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A Boccaccian Renaissance brings together essays written by internationally recognized scholars in diverse national traditions to respond to the largely unaddressed question of Boccaccio’s impact on early modern literature and culture in Italy and Europe. Martin Eisner and David Lummus co-edit the first comprehensive examination in English of Boccaccio’s impact on the Renaissance.
The essays investigate what it means to follow a Boccaccian model, in tandem with or in place of ancient authors such as Vergil or Cicero, or modern poets such as Dante or Petrarch. The book probes how deeply the Latin and vernacular works of Boccaccio spoke to the Renaissance humanists of the fifteenth century. It treats not only the literary legacy of Boccaccio’s works but also their paradoxical importance for the history of the Italian language and reception in theater and books of conduct.
While the geographical focus of many of the essays is on Italy, the volume concludes with three studies that open new inroads to understanding his influence on Spanish, French, and English writers across the sixteenth century. The book will appeal strongly to scholars and students of Boccaccio, the Italian and European Renaissance, and Italian literature.
Contributors: Jonathan Combs-Schilling, Rhiannon Daniels, Martin Eisner, Simon Gilson, James Hankins, Timothy Kircher, Victoria Kirkham, David Lummus, Ronald L. Martinez, Ignacio Navarrete, Brian Richardson, Marc Schachter, Michael Sherberg, and Janet Levarie Smarr
"A Boccaccian Renaissance opens a window on various aspects of Boccaccio studies and provides insights into literary and cultural trends across centuries, countries, and languages, which will certainly be of great interest to scholars of the early modern period." —Sixteenth Century Journal
David Lummus is assistant director of the Center for Italian Studies at the University of Notre Dame and editor of the American Boccaccio Association's Lectura Boccaccii for Day 6 of the Decameron. His publications on Boccaccio and Petrarch have appeared in Speculum and Renaissance Quarterly.
Introduction: “Finding the Renaissance Boccaccio” by Martin Eisner and David Lummus
Part 1. Boccaccio and Renaissance Humanism
1. “Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism” by James Hankins
2. “Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata: Reading the Decameron in the Quattrocento” by Timothy Kircher
Part 2. Framing the Renaissance Boccaccio
3. “Poets Prefer Company: Boccaccio’s Portraits and the Three Crowns of Florence” by Victoria Kirkham
4. “Under the Cover of a Green-Hued Book: Boccaccio’s Pastoral Project” by Jonathan Combs-Schilling
5. “Squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and Early Modern Print Culture: A New Model for the Study of Biography” by Rhiannon Daniels
6. “Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio In Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy: Notes on Niccolò Liburnio’s Delli Monti, Selve, Boschi and Giuseppe Betussi’s Genealogia De Gli Dei” by Simon Gilson
Part 3. Boccaccio in Renaissance Italy
7. “Along the Path of Disaster: The Decameron and Bembo's Prose” by Michael Sherberg
8. “‘For instruction and benefit’: The Renaissance Boccaccio as Model of Language and Life” by Brian Richardson
9. “De nuptiis comoediae et novellae: Italian Comedy Receives Boccaccio’s Decameron (1486-1533)” by Ronald L. Martinez
Part 4. Boccaccio in Renaissance Europe
10. “Language, Nation, Translation: When Boccaccio’s Unnatural Prose Becomes ‘le commun langaige Francoys’” by Marc Schachter
11. “Boccaccio in the Spanish Renaissance: Juan de Flores’s Grimalte y Gradisa” by Ignacio Navarrete
12. “Regendering Griselda on the London Stage” by Janet Levarie Smarr