1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910460345503321

Autore

Olson Kristina

Titolo

Courtesy lost : Dante, Boccaccio, and the literature of history / / Kristina M. Olson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

1-4426-6718-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (259 p.)

Collana

Toronto Italian Studies

Disciplina

858/.109

Soggetti

Courtesy in literature

Chivalry in literature

Electronic books.

Florence (Italy) History To 1421

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Editions and Translations -- Introduction “Fateci dipignere la Cortesia”: Historicizing cortesia -- 1. Boccaccio’s History of cortesia: The Incivility and Greed of the Elite -- 2. Boccaccio’s Politics of cortesia: Narrating the Elite and the gente nuova -- 3. The Ethical (and Dantean) Framework of the Decameron: The Avarice of Clerics and Merchants -- 4. Constructing a Future for cortesia in the Past: Virility, Nobility, and the History of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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 Dante’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 Boccaccio’s Decameron, De casibus, and Esposizioni in which the author rewrites moments in Florentine and Italian history that had also appeared in Dante’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 Dante’s and Boccaccio’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.