Boccaccio's Dante and the shaping force of satire
By: Robert Hollander.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Ann Arbor
Language: eng
Number of pages: 225
Subjects: Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375; Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321; Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321 -- Influence
Description: In Boccaccio's Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire, Robert Hollander offers a valuable synthesis of new material and some previously published essays, addressing the question of Dante's influence on Boccaccio, particularly concerning the Commedia and the Decameron.

Hollander reveals that Boccaccio's writings are heavy with reminiscences of the Dante text that he believed to be the greatest "modern" work. It was Boccaccio's belief that Dante was the only writer who had achieved a status similar to that reserved for the greatest writers of antiquity. Most of these essays try to show how carefully Boccaccio reflects the texts of Dante in the Decameron.

Some essays also turn to the question of Boccaccio's allied reading of Ovid, especially the amatory work, as part of his strategy to base his work primarily on these two great authorities as he develops his own vernacular and satiric vision of human foolishness. Boccaccio's Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire will be of tremendous value to scholars of medieval studies in general.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Boccaccio's Dante; title: Imitative distance (Decameron I.i and VI.x); title: Decameron : the sun rises in Dante; title: Utilità; title: The proem of the Decameron; title: Day ten of the Decameron : the myth of order / with Courtney Cahill; title: Appendix : hapax legomenon in Boccaccio's Decameron and its relation to Dante's Commedia.