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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
“The book enhances in a number of ways our knowledge of Boccaccio’s legacy in the Renaissance, particularly in the area of the history of the book, but also Boccaccio’s significance as a political thinker, his obsession with the pastoral, his role in the birth of Renaissance comedy, and new aspects of his influence in France, Spain, and England. The scholarship is very sound, as most contributors are acknowledged leaders in their fields.” —Martin McLaughlin, University of Oxford
"Giovanni Boccaccio’s presence as it radiates through time and space is captured and distilled in this elegantly conceived volume. Martin Eisner and David Lummus have gathered and framed twelve distinguished essays on the 'Renaissance Boccaccio'; together they offer a compelling reexamination of the impact of this most generous of Italy’s tre corone." —Teodolinda Barolini, Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian, Columbia University
“This is a collection of strong essays by leading experts in the field that break new ground in our understanding of the diverse reworkings of Boccaccio’s works in the Renaissance and beyond, both in Italy and in Europe. These contributions are independently rigorous and original works. The book will be useful to readers in a variety of fields in studies of medieval and Renaissance Italian and European traditions and beyond. I agree wholeheartedly with the editors that the chapters ‘leave signs of how much work still needs to be done and from what perspective that work must begin.'" —Kristina M. Olson, George Mason University
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.
Martin Eisner is associate professor of Italian studies at Duke University. He is the author of Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature: Dante, Petrarch, Cavalcanti, and the Authority of the Vernacular.
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