Mini Spring Seminar by Susanna Barsella

Wednesday, April 13, 2016
6.00-8.00 p.m.

Textual architecture and Poetic Education in Boccaccio’s Comedía delle ninfe fiorentine

Boccaccio’s Comedía delle ninfe fiorentine (1341/2) illustrates the transformative power of poetic education through two connected stories. The first story narrates Ameto’s progress from a life based on animal instinct to a life inspired by virtue under the guidance of seven Nymphs. The second story presents a mirror-image of Ameto’s transformation: an unseen disenchanted observer witnesses Ameto’s initiation but remains apparently untouched by this revealing experience. From the standpoint of this fictionally realistic observer, Boccaccio presents a structural mise en abîme of the positive myth of Ameto. The mirror-like architecture of the Comedía allows us to discern a further level of interpretation of this work, one that is centered on the productive aspect of knowledge in the transformative process that learning may (as in Ameto’s story)– or may not (as in the observer’s story) - initiate. Boccaccio’s reflection on the art of education as production inspired by operative Faith sets his Comedia in direct, critical, dialogue with Dante’s Commedia.

Thursday, April 14, 2016
5.30-7.30 p.m.

The Lover in the frame: Boccaccio’s Philosophy of Love and the Proemium of the Decameron

This seminar focuses on the figure of the poet-lover in the Proemium and the conclusions of the Decameron. In particular, it investigates the relationship between love and rhetoric that the principal narrator places at the center of his dedication to young women besotted by love. By setting the narrative project of the Decameron within a philosophical perspective, Boccaccio establishes an implicit dialogue with Cavalcanti, Dante, and the medieval medical tradition on the nature of love excess and its remedies. The theme of “excessus amoris,” as connected to the healing power of poetry, is at the core of Boccaccio’s narrative strategy. Developed against the backdrop of an Aristotelian ethics of virtue, this theme appears to be a leading thread connecting the different layers of the articulated structure of the Decameron.