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Toronto Italian Studies
The Decameron Ninth Day in Perspective

The Decameron Ninth Day in Perspective

Edited by Simone Marchesi and Susanna Barsella

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Series: Toronto Italian Studies

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

Digital download
9781487540517
Published: March 2022

Digital download
9781487540500
Published: March 2022

Description
Contents
Authors

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.

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

Simone Marchesi is Associate Professor of Italian Literature at Princeton University. His main research interest is the dialogue established with Latin classics by Italian writers from the medieval period, in particular Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He has published two monographs in this field: Stratigrafie decameroniane (2004) and Dante and Augustine: Linguistics, Poetics, Hermeneutics (2011). He has translated into Italian Robert Hollander’s monumental commentary on Dante’s Comedy (2011) and has recently edited the school version of the same commentary (Dante, La Commedia, 2016). His current research concerns medieval ideas about translation, as they are reflected in twelfth-to fifteenth-century vernacular fictions, a study provisionally entitled The Tower and the Garden.

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