Academic literature on the topic 'Chaucer, Geoffrey, Boccaccio, Giovanni'

Resumen: El cine es una herramienta muy importante para aproximarse a otras épocas históricas con el objetivo de tratar cuestiones de género y diversidad. Un ejemplo claro al respecto lo constituye la denominada Trilogia della Vita o Trittico della Vita de Pier Paolo Pasolini, tres películas que recrean los cuentos eróticos más famosos de la Edad Media desde la Cristiandad al Islam: Il Decameron de Giovanni Boccaccio, I racconti di Canterbury de Geoffry Chaucer e Il fiore delle Mille e una notte. El cine nos muestra así a una literatura histórica singular que representa a una Edad Media diferente. En ese sentido, este artículo analiza por primera vez el valor que tienen estas tres películas de Pasolini en el área de conocimiento de la historia medieval desde la perspectiva queer para fomentar la educación artística y los derechos LGTBIQ+ en la universidad. Es también un pequeño homenaje a la biografía extraordinaria de Pasolini, escritor, filósofo y fundador del llamado cine de poesía. Palabras clave: cine, literatura, Edad Media, género, diversidad sexual, Pasolini, educación artística, derechos humanos. Abstract: Cinema is a very important tool to approach other historical periods with the aim of talking about gender and diversity. A clear example of this is the Trilogy of Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini, three films that recreate the most famous erotic tales of the Middle Ages from Christianity to Islam: Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and The Thousand and One Nights (often known as The Arabian Nights). Thereby, cinema shows us a singular historic literature that represents a different Middle Ages. In this way, this article analyzes for the first time the value of these three films in the knowledge area of Medieval History from the queer perspective to promote Art Education and GLBTIQ+ Rights at the University. It is also a small tribute to the extraordinary Pasolini’s biography, writer, philosopher and founder of the so-called poetry cinema. Keywords: cinema, literature, Middle Ages, gender, sexual diversity, Pasolini, art education, human rights. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7203/eari.10.14089

How can cultural works from the distant past –such as the Middle Ages—teach us ethical modes of behavior for today? One form of ecopoetics emerges through slow practice, making the reader collaborate in the measured process of co-creating the emotional impact of an imaginative text. Drawing on rich debates about slow cinema, this essay suggests how Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale—from his grand fourteenth-century poem, The Canterbury Tales—evokes a slow eco-aesthetics with ethical impact. The relative slowness of walking shapes how individuals respond to their environment. In turn, a deceleration of perception affects how travel comes to be written about, as seen in the tale of Patient Griselda. Introduced by Giovanni Boccaccio and adapted by such writers as Francesco Petrarch, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan, she acts dynamically through her apparent silence and notorious patience. The environmental humanities offer paradigms for us to consider the strategies of slowness and patience. This essay shows how medieval pilgrimage literature evokes a slow aesthetic which is at the same time an ecocritical strategy. Slowness results in an enduring impact and heightened sensitivity to the ecological damage for which we all are culpable. Slower somatically inculcates key aspects of environmental awareness. Pilgrimage texts from the Middle Ages teach us slow ethical aesthetics, suggesting that the medieval moment—finally and a long time coming— is now.

La contesa tra Venere celeste e Venere terrena, tra l’amore onesto e coniugale, che regola la comunità, e l’amore dilettevole e extraconiugale, che è fonte inesauribile di valore guerriero e di virtù cavalleresche nella società cortese, affascina il Boccaccio durante il soggiorno nella Napoli angioina. Se nel Filostrato celebra il trionfo dell’amore per diletto e nel Filocolo concilia il diletto con l’amore onesto, nel Teseida invece rappresenta le tensioni dell’eroina romanza sempre in bilico tra le due Veneri. Nel periodo napoletano Boccaccio trascrive due frammenti di polemica antimatrimoniale nello Zibaldone Laurenziano XXIX 8. Il primo è estratto dall’Adversus Jovinianum, nel quale Gerolamo cita un passo del De nuptiis di Teofrasto per affermare che il sapiente deve stare lontano dalle noie del matrimonio per dedicarsi totalmente agli studi. Il secondo, prelevato dalla Dissuasio di pseudo-Valerio, contiene rassegne di mogli pericolose e di mariti che soccombono alla loro malvagità, con l’obiettivo di rafforzare l’esortazione finale a non sposare Venere ma Pallade. All’archivio dello Zibaldone Boccaccio ritorna più volte, in particolare nelle opere postdecameroniane del periodo fiorentino (Corbaccio, Trattatello in laude di Dante, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia), quando sulle orme di Dante e sotto il magistero di Petrarca si congeda definitivamente dalla letteratura amorosa mezzana per dedicarsi alla letteratura elevata e agli studi teologici e filosofici. Lungo il Trecento e il Quattrocento, nel frequente riaccendersi in Europa del dibattito sul matrimonio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Leonardo Bruni, Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco e Ermolao Barbaro rimettono in gioco Teofrasto e pseudo-Valerio con la mediazione del Boccaccio.

Two of the tales mentioned in the title are in many ways typical of the great collections of stories (The Canterbury Tales and Il Decamerone) to which they belong. What makes them conspicuous is no doubt the intensity of the erotic desire presented as the ultimate law which justifies even the most outrageous actions. The cult of eroticism is combined there with a cult of youth, which means disaster for the protagonists, who try to combine eroticism with advanced age. And yet the stories in question have roots in a very different tradition in which overt eroticism is punished and can only reassert itself in a chastened form, its transformation being due to sacrifices made by the lover to become reunited with the object of his love. A medieval example of the latter tradition is here the Middle English romance, Sir Orfeo. All of the three narratives are conspicuously connected by the motif of the enchanted tree. The Middle Ages are associated with a tendency to moralize ancient literature, the most obvious example of which is the French anonymous work Ovide moralisé (Moralized Ovid), and its Latin version Ovidius Moralizatus by Pierre Bersuire. In the case of The Merchant’s Tale and The Tale of the Enchanted Pear-Tree, we seem to meet with the opposite process, that is with a medieval demoralization of an essentially didactic tradition. The present article deals with the problem of how this transformation could happen and the extent of the resulting un-morality. Some use has also been made of the possible biblical parallels with the tales in question.

Stories have been the source of moral lessons and entertainment, as far as the humankind of all the time, is concerned. The use of story- telling existed from the time immemorial. Stories appeared in the form of ballads and epics, in the ancient time, but later it took the shape of short and long fictions. The long fictions or novels varied in its theme and size. They are divided into many genres according to its subject matter- Gothic, Picaresque, Historical etc. The Ballad is nothing but a short story in verse. Its subjects are simple and memorable like adventure, love, war and the life etc. An Epic is a long tale in verse with famous heroes for its main characters. Iliad and Odyssey are examples. These stories gave the reader enjoyment and certain life-related ‘tips’. Hayden White, an American historian says, “the aim of the writer of a novel must be the same as that of the writer of the history”. Historians and Novelists wish to provide a verbal image of ‘reality’. A novelist may produce reality indirectly but this is meant to correspond to some sphere of human experience. He desires to pass the merits and demerits of such experience onto the readers, to enhance a better vision of life. Novelists are free to use fictitious characters and situations for the readers’ entertainment. Stories took its present prose form later in the middle ages. Decameron, a collection of stories by Boccaccio, was published in 1350. It deals with stories told by a group of people affected by Black Plague. They used these stories to get mental relief from the pandemic. ‘Canterbury Tales’ of Geoffrey Chaucer also, is telling the life-related stories by some pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury. All these show that men were, from the early ages itself, used to tell stories to recollect the past and go forward with lessons of reality for a better life. Actually these stories are ‘historical facts’ blended with the imagination of the writers.

Literature can play an important role in shaping our responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It can offer us significant insights into how individuals treated the trauma of pandemics in the past, and how to survive in a situation beyond our control. Considering the changes and challenges that the coronavirus might bring for us, we should know that the world we are living in today is shaped by the biological crisis of the past. This understanding can help us deal with the challenges in the current pandemic situation. Literature can show us how the crisis has affected the lives of infected individuals. By exploring the theme of disease and pandemic, which is consistent and well-established in literature (Cooke, 2009), we come across a number of literary works dealing with plagues, epidemics and other forms of biological crises. Among the prominent examples of pandemic literature is Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947), narrating the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. The novel illustrates the powerlessness of individuals to affect their destinies. Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague (1912) is another story depicting the spread of the Red Death, an uncontrollable epidemic that depopulated and nearly destroyed the world. The book is considered as prophetic of the coronavirus pandemic, especially given London wrote it at a time when the world was not as quickly connected by travel as it is today (Matthews, 2020). Furthermore, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death (1842) is a short story on the metaphorical element of the plague. Through the personification of the plague, represented by a mysterious figure as a Red Death victim, the author contemplates on the inevitability of death; the issue is not that people die from the plague, but that people are plagued by death (Steel, 1981). Moreover, Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826) is another apocalyptic novel, depicting a future which is ravaged by a plague. Shelley illustrates the concept of immunization in this fiction showing her understanding about the nature of contagion. Pandemic is also depicted in medieval writings, such as Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales illustrating human behaviour: the fear of infection increased sins such as greed, lust and corruption, which paradoxically led to infection and consequently to both moral and physical death (Grigsby, 2008). In ancient literature, Homer’s Iliad opens with a plague visited upon the Greek camp at Troy to punish the Greeks for Agamemnon’s enslavement of Chryseis. Plague and epidemic were rather frequent catastrophes in ancient world. When plague spread, no medicine could help, and no one could stop it from striking; the only way to escape was to avoid contact with infected persons and contaminated objects (Tognotti. 2013). Certainly, COVID-19 has shaken up our economic systems and affected all aspects of our living. In this respect, literature can give us the opportunity to think through how similar crises were dealt with previously, and how we might structure our societies more equitably in their aftermath. Thus, in order to explore what literature tells us about the pandemic, the following interview is conducted with Frederick Aldama, a Distinguished Professor of English at the Ohio State University.

Conversations among scholars in the study of Chaucer have been essential in constructing the foundations on which we now stand. However, in light of recent pressures in the very competitive and practical aspects of academic life, the scholarly conversation is often lost amidst the desire to find any obscure point on which to publish simply for the reason that no one has yet said anything about it. There is certainly a usefulness to exploring all facets of Chaucer's work, but there is also a need to slough off the cumbersome coat of 'publish-or-perish' scholarship in favor of carrying on a more meaningful conversation which may contribute to new readings or interpretations, epiphanies, or canon-altering revelations. This bibliography was begun for two purposes. First, as a bibliography, it was made to serve its users in a convenient and comprehensive manner. Second, it was made to illustrate the conversations of recent years, or lack thereof, among scholars concerned with the character and actions of Criseyde in the Troilus. Criseyde is arguably the quintessential character in Chaucer's works. She is wonderfully enigmatic, and her role in the Troilus spawned six hundred years of debate. The chapters which follow testify to the complexity of Criseyde. As she caught the eye of multiple authors from classical antiquity to the Elizabethan age, she continues to entice scholars to read and re-read her in various articles, chapters, and books. This is supported by the fact that nearly one quarter of all scholarship published (over four hundred works) on Troilus and Criseyde since 1986 deals expressly with Criseyde, herself. This bibliography is constructed as it is in the hope of providing a more convenient tool for scholars. The Riverside Chaucer serves as an adequate starting point because of its comprehensive compilation of notes and studies on Chaucer's works, including the Troilus. Since nothing of similar stature has appeared since, this bibliography will begin in 1986, the year in which the Riverside's compilation came to an end. Chapter 1 of this study looks at recent scholarship which examines the origins of Chaucer's Criseyde. While W.W. Skeat and R.K. Root provided us long ago with detailed lists and accounts of Chaucer's sources for the Troilus, today's scholars continue to make new additions to these, as well as new interpretations and readings which suggest further, new or different sources. The final chapter of this work examines the scholarship that reads Criseyde's role in the poem as a whole, not focusing on any one scene or act. Scholars such as David Aers and Jill Mann provide critiques on the nature of Criseyde from our initial sight of her in Book I to her final departure from the poem in Book V. Interestingly, recent scholarship on Criseyde tends to focus on one or more specific scenes in a specific book within the poem. Scholars deconstruct Criseyde's entrance at the Palladium in Book I, her reaction to Pandarus' goading her to love Troilus in Book II, or descriptions of her dress in the Greek camp in Book IV. Therefore, in structuring this bibliography, rather than focusing on themes, I sought to frame the scholarship with the poem's own narrative structure. Thus, chapters two, three, four, and five are comprised of scholarship that examines Books I, II, III, and Books IV and V of the Troilus. Users who question certain scenes in one of the poem's books can then look to the corresponding chapter of this bibliography to find whether scholars have conversed about the scene or scenes in question. In a sense, this bibliography examines Criseyde's existence prior to Chaucer's poem, her activity within Chaucer's poem, and her reputation upon exiting Chaucer's poem. This bibliography seeks to put scholarship together in such a way as to confirm whether or not scholars are continuing conversations about Chaucer's Criseyde. In many cases we find that conversations do exist and are carried forward. New landmarks in scholarship, for example Piero Boitani's edited collection The European Tragedy of the Troilus or David Aers' Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, are made apparent by the number of other scholars conversing on arguments and suggestions made by the contributing authors of these two works. Scholars pick up where their predecessors leave off in continuing arguments, patterns of interpretation, and close readings of Criseyde. Further, scholars begin new conversations. In some instances, both old and new conversations fail to move forward, whether by mischance or 'entente.' It is essential that we continue these colloquial discussions of scholarship as the critical scope of Chaucer studies widens, rather than rocketing forward as it did with the work of Skeat, Root, Donaldson, and Robertson in the early and mid twentieth-century. Certainly, we can disagree, but let us remember the ease with which C.S. Lewis discusses Medieval literature in his Discarded Image and the warmth of a conference session at MLA, NCS, or Kalamazoo, in which Chaucerians gather to move forward as one body rather than a mix of warring clans, prima donnas, or renegade dissenters. Scholarship aside, I offer this bibliography lastly to demonstrate the wonders of Chaucer's poetic arts and their chief exemplar, Criseyde.
Master of Arts

Reading for form can mean reading for formation. Understanding processes through which a text was created can help us in characterizing its form. But what is involved in bringing a diachronic process to bear upon a synchronic work? When does literary formation begin and end? When does form happen? These questions emerge with urgency in the interactions between English poet Geoffrey Chaucer and Italian Trecento authors Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francis Petrarch. In fourteenth-century Italy, new ways were emerging of configuring the relation between author and reader. Previously, medieval reading was often oriented around the significance of the text to the individual reader. In Italy, however, reading was beginning to be understood as a way of getting back to a work’s initial formation. This book tracks how concepts of reading developed within Italian texts, including Dante’s Vita nova, Boccaccio’s Filostrato and Teseida, and Petrarch’s Seniles, impress themselves upon Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Canterbury Tales. It argues that Chaucer’s poetry reveals the implications of reading for formation: above all, that it both depends upon and effaces the historical perspective and temporal experience of the individual reader. Problems raised within Chaucer’s poetry thus inform this book’s broader methodological argument: that there is no one moment at which the formation of Chaucer’s poetry ends; rather its form emerges in and through the process of reading within time.

This chapter shows how Geoffrey Chaucer's relationship to literary tradition can be explored through his study, translation, and adaptation of one Italian poem—Giovanni Boccaccio's Il Filostrato. Chaucer used Boccaccio's youthful experiment Il Filostrato (1335) to create Troilus and Criseyde (1385), an enduring masterpiece and unquestionably his greatest completed work. Here, the chapter examines twelve aspects of Il Filostrato which prompt Chaucer at times to straightforward imitation, at times to considerable amplification of an idea, and at times to a corrective reaction. It shows how many of these aspects—which represent Chaucer in different ways learning from and being stimulated by Boccaccio—also came to seem like key characteristics of Chaucer's mature work. After all, Chaucer became the poet he was partly through intense reflection on Boccaccio's ideas and techniques.

‘Organizing, disorganizing: The Canterbury Tales’ describes the structure and content of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The chief precedent for this work as a framed collection is the Decameron, heroically written in response to the 1348 plague, but then retouched by Boccaccio until his death in 1375. Chaucer heard much about Boccaccio during his visit to Florence in 1373, the year of the world’s first lecturae Dantis (Dante lectures, organized and given by Boccaccio). Chaucer’s Tales exist over fifty-five manuscripts; tale orders vary and ‘fragments’ float. For Chaucer, the framed collection provided a convenient workshop and repository for all kinds of writing, some of it drafted much earlier.

‘Poetry at last: Troilus and Criseyde’ describes the structure and content of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. Since London styled itself ‘Troynovant’ or ‘New Troy’, imagining itself founded by the Trojan-Latin Brutus, Chaucer immediately saw great potential in Boccaccio’s ottava rima tale, Il Filostrato. The Boccaccio-inspired Troilus and Criseyde tells of a doomed love affair in a doomed city. For three-fifths of its length its trajectory is seemingly comic, or upward-moving, but it is defined as a tragedy. The dense allusiveness of Troilus and Criseyde suggests that Chaucer is writing a poem to be pondered over, many times, rather than listened to once.