Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature

Dante, Petrarch, Cavalcanti, and the Authority of the Vernacular

Martin Eisner

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781107497269
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Giovanni Boccaccio played a pivotal role in the extraordinary emergence of the Italian literary tradition in the fourteenth century, not only as author of the Decameron, but also as scribe of Dante, Petrarch and Cavalcanti. Using a single codex written entirely in Boccaccio's hand, Martin Eisner brings together material philology and literary history to reveal the multiple ways Boccaccio authorizes this vernacular literary tradition. Each chapter offers a novel interpretation of Boccaccio as a biographer, storyteller, editor and scribe, who constructs arguments, composes narratives, compiles texts and manipulates material forms to legitimize and advance a vernacular literary canon. Situating these philological activities in the context of Boccaccio's broader reflections on poetry in the Decameron and the Genealogy of the Gentile Gods, the book produces a new portrait of Boccaccio that integrates his vernacular and Latin works, while also providing a new context for understanding his fictions.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Figures and tables
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations for frequently cited works
• Introduction Boccaccio between Dante and Petrarch
• Chapter One Dante’s dirty feet and the limping republic
• Chapter Two Dante’s shame and Boccaccio’s paratextual praise
• Chapter Three The making of Petrarch’s vernacular Book of Fragments (Fragmentorum liber)
• Chapter Four The inventive scribe
• Epilogue The allegory of the vernacular
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index