Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:27:24.505Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Boccaccio and the Early Modern Reception of Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

James C. Kriesel
James C. Kriesel*
Affiliation:
Villanova University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Fourteenth-century Italian humanists discussed the properties of tragedy while considering the value of Latin versus vernacular literature. Boccaccio was interested in these discussions because humanists were promoting classicizing tragic and epic literatures at the expense of vernacular writing. This article explores Boccaccio’s role in these debates by examining the tragic stories of the Decameron. It suggests that Boccaccio highlighted the virtues of his erotic tales by contrasting them to the tragic stories of day 4, a strategy inspired by Ovid’s elegiac poems. Boccaccio thus underscored the dignity of his low, Ovidian-inspired Decameron, and counterbalanced humanist fascination with high tragic-epic literatures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , Summer 2016 , pp. 415 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alighieri, Dante Vita nuova. Trans. Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta. Notre Dame, 1995.Google Scholar
Alighieri, Dante De vulgari eloquentia. Ed. and trans. Steven Botterill. Cambridge, 1996.Google Scholar
Alighieri, Dante The Divine Comedy. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez. 3 vols. Oxford, 1996–2011.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Guyda “Boccaccio and the Infernal Body: The Widow as Wilderness.” In Boccaccio and Feminist Criticism, ed. Thomas Stillinger and Regina Psaki, 83–104. Chapel Hill, 2006.Google Scholar
Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio. Il tragico cristiano: Da Dante ai moderni. Florence, 2003.Google Scholar
Barolini, Teodolinda “Dante and Francesca da Rimini: Realpolitik, Romance, Gender.” Speculum 75.1 (2000), 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Robert “Ovid in Medieval Italy.” In Ovid in the Middle Ages (2011), 123–42.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. Ed. Vittore Branca. 10 vols. Milan, 1964–98.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni L’Ameto. Trans. Judith Serafini-Sauli. New York, 1985.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni Il Filostrato. Ed. Vincenzo Pernicone. Trans. Robert P. ap Roberts and Anna Bruni Seldis. New York, 1986.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta. Trans. Mariangela Causa-Steindler and Thomas Mauch. Chicago, 1990.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni Decameron. Ed. Vittore Branca. 2 vols. Turin, 1992.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni Famous Women. Ed. and trans. Virginia Brown. Cambridge, MA, 2001.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni Vita di Petrarca. Ed. Gianni Villani. Rome, 2004.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni Expositions on Dante’s Comedy. Trans. Michael Papio. Toronto, 2009.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni The Decameron. Trans. Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella. New York, 2010.Google Scholar
Boitani, Piero The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature. Cambridge, 1989.Google Scholar
Boncompagno da Signa. Rhetorica novissima. In Scripta anecdota glossatorum, Biblioteca iuridica medii aevi, ed. Augustus Guadentius. 3 vols. Bologna, 1913. scrineum.unipv.it/wight/index.htm.Google Scholar
Branca, Vittore “Ostensione del cuore ‘amore’ e ‘morte.’” In Forma e parola: Studi in onore di Fred Chiappelli, ed. Dennis J. Dutschke, Pier Massimo Forni, Filippo Grazzini, Benjamin R. Lawton et al., 155–73. Rome, 1992.Google Scholar
Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio. Ed. Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels, and Stephen J. Milner. Cambridge, 2015.Google Scholar
Carrai, Stefano Dante elegiaco: Una chiave di lettura per la Vita nova. Florence, 2006.Google Scholar
Cazalé Bérard, Claude. “Boccaccio’s Working Notebooks (Zibaldone Laurenziano, Miscellanea Laurenziana, Zibaldone Magliabechiano).” In Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, eds. Victoria Kirkham, Michael Sherberg, and Janet L. Smarr, 307–18. Chicago, 2014.Google Scholar
Fedi, Roberto “Il ‘regno’ di Filostrato: Natura e struttura della Giornata IV del Decameron.” MLN 102.1 (1987): 39–54.Google Scholar
Filosa, Elsa “Intertestualità tra Decameron e De mulieribus claris: La tragica storia di Piramo e Tisbe.” Heliotropia 3.1–2 (2006): 1–9.Google Scholar
Filosa, Elsa “L’amicizia ai tempi della congiura (Firenze 1960–61): A confortatore non duole capo.” Studi sul Boccaccio 42 (2014): 195–220.Google Scholar
Forni, Pier Massimo Forme complesse nel Decameron. Florence, 1992.Google Scholar
Harrison, Robert Pogue The Body of Beatrice. Baltimore, 1988.Google Scholar
Isidore of Seville. Etymologies. Trans. Stephan A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof. Cambridge, MA, 2006.Google Scholar
Kelly, Henry Ansgar Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante. Berkeley, 1989.Google Scholar
Kelly, Henry Ansgar Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirkham, Victoria The Sign of Reason in Boccaccio’s Fiction. Florence, 1993.Google Scholar
Kriesel, James C. “The Genealogy of Boccaccio’s Theory of Allegory.” Studi sul Boccaccio 37 (2009): 197–226.Google Scholar
Kriesel, James C. “Chastening the Corpus: Bembo and the Renaissance Reception of Boccaccio.” The Italianist 31 (2011): 367–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locati, Silvia La rinascita del genere tragico nel medioevo: L’Ecerinis di Albertino Mussato. Florence, 2006.Google Scholar
Lummus, David “The Decameron and Boccaccio’s Poetics.” In Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio (2015), 65–82.Google Scholar
Marchesi, Simone Stratigrafie decameroniane. Florence, 2004.Google Scholar
Marchesi, Simone “Intenzionalità tragica e intendimento comico in Decameron.” Humanistica 2 (2009): 31–41.Google Scholar
Marcus, Millicent An Allegory of Form: Literary Self-Consciousness in the Decameron. Saratoga, 1979.Google Scholar
Matthew of Vendôme. Ars versificatoria (The Art of the Verse Maker). Trans. Roger P. Parr. Milwaukee, 1981.Google Scholar
Mazzotta, Giuseppe The World at Play in Boccaccio’s Decameron. Princeton, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milner, Stephen J. “Boccaccio’s Decameron and the Semiotics of the Everyday.” In Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio (2015), 83–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minnis, Alastair J., A. Brian Scott, and David Wallace, eds. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, c. 1100–c. 1375: The Commentary Tradition. Oxford, 1988.Google Scholar
Musumarra, Carmelo La poesia tragica italiana nel Rinascimento. Florence, 1972.Google Scholar
Ovid. Heroides and Amores. Trans. Grant Showerman. Cambridge, MA, 1977.Google Scholar
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. Frank Justus Miller. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1977–84.Google Scholar
Ovid. The Art of Love, and Other Poems. Trans. J. H. Mozley. Cambridge, MA, 1979.Google Scholar
Ovid in the Middle Ages. Ed. James G. Clark, Frank Thomas Coulson, and Kathryn L. McKinley. Cambridge, 2011.Google Scholar
Papio, Michael “On Seneca, Mussato, Trevet and the ‘Boethian’ Tragedies of the De casibus.” Heliotropia 10.1–2 (2013): 47–63.Google Scholar
Petoletti, Marco “Gli Zibaldoni di Giovanni Boccaccio.” In Boccaccio autore e copista, ed. Teresa De Robertis, Carla Maria Monti, Marco Petoletti, Giuliano Tanturli et al, 291–326. Florence, 2013.Google Scholar
Picone, Michelangelo “L’‘Amoroso sangue’: La quarta giornata.” In Introduzione al Decameron, ed. Michelangelo Picone and Margherita Mesirca, 115–39. Florence, 2004.Google Scholar
Picone, Michelangelo “Dal Lai alla novella tragica: Ghismonda (IV.1).” In Boccaccio e la codificazione della novella: Letture del Decameron, ed. Nicole Coderey, Claudia Genswein, and Rosa Pittorino, 185–98. Ravenna, 2008.Google Scholar
Piromalli, Antonio “Le novelle tragiche della quarta giornata del Decameron.” Campi immaginabili 3 (1991): 7–16.Google Scholar
Pizzorno, Patrizia Grimaldi “La metafora della ‘sepoltura’ in Decameron IV.1: Fra Cavalcanti e Tino da Camaino.” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 53 (1996): 5–28.Google Scholar
Poletti, Federico “Fortuna letteraria e figurativa della ‘Ghismonda’ (Dec. IV, 1) fra umanesimo e Rinascimento (I parte).” Studi sul Boccaccio 32 (2004): 101–44.Google Scholar
Quintilian. The Orator’s Education. Ed. and trans. Donald A. Russell. 5 vols. Cambridge, MA, 2001.Google Scholar
Rigby, Stephen H. “The Body Politic in the Social and Political Thought of Christine de Pizan (Unabridged Version).” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, Études christiniennes (2013). DOI: 10.4000/crm.12965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russo, Vittorio “Il senso del tragico nel Decameron.” Filologia e letteratura 11 (1965): 29–83.Google Scholar
Sanguineti, Federico “Quarta giornata.” Heliotropia 4.1–2 (2007): 1–19.Google Scholar
Scaglione, Aldo D. Nature and Love in the Late Middle Ages. Berkeley, 1963.Google Scholar
Schnapp, Jeffrey “Tragedy and the Theatre of Hell.” In “Libri poetarum in quattuor species dividuuntur”: Essays on Dante and “Genre,” ed. Zygmunt G. Barański, 100–27. Reading, 1995.Google Scholar
Segre, Cesare Le strutture e il tempo: narrazione, poesia, modelli. Turin, 1974.Google Scholar
Seneca. Tragedies. Ed. and trans. John G. Fitch. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA, 2002–04.Google Scholar
Sherberg, Michael “The Patriarch’s Pleasure and the Frametale Crisis: Decameron IV–V.” Romance Quarterly 38.2 (1991): 227–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sherberg, Michael The Governance of Friendship: Law and Gender in the Decameron. Columbus, 2011.Google Scholar
Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid. Trans. H. Rushon Fairclough. Revised G. P. Goold. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1999–2000.Google Scholar
Webb, Heather The Medieval Heart. New Haven, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar