Abstract
This chapter examines how Boccaccio in the Proemio and Conclusione of the Decameron subverts the normative medieval discourses of consolation as found within the Italian vernacular traditions of the Consolation of Philosophy and the ars dictaminis to serve a wholly different and erotically charged function. By exploiting the mediating function of written texts, Boccaccio-narrator seeks to console by imagining a transition from being in touch literally to literally being in touch. In the process he parodies Boethius’ and Dante’s journeys of meditative ascent, offering in their place the fantasy of a pedestrian journey that climaxes in an erotic “rendezvous.”
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Notes
See Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron in Tutte le opère ai Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Vittore Branca, 12 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1976).
Claudio Giunta, Versi a un destinatario: saggio sulla poesia del medioevo (Bologna: II Mulino, 2002).
See Francesco Bruni, Boccaccio: L’invenzione della letteratura mezzana (Bologna: II Mulino, 1990).
See Robert Black and Gabriella Pomaro, ha ‘Consolazione dellafilosofia’ nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento italiano (Florence: SISMEL, 2000).
See Stephen Grossvogel, Ambiguity and Allusion in Boccaccio’s “Filocolo” (Florence: Olschki, 1992), pp. 33–55.
Millicent Joy Marcus, An Allegory of Form: Literary Self-Consciousness in the “Decameron” (Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri, 1979), pp. 110–125.
Joel C. Relihan, The Prisoner’s Philosophy: Life and Death in Boethius “Consolation.” With a Contribution on the Medieval Boethius by William E. Heise (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007)..
On Galeotto, see Robert Hollander, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp. 102–106.
For Boccaccio’s schooling and professional training, see Vittore Branca, Boccaccio: The Man and His Works, trans. Richard Monges (New York: Harvester Press, 1976), pp. 3–40.
James R. Banker, “Giovanni di Bonandrea and Civic Values in the Context of the Italian Rhetorical Tradition,” Manuscrípta 18 (1974): 3–20.
See Virginia Cox, “Ciceronian Rhetoric in Italy, 1260–1350,” Rhetoríca 17 (1999): 239–88.
See Stephen J. Milner, “Exile, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Civic Republican Discourse,” in At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, ed. Stephen J. Milner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), pp. 162–91.
See Ronald G. Witt, “Brunetto Latini and the Italian Tradition of Ars Dictaminis” Stanford Italian Review 2 (1983): 5–24.
See Boncompagno da Signa, Rota Veneris, ed. and trans. Josef Purkart (Delmar, New York: Scholar’s Facsimiles and Reprints, 1975).
See Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 82–84.
See Kate Cooper, “Insinuation of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy,” Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992): 150–64
Sharon Farmer, “Persuasive Voices: Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61.3 (1986): 517–43.
Tzvetan Todorov, Grammaire du Decameron (The Hague: Mouton, 1969).
See G. Olson, Literature as Recreation in the hater Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 175.
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© 2008 Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner
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Milner, S.J. (2008). Coming Together: Consolation and the Rhetoric of Insinuation in Boccaccio’s Decameron. In: Léglu, C.E., Milner, S.J. (eds) The Erotics of Consolation. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09741-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09741-5_6
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