Synopses & Reviews
Boccaccios highly entertaining and occasionally bawdy fourteenth-century classic Decameron, which has influenced Shakespeare, Chaucer, Melville, Calvino, and countless other writers, offers contemporary readers a range of literary pleasures and philosophical insights. In this creative and engaging reading of the book, Richard Kuhns presents original ways of interpreting and discovering the hidden meanings of Decameron.
Kuhns approaches the work from a variety of literary, philosophical, and historical perspectives. He argues that Decameron contains a theory of storytelling within the stories themselves, showing that a philosophy of the genre can be expressed in the process of telling. Kuhns reveals the ways in which Decamerons comic and sexual elements lead into philosophical debate and moral argument. In uncovering the meanings of sexual metaphors in the work, Kuhns also shows how Boccaccio viewed the relationship between storyteller and audience in sexual terms. Finally, Kuhns suggests that Decameron is one of the first self-conscious creations of A Total Work of Art. Throughout the stories, Boccaccio draws on trecento Italian culture, integrating painting, poetry, musical performance, and dramatic scenes into his work.
Synopsis
In this creative and engaging reading, Richard Kuhns explores the ways in which Decameron'ssexual themes lead into philosophical inquiry, moral argument, and aesthetic and literary criticism. As he reveals the stories' many philosophical insights and literary pleasures, Kuhns also examines Decameronin the context of the nature of storytelling, its relationship to other classic works of literature, and the culture of trecento Italy.
Stories and storytelling are to be interpreted in terms of a wider cultural context that includes masks, metamorphosis, mythic themes, and character analysis, all of which Boccaccio explores with wit and subtlety. As a storyteller, Boccaccio represents himself as literary pimp, conceiving the relationship between storyteller and audience in sexual terms within a tradition that goes back as far as Socrates' conversations with the young Athenians.
As a whole, Boccaccio's great collection of stories creates a trenchant criticism of the ideas that dominated his social and cultural world. Addressed as it is to women who were denied opportunities for education, the author's stories create a university of wise and culturally observant texts. He teaches that comic, religious, sexual, and artistic themes can be seen to function as metaphors for hidden and often dangerous unorthodox thoughts.
Kuhns suggests that Decameronis one of the first self-conscious creations of what we today call a total work of art. Throughout the stories, Boccaccio creates a detailed picture of the Florentine trecento cultural world. Giotto, Buffalmacco, and other great painters of Boccaccio's time appear in the stories. Their works and the paintings that surround the characters as they prepare to leave the plague-ridden city, with their representations of Dante, Aquinas, and other thinkers, are essential to understanding the ways the stories work with other works of art and illuminate and enlarge interpretations of Boccaccio's book.
Synopsis
Kuhns approaches Decameron from a variety of literary, philosophical, and historical perspectives. He argues that Decameron contains a theory of storytelling and reveals the ways in which Decameron's comic and sexual elements lead into philosophical debate and moral argument. Kuhns also suggests that Decameron is one of the first self-conscious creations of a "total work of art."
Synopsis
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