Incorporating the most recent research by scholars in Italy, the UK, Ireland and North America, this collection of essays foregrounds Boccaccio's significance as a pre-eminent scholar and mediator of the classical and vernacular traditions, whose innovative textual practices confirm him as a figure of equal standing to Petrarch and Dante. Situating Boccaccio and his works in their cultural contexts, the Companion introduces a wide range of his texts, paying close attention to his formal innovations, elaborate voicing strategies, and the tensions deriving from his position as a medieval author who places women at the centre of his work. Four chapters are dedicated to different aspects of his masterpiece, the Decameron, while particular attention is paid to the material forms of his works: from his own textual strategies as the shaper of his own and others' literary legacies, to his subsequent editorial history, and translation into other languages and media.

A major re-evaluation of Boccaccio's status as literary innovator and cultural mediator equal to that of Petrarch and Dante.

About the Author
Guyda Armstrong is Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Manchester and is author of The English Boccaccio: A History in Books (2013). Rhiannon Daniels is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Bristol and is author of Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy, 1340-1520 (2009). Stephen J. Milner is Serena Professor of Italian at the University of Manchester. He is co-editor, with Catherine Leglu, of The Erotics of Consolation: Distance and Desire in the Middle Ages (2008) and editor of At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy (2005).

Reviews
'... this new book enlightens readers from different disciplines and backgrounds about the works of Boccaccio. It offers a picture of him at the crossroads of media, political commitments, and a literary career, underlines his modernity, and explains why his genius continues to live - even through media he had no opportunity, for reasons of chronology, to exploit ...' Johnny L. Bertolio, Renaissance and Reformation
'These essays, all well and clearly written, knowledgeable and thoroughly grounded in up-to-date scholarship, combine a quick review of previous work on their topics with an offering of valuable new insights and suggestions for diverse approaches to Boccaccio's texts. Both readable by students and useful to scholars, this will long remain a necessary and worthwhile volume for anyone venturing into Boccaccio studies.' Janet Levarie Smarr, Speculum



Book Information
ISBN 9781107609631
Author Guyda Armstrong
Format Paperback
Page Count 294
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 440g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 152mm * 15mm