Boccaccio Defends Literature

by Brenda Deen Schildgen

Overview

In Boccaccio Defends Literature, Brenda Deen Schildgen contends that Giovanni Boccaccio’s significant contribution to literary history remains underappreciated. The book asserts that Boccaccio refuted the detractors that condemned poetry as immoral, irrational, and even demonic, highlighting instead its aesthetic and cathartic ability to restore equilibrium, provoke thought, and provide solace and entertainment.

The book explores how, despite often being dismissed for his morally dubious tales, Boccaccio dedicated himself to defending the legacy of the ancients, endorsing vernacular and secular literature, and cementing the reputations of Dante and Petrarch. It reveals how he forged a wholly new direction for literary prose fiction, driven by his commitment to humanistic studies and admiration for literary achievement. Without moral or spiritual hesitation, Boccaccio asserted that literature – whether pagan or Christian – was an autonomous form of knowledge, a stance he maintained from the 1350s to the end of his life.

Contesting the arguments of moralists who sought to ban books, Schildgen demonstrates that Boccaccio advocated for the independence of readers, asserting that they, not writers, bore the responsibility for their responses to literature. Boccaccio Defends Literature thus unveils Boccaccio as a steadfast defender of the enduring relevance of literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487558949
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	11/30/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	310
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Brenda Deen Schildgen is a distinguished professor emerita of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis.

Table of Contents

Primary Texts
Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Genealogy of the Gods Books 14 and 15 and the Defence of Poetry
2. Petrarch versus Boccaccio on Poetry
3. Defensio and Laudatio: Boccaccio and the Poetry of Others
4. The Decameron in Dialogue with the Genealogy of the Gods: How the Decameron Defends Vernacular Prose Fiction – Part 1
5. The Decameron in Dialogue with the Genealogy of the Gods: How the Decameron Defends Vernacular Prose Fiction – Part 2
Conclusion
Appendix: Comic Tales in the Decameron
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

“With enormous and gracefully presented erudition, Brenda Deen Schildgen traces the long history of debates about the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, pleasure and usefulness, or poetry and philosophy/theology, and then analyses Boccaccio’s views on this issue across a number of his writings, arguing both that his views remained substantially unchanged over his lifetime and that they offered a revolutionary claim: not only that literature is both pleasurable and useful but that its very pleasures are beneficial. Comparing his stance with Petrarch’s major theme of indecision between the two poles, Schildgen argues for a Boccaccio more modern than Petrarch, who remained trapped in medieval dualities.”—Janet Levarie Smarr, Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Italian Studies, University of California, San Diego
“This highly readable book, which explores Boccaccio’s defence of imaginative literature in the context of ancient, medieval, and modern attacks on it, is clearly the culmination of a long career meditating on the issue of teaching vs. pleasing in relation to poetry and fiction. Schildgen makes important contributions not only to scholarship on Boccaccio and Petrarch but also to recent research on literary narrative in terms of the pleasure, solace, and intellectual stimulation that it offers.”—Olivia Holmes, Professor of English, Italian, and Medieval Studies, Binghamton University

From the Publisher