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Boccaccio and the Early Modern Reception of Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

James C. Kriesel
James C. Kriesel*
Affiliation:
Villanova University
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Abstract

Fourteenth-century Italian humanists discussed the properties of tragedy while considering the value of Latin versus vernacular literature. Boccaccio was interested in these discussions because humanists were promoting classicizing tragic and epic literatures at the expense of vernacular writing. This article explores Boccaccio’s role in these debates by examining the tragic stories of the Decameron. It suggests that Boccaccio highlighted the virtues of his erotic tales by contrasting them to the tragic stories of day 4, a strategy inspired by Ovid’s elegiac poems. Boccaccio thus underscored the dignity of his low, Ovidian-inspired Decameron, and counterbalanced humanist fascination with high tragic-epic literatures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , Summer 2016 , pp. 415 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Renaissance Society of America

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