Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works

by Victoria Kirkham (Editor), Michael Sherberg (Editor), Janet Levarie Smarr (Editor)

Long celebrated as one of “the Three Crowns” of Florence, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) experimented widely with the forms of literature. His prolific and innovative writings—which range beyond the novella, from lyric to epic, from biography to mythography and geography, from pastoral and romance to invective—became powerful models for authors in Italy and across the Continent.           

           

This collection of essays presents Boccaccio’s life and creative output in its encyclopedic diversity. Exploring a variety of genres, Latin as well as Italian, it provides short descriptions of all his works, situates them in his oeuvre, and features critical expositions of their most salient features and innovations. Designed for readers at all levels, it will appeal to scholars of literature, medieval and Renaissance studies, humanism and the classical tradition; as well as European historians, art historians, and students of material culture and the history of the book. Anchored by an introduction and chronology, this volume contains contributions by prominent Boccaccio scholars in the United States, as well as essays by contributors from France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The year 2013, Boccaccio’s seven-hundredth birthday, will be an important one for the study of his work and will see an increase in academic interest in reassessing his legacy.

Genres: Renaissance, Italy

576 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 2013

Reviews

[Kalliope · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Andrea del Castagno saw Boccaccio


This is an extraordinary homage to the extraordinary Boccaccio.

The subtitle A Critical Guide to the Complete Works is no light aim.

It certainly is a Guide. As I am approaching the Decameron, I was in need of a Lazarillo (a dog as cicerone for a blind person, so named after La vida del lazarillo de Tormes) to direct my steps so that I miss as little as possible. It is also certainly very Critical in that it has grouped around thirty scholars around the project (and half of the book are the footnotes). And by Complete Works it means a startlingly extensive catalog of works produced by this remarkably prolific man and the book does not seem to have left anything out.

I have to acknowledge that I have been limited in how much I could absorb from this study, given that I have not read any of Boccaccio’s works yet. But it certainly has offered me an idea of the kind of scope of his literary and artistic mind.

The chief editor, Victoria Kirkham, from Penn, has organized all the contributing essays, each one of them generally dedicated to a single work, to be grouped in sections that address the various facets of this multitalented man.





Boccaccio wrote in Latin--choice echoed by his idol Petrarch, and he wrote in the vernacular--the one favored by his other idol Dante. He wrote in verse and he wrote in prose. He wrote on history, and he wrote on mythology. There are eschatological and scatological aspects to his works. Geographical treatises and encyclopedic works came out of his pen. He was serious, and he was a practitioner of the burlesque. He wrote with deference to women and he wrote to the detriment of women. He wrote holy and he wrote erotic. He was for Love-as-the-Cure-for-Everything; he was against Love-as-the Devil’s-Curse. He wrote fiction, he wrote biographies. He wrote erudite, and he wrote vulgar. Letters and epistles he authored. He was rooted in medieval genres but he contributed to the flourishing of Humanism. He wrote texts and he painted images.

You name it and he had covered it.

My guess is that this richness in output was more the result of self-doubt, feeling always in the shadow of his two idols, than of pursuing a self-aggrandizing ambition.

After The Decameron the next works I would like to read are The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta, On Famous Women, and De Canaria.... And then?....

Independently of which of Boccaccio’s works I succeed in reading, this book will be visited again as I, gradually, with stamina and with confidence, in spite of my clumsy blindness, proceed to try and explore all those founding stones he left as his mark in all literary genres.

My Lazarillo for Boccaccio.