La testa di Lorenzo: lettura di Decameron IV, 5

Revista de literatura medieval, 2018

2019

Rileggendo la novella IV 1 secondo la paragrafatura originaria, trasmessa dal codice autografo del Decameron, ms. Hamilton 90, e possibile approfondire l’analisi critica della triste storia di Tancredi e Ghismonda, arrivando ad un’interpretazione che rispecchia l’ultima volonta d’autore.Thanks to a new reading of Decameron’s novel IV 1 based on the original paragraphs transmitted by the autograph manuscript, ms. Hamilton 90, it is possible to deepen the critical analysis of Tancredi and Ghismonda’s sad story, providing an interpretation that reflects Boccaccio’s ultimate will.

2024

This article aims to analyze the Decameron taking into account the relational and social dynamics of every human relationship. The work presents itself as a model of etiquette of speech, life, death and passions, because balance and respect for others, values that are hidden in all the stories, anticipate the sixteenth-century concepts of civilization and etiquette, both evolutions of the principle of courtesy. The relational dimensions are translated on the basis of an implicit and necessary social order, canceled by the plague, which must be maintained for there to be harmony; in this regard, Goffmanian sociology finds a coherent witness in the Decameron. Boccaccio's anthropological choice-to entrust a possible ethical solution to the brigade-is the true distinctive feature of the equality represented by the Decameron.

"Esercizi di lettura per Marco Santagata", a cura di Annalisa Andreoni, Claudio Giunta e Mirko Tavoni, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2017.

Nel segno di una comune ispirazione misogina, l’accostamento della novella dello scolare e della vedova (Decameron VIII 7) con il più tardo Corbaccio è canonico nella critica boccacciana, ma non forse approfondito in chiave analitica come ci si attenderebbe. Nel contesto di un’opposizione funzionale del novelliere con l’operetta misogina, si fa riferimento alla novella di Elena e Rinieri come anticipazione dei successivi esiti della rappresentazione boccacciana dell’universo muliebre. Attraverso un’analisi contrastiva delle due protagoniste della novella e del Corbaccio, questa lettura intende definirne lo statuto all’interno di un contesto di riferimento assai complesso e apparentemente contraddittorio come la rappresentazione della donna, e della vedova in particolare, nell’opera di Boccaccio.

Spolia, 2018

La novella della marchesana di Monferrato (Decameron I 5). Una lettura secondo l’autografo hamiltoniano

Ludica. Annali di storia e civiltà del gioco, 2023

The fact that, until recently, the Decameron tended to be classified as mere entertainment, exerted a negative influence over how the book was read and, crucially, modified its principal aim. That such a misunderstanding should have been so widely accepted can be explained as a prejudice that paid no attention to the literary and cultural objectives of Boccaccio, who in fact was pursuing an entirely personal route, not the same of the other two great figures of the 14th century. Studies published in the last few years have demonstrated not only how widely read Boccaccio was, but more particularly how his reading was incorporated into his masterpiece, albeit in veiled form and on occasion with sophisticated parodic intent. The presences of the Cicero of De officiis, of the Aristotle encountered in his Nicomachean Ethics and of Seneca’s moral philosophy (to mention only the more famous names) is so pervasive and so precisely demonstrable, that today’s reader simply must be prepared to reappraise that wholly outdated tag. In fact, any reading of the Decameron that takes full account of the range and nature of Boccaccio’s store of literary references cannot but acknowledge that the principal lesson of the book lies in the proposal that a civil and selected sodalitas should take the place of the social disruption caused by the plague. There is no reason to doubt the book’s comic vocation (in the Dantesque sense of the term), but its true protagonists are the narrators and their ability to steer a moral course in a world almost wiped out by the pestilence.

The Author’s Voice in the “re-mastered” Decameron By discussing Busi’s Decameron, a so-called “translation” into modern Italian of the Boccaccio’s classical novel, this paper uses two meanings of the Author’s Voice: first, in terms of translator’s fidelity towards the original, and second, in terms of interpreting the Author’s presence in the chapters in which Boccaccio openly dialogs with his public (Proemio, Introduction to the Fourth Day and Conclusion). Since Busi’s work seems to refer to a public of soft readers to which he wants to offer a fresh, daring and dynamic text, as Boccaccio did for his fellows Florentines in XIV century, he neither re-writes nor re-visits the classical Novel. Instead – as this study aims to demonstrate – by re-mastering the old text, he proposes a text with a different identity, a whole new aesthetical object that should be declared and recognized as such. This new work, if properly identified, although being a perishable literary product, proves that Boccaccio’s Decameron still produces a creative interest, cannot be seen as a substitute for the original novel but nevertheless, is a particular kind of palimpsest, offering readers the satisfaction of intertextual dialogue.

in "Esercizi. Miscellanea del Dipartimento di Scienze filologiche e linguistiche", a cura di G. M. Rinaldi, :due punti edizioni, Palermo 2007, pp. 9-34

La novella V 10 del Decameron è forse il primo racconto della letteratura italiana che ruoti attorno a un personaggio “omosessuale”. Si cerca qui, attraverso un’analisi narratologica e intertestuale della novella, di ricostruire lo sguardo del narratore sul tema, sguardo meno rigido e perentorio di quello di molti lettori successivi.

La Rassegna d'Ischia n. 5, 2021