It would not be wrong to say that for the most part literature confronts critically and reuses what has gone before. This is particularly true of the Middle Ages when to be original was to rework and give new meaning to the auctoritates of the past: “gloser la letre et de lur sen le surplus metre”, as Marie de France puts it in the Prologue to her Lais. Boccaccio, who in many ways is a profoundly medieval author, is no exception, and his codification of the novella is essentially the result of a rewriting of previous works, many of which were French, a culture he had learned to appreciate during his stay in Angevin Naples in 1327-1340/41. By comparing a few of the tales in the Decameron to possible Old French analogues, this chapter will set out to show that Boccaccio’s rewriting of the French tradition frequently relies heavily on comic strategies involving language and parody. The result is both a new genre, the novella, and a new style, that of a comedìa, in the sense that Dante, perhaps Boccaccio’s main source of inspiration, had understood it.
Rewriting the French Tradition. Boccaccio and the Making of the Novella
LEE, Charmaine Anne
2010
Abstract
It would not be wrong to say that for the most part literature confronts critically and reuses what has gone before. This is particularly true of the Middle Ages when to be original was to rework and give new meaning to the auctoritates of the past: “gloser la letre et de lur sen le surplus metre”, as Marie de France puts it in the Prologue to her Lais. Boccaccio, who in many ways is a profoundly medieval author, is no exception, and his codification of the novella is essentially the result of a rewriting of previous works, many of which were French, a culture he had learned to appreciate during his stay in Angevin Naples in 1327-1340/41. By comparing a few of the tales in the Decameron to possible Old French analogues, this chapter will set out to show that Boccaccio’s rewriting of the French tradition frequently relies heavily on comic strategies involving language and parody. The result is both a new genre, the novella, and a new style, that of a comedìa, in the sense that Dante, perhaps Boccaccio’s main source of inspiration, had understood it.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
