supposed to serve as a warning about the changeability of fate for influential contemporaries of G. Boccaccio and subsequent generations. In the system of that time ideas, following the cardinal virtues of Christian theology (prudence, justice, courage, temperance) guaranteed the favor of Fortune.

FOLKLORE AND LITERARY SOURCES OF FRANKO’S "PARABLE ON FRIENDSHIP"

The article analyzes the literary and folklore sources of Franko’s "Parable on Friendship". It has been ascertained that this poetic piece from "My Emerald" collection is obviously rooted in the exemplum "On Semifriendship" from "the book of true to life maxims, parables and novellas" "Disciplina clericalis" (1106) by Medieval writer Petrus Alfonsi. The long-lasting literary journey of the key motif (a friend in need) has been traced through a story from "Gesta romаnorum" collection (early 14th c.), a tale from Don Juan Manuel’s book "Tales of Count Lucanor" (1335) and a novella from Boccaccio’s "The Decameron" (1353). It is remarked that each of the listed sources was subject of Ivan Franko’s considerable academic interest. The researcher offered numerous insights on Petrus Alfonsi’s book, the collection of an unknown author under the title “Gesta Romanorum”, tales by Juan Manuel and novella collection by Giovanni Boccaccio, remarking their essential influence on the literary and folklore tradition of the European people. The texts from the mentioned books were scrupulously analyzed by the Ukrainian scholar in the national literary contexts. Special emphasis is placed on the folklore spin-off in the popular plot development. A folk tale on putting the friendship to test has been identified in the collected records by Polish folklorist Zofia Rokossovska "Bajki (skazki) zo wsi Jurkowszczyzny (powiatu Zwiahelskiego, gubernii Wołyńskiej)" (1897 р.), which was brought out shortly before Franko started working on "My Emerald" and may have given him an additional and final inspiration to apply "own patterns" to "a foreign foundation" or in other words to come up with an original reception of a popular topic. The article also offers a comparative analysis of certain matching motifs and establishes a degree of their closeness to Franko’s parable.

Translating the Law in the Inns of Court Play Gismond of Salerne (1566–68)

Abstract: Gismond of Salerne (1566–68) was a dramatic adaptation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Tancredi and Ghismunda novella produced at the Inner Temple. Positing that the legal background of the authors was reflected in their reception of Boccaccio, this essay investigates the representation and use of various significations of the law in the play. It argues that the Inns authors were receptive to the presence of the Natural Law concept in the background of Boccaccio’s novella and that they intensified its role in the play, emphasizing its conflict with man-made law. The latter is also investigated in its own right, showing its impact on a thematic, rhetorical, and dramaturgical level. Further, the Inns writers’ political interests as members of a community revolving around common law explain why the play idealizes and justifies specific legal notions and practices.

The 'Decameron' Sixth Day in Perspective ed. by David Lummus

Reviewed by: The 'Decameron' Sixth Day in Perspective ed. by David Lummus Emily Di Dodo The 'Decameron' Sixth Day in Perspective. Ed. by David Lummus. (Lectura Boccaccii, 6) Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2021. xii+290 pp. $75. ISBN 978–1–4875–0871–5. The Sixth Day of the Decameron, over which Elissa reigns, is widely regarded as a tour de force of rhetorical concision, the theme being 'those who, on being provoked by some verbal pleasantry, have returned like for like, or who, by a prompt retort or shrewd manœuvre, have avoided danger, discomfiture or ridicule' (Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. by G. H. McWilliam (New York: Penguin, 2003), p. 444). This volume offers a fresh perspective on and rich insights into these tales, engaging with past criticism, especially concerning the metaliterary nature of the tales, but then builds upon it with novel readings, which in some cases unabashedly move against the grain of traditional scholarship. The book will become a point of reference especially for students, both undergraduate and graduate. All the same, I would have found it more constructive if all contributions had considered the function of the individual tales within the work as a whole, thus offering a perspective of the novelle in their intended or broader context. The Introduction by David Lummus considers the function of Day vi in the architecture of the Decameron, aptly highlighting its reflections on the art of storytelling through the power of the word, drawing parallels with Cicero, Scripture, and Boccaccio's own Genealogia deorum gentilium. The introduction has a welcome focus on the framing narrative, specifically the thematic consequences of the 'plebian distraction' (p. 11) and the originality of the conclusion, which establishes the 'valle delle donne' (vi, concl. 18) as a theatre for 'the aestheticization of the erotic' (p. 14). Teresa Kennedy is tasked with vi. 1, in which she persuasively looks past the superficial humour of Madonna Oretta's witty retort, revealing a darker interpretation consisting in the avoidance of sexual violence through metaphorical language and [End Page 254] wit. This is supported by the intertextual allusions created by the attribution of the tale to Filomena, as this evokes her homonymous counterparts in the Filostrato and Ovid's Metamorphoses, as well as earlier tensions with the Decameron's Filostrato. Tale vi. 2 is explored by Giulia Cardillo, who engages with the Genealogia to draw links between the preceding tale and the theme of Day vi. Cardillo convincingly emphasizes the importance of Pampinea's preamble as a didactic tool with which to instruct the discerning reader to lift the 'poetic veil' (p. 40) and reveal a deeper interpretation of the analogy made between wine and words, made all the more valuable by 'the poet's obscuritas' (p. 44). Guyda Armstrong, in her analysis of vi. 3, fills a critical gap in scholarly discourse surrounding this tale by proposing an 'explicitly feminist' (p. 57) reading. Armstrong begins by situating the tale and narrator within the context of the day's theme. She thus draws attention to its status as a continuation of the discourse on language initiated by Pampinea on Day i, as well as the gendered tensions within the brigata, specifically between Dioneo and Elissa. Armstrong gives equal attention to the narrative realism evoked in the tale, for which she outlines a complex web of connections to fourteenth-century Florentine society, staging 'the routine male invasion of [Nonna de' Pulci's] personal space' (p. 67). Broader thematic considerations give way to an essential commentary, offering a 'historicized close-reading' (p. 90) of the socio-political frictions that have often been overlooked. James C. Kriesel's chapter on vi. 4 presents an intertextual analysis of the significance of the crane intertwined with considerations surrounding the tale's 'vernacularity' (p. 96). On this latter point, it would have been beneficial to consider, for example, how Brunetta and Chichibio relate to other plebeian interactions (e.g. Licisca and Tindaro). Kriesel goes on to explore how the protagonists enact a discourse on truth, highlighting biblical resonances, followed by an analysis of Boccaccio's linguistic congruence potentially inspired by Dante. Tale vi. 5 is covered by Zygmunt G. Barański...

Community, Survival, and the Arts in the Boccaccian Tradition

This essay brings Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death” into dialogue with Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, a fourteenth-century Italian text. Though different in scale, both texts start with an experience of plague and follow a group of people who withdraw into a restricted community to survive the disease through art. The outcomes are wildly different, however: death, for Poe’s characters; a return to their homes, for Boccaccio’s. Firstly, I consider Boccaccio’s text for its justification of the characters’ decision to escape the city, their manner of living together, and their stories’ content. Crucial here is that the Decameron is, in its fuller title, “cognominato Prencipe Galeotto” [surnamed Prince Galehaut], an Arthurian and Dantean reference that highlights art’s potential to be morally dangerous. Secondly, I examine Poe’s story as a kind of tragic, deviant Decameron, lacking the reason, order, and constraints that Boccaccio stresses in the construction of his ideal community. I read Poe’s Prince as another Galehaut: a seductive intermediary who leads his followers via art to death. Thirdly, I reflect on our experience of a student–staff book club at SELCS in UCL, to consider what sort of story-telling community we created in the time of Covid-19, in the wake of this Boccaccian tradition. Ultimately, I see our activities as having been most similar to a third text, Marguerite de Navarre’s Boccaccio-inspired Heptaméron, given Marguerite’s reflections on the role of art in a crisis and the unfinished nature of her text.

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism, edited by Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner

Reviewed by: The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism ed. by Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner Ann F. Howey (bio) The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism, edited by Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner; pp. xx + 688. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, £110.00, $145.00. Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner, in their introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism, clearly articulate the goal for this ambitious collection of essays: “to demonstrate that medievalism was as influential a cultural force in Britain . . . as was classical culture” throughout the nineteenth century (2). To accomplish that goal, the collection seeks to illustrate the “broad-ranging and diverse” nature of Victorian medievalism by examining “every major aspect” of the phenomenon “from the perspective of the many disciplines to which it is relevant today” (2, 4). Essays are therefore organized into six sections: Medievalism Before 1750 (4 chapters); Romantic Period Medievalism (6 chapters); Sources (9 chapters); Social, Political, and Religious Praxis (6 chapters); Arts and Architecture (7 chapters); and Literature (7 chapters). The chosen organization results in a number of strengths for the collection. As the section headings suggest, the collection is temporally diverse, beginning its study with texts and practices from long before the 1830s. Thus, although its title might signal the narrower temporal window of Victoria’s reign, the collection explores medievalisms throughout the long nineteenth century, and even earlier in its opening section. The book as a whole communicates a sense of the evolution of medievalism—that is, how later eras (re)constructed and engaged with the medieval era (variously defined) as soon as that era ended; charting an evolution of attitudes and tastes in the use of medieval materials is often a focus of individual chapters as well. Some chapters extend that evolution past the Victorian period, with reference to the continuing appearances of the medieval today. For example, John Haines’s “Medievalist Music and Dance” gestures to the legacy of Victorian music-hall in post-Victorian cinema; Parker’s “Anglo-Saxonism and the Victorian Novel” ends by considering these novels as the “roots of our contemporary culture” and citing twenty-first-century fiction and television (652); Inga Bryden’s “Tennyson and the Return of King Arthur” references the ongoing vogue for Arthurian objects. The Handbook’s evolutionary focus usefully debunks any notion that [End Page 681] the Victorians were doing something completely new in their recourse to the medieval past for literary, artistic, architectural, religious, and political inspiration, while simultaneously recognizing the importance of their scholarly, creative, theological, and political engagements with that past. The collection also traces evolutions across geographies. For example, the Sources section contains essays on Anglo-Saxon poetry (M. J. Toswell) and Anglo-Saxon sculpture (Jane Hawkes), Geoffrey Chaucer (Richard Utz), Irish and Welsh sources (Huw Pryce), Scottish literature and Arts and Crafts (Sarah Dunnigan and Gerard Carruthers), Italian influences such as Giovanni Boccaccio (Eleonora Sasso), and Old Norse-Icelandic texts (Carl Phelpstead). Geographical diversity goes further than the diverse objects of British medievalist study in the period, however. Chapters such as Francis G. Gentry’s “Medievalism as an Instrument of Political Renewal in Nineteenth-Century Germany” or Elizabeth Emery and Janet T. Marquardt’s “The Influence of French Medievalism on Victorian Britain” investigate similarities and differences between medievalisms in other European countries. Other essays—for example Kathleen Davis and Nadia R. Altschul’s “Orientalism, Medievalism, Colonialism, and Militarized Mercantilism” and G. A. Bremner’s “The Gothic Revival beyond Europe”— trace the British export of medievalism to other parts of the globe, whether in colonial attitudes or in architectural designs. As with the temporal diversity of the collection, this geographic diversity demonstrates the way that medievalism affected virtually every sphere of nineteenth-century life. In addition, it suggests the ways that people in a variety of national contexts adapted medievalism to their local circumstances and deployed it for their own purposes, emphasizing the malleability of medievalism and the suitability of the plural term medievalisms. The collection also impresses because of the variety of fields covered and approaches employed. Literature is well-represented throughout, from the Ballad Revival (David Matthews), the Lake Poets (Tom Duggett), and Sir Walter Scott’s novels (James Watt) to...

Miłość i strach w Dekameronie Giovanniego Boccaccia

In the Introduction to the First Day of the Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio depicts the Black Death pandemic and also portrays the devastating effects of death on emotional states of Florentines. Although the plague doesn’t enter the artistically ordered world of the Decameron’s storytellers, death and fear are still present in the novellas. Therefore, a question may arise, how is it possible that the novellas which were written to bring comfort often show dramatic events? To approach this issue the article aims to examine various relations between love and fear. It turns out that in the reconstruction of the world devastated by the plague, it may be helpful, among other things, to return to the ancient chivalrous values and the concept of courtly love, which only noble individuals can truly experience. What is important, nobility of spirit according to Boccaccio is not determined by either gender or social origin.

SHAKESPEARIAN MAN IN THE CONTEXT OF RENAISSANCE IDEAS

William Shakespeare’s writing is characterised by lasting interest in man as a dialectic being. On the one hand, it can be explained by the specific features of the genre chosen by Shakespeare, for both the play (a tragedy, a comedy, a historical chronicle) and the sonnet call for a more intense clash of thesis and antithesis. On the other hand, it is the age that has shaped the notion of man as a being with inner contradictions: Shakespeare wrote his works at a time when an optimistic view of man was gradually replaced by pessimism that is characteristic of the decline of Renais- sance. The paper is devoted to the analysis of interpretation of the image of man that is typical of Shakespeare’s writing. Special attention is paid to the pair of opposites of “man-God” and “man-degenerate of nature”, emphasising daring as a common meas- urement of the value of man in Renaissance. The interpretation of the image of man that is specific to Shakespeare’s writing is viewed in the context of ideas of Renaissance authors: Pico della Mirandola, Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio and Christopher Marlowe.

Review: Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment

Review: <i>Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment</i>

Boccaccio's Pisan Allegory of "Death" in Petrarch's Triumphus Mortis

From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, viral contagions, such as the Black Death of 1348, disrupted many social, political, and economic parts of life, situating the idea and the reality of Death in mass numbers at the forefront of late medieval and early Renaissance minds. Responding to the anxieties experienced by the thousands, literary and visual texts from this period emphasized the personification of Death as an imposing figure and common threat. This paper traces the visual evolution of the figure of Death which, I argue, developed according to intertextual and intervisual dialogues among Francesco Petrarca’s Triumphus Mortis, Giovanni Boccaccio’s L’Amorosa visione, and the fresco known as the Triumph of Death by Buonamico Buffalmacco in the Pisa Camposanto. While early visual portrayals of Petrarch’s Triumphus Mortis attest to the renewed interest in the “Triumph of Death” in the decades immediately following the 1358 plague, most artists depict a chariot atop which Death rides during a “triumphal” procession, painted elements that are not explicitly recounted in Petrarch’s text. &nbsp;I investigate the reasons for this cross-contamination between word and image around the “Triumph of Death,” demonstrating further how Boccaccio’s engagement with funerary rituals informed his Amorosa visione, as well as his viewing of the Pisa Camposanto. The fusion of live-action pageantry with the visual “Triumph of Death” provided Petrarch with an intermedial model for his Triumphus Mortis, to which later artists turned for inspiration in depicting figures within and beyond the poet’s Trionfi. Such intermedial dialogues across art and poetry resonated with audiences striving to overcome the indiscriminate nature of Death and the fear of disease during a most unsettling historical moment.

Allegory and the Matter of Poetics: Dante as a Case Study in Giovanni Boccaccio’s and Leonardo Bruni’s Perspectives

The question of whether or not to read poetry through an allegorizing lens had significant implications in the Middle Ages. The identification of allegories in a poetical text was highlighted by early supporters of poetry as the primary means of legitimizing the craft; regardless of whether a poet quoted a pagan god or a mythological figure, the true challenge was to find the real meaning beneath the surface. This approach—one embraced by Giovanni Boccaccio—offered a wealth of samples to the earliest readers of Dante’s Divine Comedy. At the end of the fourteenth century, some humanists started to call into question the theological stance on which the allegorical interpretations were based. In order to promote the autonomous status of poetry, literati of the calibre of Leonardo Bruni maintained that allegory was a double-edged sword. Inspired by Plato’s refusal of allegory, Bruni encouraged the reading of literary texts free from the restrictions of a theoretical superstructure. For proponents of these opposing tendencies, Dante represented a true case study, for he was both a theorist and a poet in his own right and could therefore nourish the reflections formulated by both camps.

Forming Pity: Responses to Suffering in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

This article argues for the critical importance of pity for understanding Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. It shows that in his translation of the popular Troilus narrative Chaucer greatly expanded the role of pity from his sources, and it investigates the consequences of this expansion for the poem's larger consideration of the ethics of responding to others. "Forming Pity" proposes that, in his increased attention to pity, Chaucer revises and indicts medieval modes of ethical response to the suffering of others. He moves away from an ethics of identification prevalent in other medieval models of pity, including Giovanni Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, and towards an ethics that acknowledges and privileges the alterity of another's suffering. He does so through a careful investigation of the social efficacy and limitations of pity as it was understood in different medieval pity discourses—most notably chivalric ethics, fin amor, and Christian ethics. As he explores pity in these discourses, Chaucer contends with pity's power to ease suffering, but also its capacity to maintain dangerous social hierarchies and its inability to end the problem of suffering. This article argues that it is pity's limited capacity to ease suffering that helps to make sense of the poem's famously difficulty conclusion. It shows that in the poem's final transition to Christian ethics and passion meditation, Chaucer abruptly switches from speaking of pity to mercy: a change that Chaucer uses to make a distinction between limited human pity and limitless divine mercy.

The king and the beast: Political and poetic shifts in Boccaccio'sAlcestus

Alcestus is the sixth among fifteen eclogues in Giovanni Boccaccio's Buccolicum carmen (c. 1362–63). Like most poems in this book, Alcestus presents an allegorical narrative based upon a specific historical episode. More particularly, Alcestus takes the form of a political panegyric in honour of Louis of Taranto (the husband of Queen Johanna), who returned to Naples in 1348, after a long conflict involving a vendetta for the murder of Andrew of Hungary (Johanna's first husband), in 1345. This article aims to offer, first, an overview of Boccaccio's Alcestus; and then, provide a closer examination of this work. Taking into consideration its historical background, as well as its literary strategies, I will focus on the different kinds of shifts that emerge in the text – from winter to spring, absence to return, sorrow to happiness, and peace to fear. As I will try to demonstrate, these shifts, besides reflecting the political instability that marked the Neapolitan Trecento, also reveal Boccaccio's literary models for this eclogue – mainly Virgil's Eclogues 5 and 8.

Reading Loops with Boccaccio, Freud and Morton

This article assesses the notion of ecological awareness through a re-reading of Giovanni Boccaccio’s classic Decameron, together with Sigmund Freud and Timothy Morton. The purpose is not primarily to trace antecedents to modern and late modern thought, but rather to follow a loop that in different ways is tangible in their works and links them together despite their temporal and thematic differences. If Freud and Morton possess heuristic value for a re-reading of Boccaccio, his way of articulating an earlier and freethinking vein in the humanist tradition may prompt us to see not only what an ecological thought may be, but also that it has always been there as an unconscious awareness. We suggest that such a loop can function as a liberating deviation from a linear idea of living at the end of times. In this article, we also follow this temporal and thematic loop as a tension between disruptiveness and interconnectedness that Freud metaphorically and mythologically describes as a battle between the two giants Thanatos and Eros. From Morton’s ecological perspective, everything’s interconnectedness (or Eros in Freud’s mythological description) is precisely what has been denied or repressed in the anthropocentric strive to master the world. What is interesting in this regard is that Boccaccio, by taking a specific disastrous event—the plague—as his starting point, also makes Thanatos and Eros the themes that interconnect his stories into a weird loop.

Pandemic fiction as therapeutic play: The New York Times Magazine’s The Decameron Project (2020)

This article explores the therapeutic potential of narrative fiction during a global health crisis. We focus on The Decameron Project (2020), a collection of short fiction by writers from around the world, commissioned by the New York Times Magazine. The Decameron Project references the narrative framework established by Giovanni Boccaccio in the mid-14th century, when the Black Death devastated Europe. Drawing on aspects of psychoanalytic theory and principles of bibliotherapy employed since the Middle Ages, we argue that The Decameron Project offers strategies to simultaneously confront and contain the anxious mind. Storytelling, according to both Boccaccio and to the editors of The Decameron Project, is not merely a source of distraction but a means of survival.

Función social de la ironía en Decamerón, de Giovanni Boccaccio

Decameron has caused a convulsive reaction due to its social content and the mockery of patterns ascribed to medieval religion and morality in Italy. Therefore, support is provided here for the reasons leading to such astonishment about the literary work by Giovanni Boccaccio. Attention is given to the concept of the social function of irony, which in turn would start from three basic principles developed by Bergson. A comic situation requires intelligence, insensitivity and social criticism. Thus, it is possible to explain that the notion of irony is conditioned by the author’s worldview.

Dlaczego komedia? Rozważania Giorgia Agambena jako próba odpowiedzi

&nbsp;In his text titled Comedy, included in the collection of essays named The End of the Poem, Giorgio Agamben — the famous contemporary Italian philosopher — took up the problem of the ambiguity of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy title. This issue has always been present in Dante studies since the Comedy itself was written. However, Agamben’s essay concern­ing this topic has not yet been met with interest among researchers of medieval or Italian literature, which seems to be quite significant. In this paper the author critically examines Agamben’s suggestions for interpretation of the title to see if they can broaden the horizon of Dante research. The confrontation of Agamben’s theses with previous concepts — the his­torical (Giovanni Boccaccio, Benvenuto da Imola) and the contemporary (Erich Auerbach, Amilcare A. Ianucci, Teodolina Barolini) — reveals the originality, but also the controversy of his ideas. The Italian philosopher entangles himself in the philological tradition, pointedly disputing with personages from the exegetical history, but at the same time he expounds his own interpretation. Nevertheless, as the author proves, there is no doubt that Agamben makes a significant contribution to the state of research on the title of the Divine Comedy revealing — among other things — deeply hidden cultural motivations of this academic phe­nomenon.

Writing on Death: Plague Narratives. A Review Essay

AbstractThis essay discusses several books, ancient and recent, on plagues to ask the question: Can we face death without turning away from it through historical narration? Can we write about death, which only afflicts individuals, without stripping death of its individuality? After briefly addressing these questions, I discuss five books, one from the ancient period (Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War), one from the late medieval period (Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron), one from the early modern period (Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year), and two from the modern period (Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, and Frank Snowden’s Epidemics and Society). These books not only come from different eras but also reflect different written responses to death—ancient history, story/fable, reportage, futuristic novel, and contemporary history. The essay concludes by considering a counterargument to its focus on death, an argument developed by Baruch Spinoza which claims that humans should think nothing less than of death.

Review Essay—Jhumpa Lahiri: Between Longing and Belonging

Review Essay—Jhumpa Lahiri: Between Longing and Belonging