Adventures in speech
Subtitle: rhetoric and narration in Boccaccio's Decameron
By: Pier Massimo Forni.
Series: Middle Ages series
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 155
Subjects: Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375; Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375 -- Technique; Narration (Rhetoric) -- History -- To 1500; Rhetoric, Medieval
Description: The Decameron is a narrative account of a situation in which narration takes place - a collection of one hundred stories set within a larger story. As a group of young men and women fleeing the plague trade stories to pass the time of crisis, storytelling occurs in a social context that allows for comment upon the tales by the tellers themselves, in a setting that elicits one story in return for another.

In his close and original analysis, Pier Massimo Forni uses the notion of rhetoric as a guiding principle for a critical assessment of the Decameron. He explores the discursive tools with which the narrators connect the contents of their stories to their audience's environment, and goes on to argue that the book is significantly marked by Boccaccio's habit of exploring the narrative potential of rhetorical forms.

Puzzling narrative segments and stories make new sense once they are understood to dramatize or enact metaphors and other figures of speech.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [141]-151) and index.
Parts of this work were previously published in Italian.