Courtesy Lost: Dante, Boccaccio, and the Literature of History

Courtesy Lost: Dante, Boccaccio, and the Literature of History (Toronto Italian Studies)

In Courtesy Lost, Kristina M. Olson analyses the literary impact of the social, political, and economic transformations of the fourteenth century through an exploration of Danteâ€™s literary and political influence on Boccaccio. The book reveals how Boccaccio rewrote the past through the lens of the Commedia, torn between nostalgia for elite families in decline and the need to promote morality and magnanimity within the Florentine Republic.
By examining the passages in Boccaccioâ€™s Decameron, De casibus, and Esposizioni in which the author rewrites moments in Florentine and Italian history that had also appeared in Danteâ€™s Commedia, Olson illuminates the ways in which Boccaccio expressed his deep ambivalence towards the political and social changes of his era. She illustrates this through an analysis of Danteâ€™s and Boccaccioâ€™s treatments of the idea of courtesy, or cortesia, in an era when the chivalry of the declining aristocracy was being supplanted by the civility of the rising merchant classes.
Country USA
Brand University of Toronto Press
Manufacturer University of Toronto Press
Binding Hardcover
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781442647077
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Courtesy Lost: Dante, Boccaccio, and the Literature of History (Toronto Italian Studies)