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OverviewIn Boccaccio's Corpus, James C. Kriesel explores how medieval ideas about the body and gender inspired Boccaccio's vernacular and Latin writings. Scholars have observed that Boccaccio distinguished himself from Dante and Petrarch by writing about women, erotic acts, and the sexualized body. On account of these facets of his texts, Boccaccio has often been heralded as a protorealist author who invented new literatures by eschewing medieval modes of writing. This study revises modern scholarship by showing that Boccaccio's texts were informed by contemporary ideas about allegory, gender, and theology. Kriesel proposes that Boccaccio wrote about women to engage with debates concerning the dignity of what was coded as female in the Middle Ages. This encompassed varieties of mundane experiences, somatic spiritual expressions, and vernacular texts. Boccaccio championed the feminine to counter the diverse writers who thought that men, ascetic experiences, and Latin works had more dignity than women and female cultures. Emboldened by literary and religious ideas about the body, Boccaccio asserted that his ""feminine"" texts could signify as efficaciously as Dante's Divine Comedy and Petrarch's classicizing writings. Indeed, he claimed that they could even be more effective in moving an audience because of their affective nature- namely, their capacity to attract, entertain, and stimulate readers. Kriesel argues that Boccaccio drew on medieval traditions to highlight the symbolic utility of erotic literatures and to promote cultures associated with women. Full Product DetailsAuthor: James C. KrieselPublisher: University of Notre Dame Press Imprint: University of Notre Dame Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.705kg ISBN: 9780268104498ISBN 10: 0268104492 Pages: 400 Publication Date: 15 December 2018 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsReviewsJames Kriesel makes a distinct and original contribution to the study of Boccaccio's role as a leading intellectual in the cultural turmoil between medieval and Renaissance conceptions of literature. The book has the potential to reorient the current debate on several key issues in Boccaccio studies for the wide scope it takes as well as the pointed analyses of central texts it provides throughout. --Simone Marchesi, Princeton University Author InformationJames C. Kriesel is assistant professor of Italian at Villanova University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |