Description:
Stories about pranks figure prominently in Boccaccio's Decameron. This book explores Boccaccio's poetics of repetition, accumulation, and contiguity in Day Eight, a day rich in tales of practical jokes.
Brief description:
William Robins is president of Victoria University and associate professor of English and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto.
Review Quotes:
"For each novella, the reader will find both a good summary of the precedent critical literature and new and innovative interpretations of the role of the beffa within Decameron's eighth day and in the context of the two precedent days of narration."
--Nicola Esposito, PhD Candidate, University of Notre Dame, Annali d'italianistica"Vibrant and kaleidoscopic, the scholarly responses in this volume champion the lasting value of Boccaccio's beffe, which, in all their social ephemerality and comedic lightness, provide crucial insight into the dynamics of civic engagement and the spaces, roles, words, and things that constituted the contemporary social imaginary in fourteenth-century Florence."
--Rebecca Bowen, University of Oxford, Modern Language Review"This collection of fine essays breaks new ground in our critical understanding of the tales belonging to Day Eight in the Decameron. The contributions are independently rigorous and original and many will serve as the definitive treatments of these individual stories. Several of the essays draw upon fields outside of literary studies, such as legal and judicial history, social history, visual arts, and even geography. As a result, readers will have a new appreciation for the importance of these tales from a multidisciplinary perspective."
--Kristina Marie Olson, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, George Mason University" The Decameron Eighth Day in Perspective offers a serious advance in state-of-the-art research. Given the challenges of the tales of trickery in Day Eight, this is no small accomplishment. Almost all of the contributors offer intriguing new perspectives on stories that, in the wake of these analyses, should receive more critical attention. Situating the work in historical contexts, these essays provide these stories new and richer meanings, and encompass the full range of Boccaccio's world: legal, philosophical, social, Biblical, literary, mercantile. The strong scholarship will help other scholars and students to understand the complexities of Boccaccio and his world."
--Martin Eisner, Department of Romance Studies, Duke University