The Decameron

Author: Giovanni Boccaccio
Publisher: BoD - Books on Demand
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1040

Book Description
In the time of a devastating pandemic, seven women and three men withdraw to a country estate outside Florence to give themselves a diversion from the death around them. Once there, they decide to spend some time each day telling stories, each of the ten to tell one story each day. They do this for ten days, with a few other days of rest in between, resulting in the 100 stories of the Decameron. The Decameron was written after the Black Plague spread through Italy in 1348. Most of the tales did not originate with Boccaccio; some of them were centuries old already in his time, but Boccaccio imbued them all with his distinctive style. The stories run the gamut from tragedy to comedy, from lewd to inspiring, and sometimes all of those at once. They also provide a detailed picture of daily life in fourteenth-century Italy.

Stories from Quarantine

Author: The New York Times
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982170816
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
"Previously published as The decameron project."

The Decameron

Author: Pier Massimo Forni
Publisher: Medieval and Renaissance Texts
ISBN: 9780866985970
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
When originally published in 1995, the volume represented a major, new departure from the "normal" sort of scholarship on Boccaccio's masterpiece, and its unique approach and contents are still valid and valuable today. The seventeen original essays in the volume focus on providing a comprehensive view of the Decameron through the analysis of particular aspects, particular problem areas in the reading and interpretation of the work. Each essay offers a critical window on a defined topic (indicated by the headwords), and, when taken together, these individual essays intersect with, supplement, and reinforce one another, thus emphasizing the harmonious nature of the work as a whole and the importance of examining it through a variety of lenses. The newness of the volume also consists in its introduction of innovative exegetical approaches and the identification of previously unidentified sources and influences. While not providing an orderly reading of the Decameron as a more traditional series of day-by-day lecturae would do, the essays examine multiple novelle from various Days and from differing perspectives so as to provide an assemblage of comprehensive views on the text. For the English-language edition two new items have been added: an update to Vittore Branca's essay on the history of the text of the Decameron and a bibliographical overview of North-American studies on the Decameron and, more generally, on Boccaccio's life, works and influence.

The Decameron - Volume I

Author: Giovanni Boccaccio
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781519646255
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
"The Decameron - Volume I" from Giovanni Boccaccio. Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch (1313 - 1375).

Holdout

Author: Graham Moore
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781409196808
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
'Plunge a syringe filled with adrenaline into the heart of Twelve Angry Men and you've got The Holdout: the first legal thriller in thirty years - ever since Presumed Innocent and A Time to Kill electrified readers the world over - to rank alongside those two modern classics.' AJ Finn'The most gripping and satisfying thriller I've read in more than a decade' Sophie Hannah'Quite the tour de force! Twelve Angry Men meets Chinatown and creates something of its own' Sarah Pinborough'This is a tense, emotionally charged, scary-good, stand-out read that hooked me until the last page' Caroline KepnesOne juror changed the verdict. What if she was wrong?'Ten years ago we made a decision together...'Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar fortune, vanishes on her way home from school. Her teacher, Bobby Nock, is the prime suspect. It's an open and shut case for the prosecution, and a quick conviction seems all but guaranteed. Until Maya Seale, a young woman on the jury, persuades the rest of the jurors to vote not guilty: a controversial decision that will change all of their lives forever.Ten years later, one of the jurors is found dead, and Maya is the prime suspect.The real killer could be any of the other ten jurors. Is Maya being forced to pay the price for her decision all those years ago?

A Rhetoric of the Decameron

Author: Marilyn Migiel
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802085948
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
"Addressing herself equally to those who argue for proto-feminist Boccaccio - a quasi-liberal champion of women's autonomy - and to those who argue for a positivistically secure, historical Boccaccio who could not possibly anticipate the concerns of the twenty-first century, Migiel challenges readers to pay attention to Boccaccio's language, to his pronouns, his passives, his patterns of repetition, and his figurative language. She argues that human experience, particularly in the sexual realm, is articulated differently by the Decameron's male and female narrators, and refutes the notion that the Decameron offers an undifferentiated celebration of Eros. Ultimately, Migiel contends, the stories of the Decameron suggest that as women become more empowered, the limitations on them, including the threat of violence, become more insistent."--Jacket.

The Ethical Dimension of the 'Decameron'

Author: Marilyn Migiel
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442625767
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
With The Ethical Dimension of the “Decameron” Marilyn Migiel, author of A Rhetoric of the “Decameron” (winner of the MLA’s 2004 Marraro Prize), returns to Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece, this time to focus on the dialogue about ethical choices that the Decameron creates with us and that we, as individuals and as groups, create with the Decameron. Maintaining that we can examine this dialogue to gain insights into our values, our biases and our decision-making processes, Migiel offers a view of the Decameron as sticky and thorny. According to Migiel, the Decameron catches us as we move through it, obligating us to reveal ourselves, inviting us to reflect on how we form our assessments, and calling upon us to be mindful of our responsibility to judge patiently and carefully. Migiel’s focus remains unabashedly on the experience of readers, on the meanings they find in the Decameron, and on the ideological assumptions they have about the way that a literary text such as the Decameron works. She offers that, rather than thinking about the Decameron as “teaching” readers, we should think about it “testing” them. Throughout, Migiel engages in the masterful in-depth rhetorical analyses, delivered in lively and readable prose, that are her trademark. Whether she is examining the Italian of the Decameron, translations of the Italian into English, commentaries by scholars, newspaper articles, or student essays, she asks us always to maintain an ethical engagement with the words of others.

The Decameron (International Student Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)

Author: Giovanni Boccaccio
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393614662
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Book Description
This volume presents fifty-five stories, newly translated, of the hundred novelle that comprise Boccaccio’s masterpiece. Winner of the 2014 PEN USA Literary Award for Translation This Norton Critical Edition includes: · Fifty-five judiciously chosen stories from Wayne A. Rebhorn’s translation of The Decameron. · Introductory materials and explanatory footnotes by Wayne A. Rebhorn, along with three maps. · Biographical works by Filippo Villani and Ludovico Dolce along with literary studies by Francesco Petrarca, Andreas Capellanus, and Boccaccio. · Eleven critical essays, including those by Giuseppe Mazzotta, Millicent Marcus, Teodolinda Barolini, Susanne L. Wofford, Luciano Rossi, and Richard Kuhns. · A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography.

The Decameron Eighth Day in Perspective

Author: William Robins
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487535139
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
Divided into ten days of ten novellas each, Boccaccio’s Decameron is one of the literary gems of the fourteenth century. The Decameron Eighth Day in Perspective is an interpretive guide to the stories of the text’s Day Eight – a day dedicated to tales of tricks and practical jokes. By drawing on literary precursors such as fabliaux, epic, philosophy, exempla, Dante’s Commedia, and scripture, and by meditating on the dynamics of civic engagement in fourteenth-century Florence, Boccaccio develops in these stories of jests a self-consciously literary representation of the Florentine social imaginary. The essays in this volume, all written by prominent scholars, survey previous scholarship and open up new cultural and historical perspectives on Boccaccio’s sophisticated art of storytelling. They analyze both the literary sources that Boccaccio’s comic narratives transform, as well as the political, legal, and ethical contexts with which they engage. Each contributor tackles a single tale, yet their essays also register major themes and concerns that recur throughout Day Eight, allowing for close connections among the essays.

The Decameron First Day in Perspective

Author: Elissa B. Weaver
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487586744
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron is the best known and most read work in Italian literature next to Dante's Divine Comedy. In the tradition of Lectura Dantis, the practice of story-by-story critical readings of Dante's work, Elissa Weaver has collected essays from some of the most prominent American Boccaccio scholars to provide critical readings of the Decameron Proem, Introduction, and the ten stories that constitute the first of the ten 'days' of storytelling. The first of the twelve essays opens the volume with a consideration of the Proem, demonstrating the importance of Boccaccio's literary subtexts (Ovidian and Dantean) for understanding his poetics. The second essay, on the Introduction, discusses the title of the work and the framing tale. The remaining ten contributions treat in detail each story, examining the literary, ethical, and social concerns embodied in the short narratives and in the context provided by the comments and discussions of the story-tellers, and exploring the intertextual relations within the Decameron and with sources and analogues. This inaugural book in a new series of critical essays on the Decameron will provide an important guide to reading the complex series of narratives that constitute the opening of the Decameron and will serve as a guide to reading the entire work.