The Decameron Ninth Day in Perspective

by Simone Marchesi (Editor), Susanna Barsella (Editor)

Overview

The Ninth Day of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is significant both for numerological and structural reasons. Whether we consider the Decameron as reproducing an itinerary toward the attainment of virtue or following other possible interpretive schematics, Day Nine remains a liminal moment of pause before the inception of the final stories dedicated to the highest civic virtues of liberality and magnificence.

This collection is composed of extensive and rigorous essays by leading experts in the field of Boccaccio studies and medieval literature, shedding new critical light on the Ninth Day. The volume incorporates a multitude of disciplinary perspectives including literary studies, visual arts, political history, and gender studies. Taking a holistic approach, the contributors to the volume trace the dense and multi-layered web of interrelations between the narrative units and the rest of the Decameron. Connections between individual stories are highlighted and interactions between Day Nine and its counterparts in the book are analysed. In doing so, The Decameron Ninth Day in Perspective synthesizes existing scholarship but also opens up new horizons for future work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487540494
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	06/16/2022
Series:	Toronto Italian Studies
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

Simone Marchesi is a professor of French and Italian at Princeton University.
Susanna Barsella is a professor of Italian at the Modern Languages and Literatures Department and the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction to Day Nine: Emilia’s Rule of Freedom
Susanna Barsella, Fordham University and Simone Marchesi, Princeton University

Love and Death in Pistoia: Decameron IX.1 between Poetry and History
David Lummus, University of Notre Dame

The Priest’s Breeches: Decameron IX.2
Maria Pia Ellero, Università degli Studi della Basilicata

Empty Womb and Full Bellies in Decameron IX.3
Federica Anichini, New York University in Florence

The Tale of the Two Cecco’s: Decameron IX.4
Patrizio Ceccagnoli, University of Kansas

Art, Nature, and Reality in Boccaccio’s Giotto: Decameron IX.5
Marcello Ciccuto, University of Pisa

The Tale of Pinuccio and Niccolosa: Decameron IX.6
Simona Lorenzini, Yale University

The Tale of Margherita, a Self-Willed Wife: Decameron IX.7
Grace Delmolino, University of California-Davis

A Metaphor Unveiled? Wine, Wrath, and the Bible in Decameron IX.8
Johnny L. Bertolio, University of Toronto

Solomon and Emilia, or the King and I: Decameron IX.9
Albert Russel Ascoli, University of California, Berkeley

Natura contra naturam: Sins Against Nature in Decameron IX.10
Max Matukhin, Princeton University

Bibliography
Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Teodolinda Barolini

"The Decameron's Ninth Day is devoted to the 'rule of freedom,' in the evocative phrase of this volume's editors: the ten narrators are to speak about what most pleases them. The result is a special opacity, a resistance to interpretation, which is likely responsible for the critical tendency to marginalize Day Nine. These essays are therefore particularly valuable contributions to the Lectura Boccaccii, a project devoted to reading each story in each day, for they bring to hermeneutical life the sparkling (if at times controversial) novelle of Day Nine."

Elsa Filosa

"The Decameron is approached not as a construction of diegetic levels, in the passing of speech from author to narrators, from narrators to novella's characters, but as a network of verbal exchanges, a ramified discourse, in which connections and interconnections on the different levels and topics are keys."

Paola Ureni

" Combining novel interpretations of individual stories with an unprecedented cohesive reading of the　giornata, the essays collected here uncover what unifies the otherwise varied narrative of the day — the fundamental link between freedom and order — and point to a new concept of freedom in Boccaccio's　work — as not opposed to, but rather participating in an orderly recapture of social equilibrium and well-being."

Timothy Kircher

" The editors have assembled a brigata of scholars who, with their learning and insights, discover new threads in the weave of Boccaccio's masterpiece during the reign of his enigmatic Queen Emilia."

Editorial Reviews

"The Decameron’s Ninth Day is devoted to the ‘rule of freedom,’ in the evocative phrase of this volume’s editors: the ten narrators are to speak about what most pleases them. The result is a special opacity, a resistance to interpretation, which is likely responsible for the critical tendency to marginalize Day Nine. These essays are therefore particularly valuable contributions to the Lectura Boccaccii, a project devoted to reading each story in each day, for they bring to hermeneutical life the sparkling (if at times controversial) novelle of Day Nine."

—Teodolinda Barolini, Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian, Columbia University

" Combining novel interpretations of individual stories with an unprecedented cohesive reading of the　 giornata, the essays collected here uncover what unifies the otherwise varied narrative of the day – the fundamental link between freedom and order – and point to a new concept of freedom in Boccaccio's　work – as not opposed to, but rather participating in an orderly recapture of social equilibrium and well-being."

—Paola Ureni, Associate Professor of Italian, College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center, CUNY

" The editors have assembled a brigata of scholars who, with their learning and insights, discover new threads in the weave of Boccaccio’s masterpiece during the reign of his enigmatic Queen Emilia."

—Timothy Kircher, H. Curt '56 and Patricia S. '57 Hege Professor of History, Guilford College

"The Decameron is approached not as a construction of diegetic levels, in the passing of speech from author to narrators, from narrators to novella’s characters, but as a network of verbal exchanges, a ramified discourse, in which connections and interconnections on the different levels and topics are keys."

—Elsa Filosa, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Italian, Vanderbilt University

From the Publisher