Boccaccio's Naked Muse: Eros, Culture, and the Mythopoeic Imagination

382 Pages·2008·2.716 MB·English

by  Boccaccio, Giovanni;Gittes, Tobias Foster

BOCCACCIO’S NAKED MUSE:
EROS, CULTURE, AND THE MYTHOPOEIC IMAGINATION
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Boccaccio’s Naked Muse
Eros, Culture, and the
Mythopoeic Imagination
Tobias Foster Gittes
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2008
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-0-8020-9204-5
Printed on acid-free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gittes, Tobias Foster
Boccaccio’s naked muse : eros, culture, and the mythopoeic
imagination / Tobias Foster Gittes.
(Toronto Italian studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8020-9204-5
1. Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313–1373 – Criticism and interpretation.
2. Myth in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PQ4293.L2G58 2007 858(cid:99).109 C2007-905683-0
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to
Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
A Note on the Translations xi
Introduction 3
1 Universal Myths of Origin: Boccaccio and the Golden Age Motif 24
The Classical Golden Age Traditions 29
Boccaccio’s Elegiac Primitivism 39
Boccaccio’s Rationalistic Reevaluation of the Golden Age 44
The Escape to Paradise 70
2 Local Myths of Origin: The Birth of the City and the Self 77
Physical Restoration: The Fertile Loam of Tuscany 77
Political Restoration and Miscegenation: Ex Pluribus Unum 89
Boccaccio’s Fruitful Bastardy 121
3 The Myth of a New Beginning: Boccaccio’s Palingenetic
Paradise 141
Tabula Rasa and Saïtic Seed: The Effacement and Replacement of
Knowledge 141
The Restoration of Knowledge: The Poet as Pedagogical Pimp 155
Nel Cospetto degli Uomini: The Prophylactic Peep-show of
Decameron VI 181
4 The Myth of Historical Foresight: Babel and Beyond 210
On the Shoulders of (Blasphemous) Giants: The Limits of
Knowledge 210
vi Contents
Through the Literary Looking-glass: The Textual Monument as
Mirror 217
Notes 243
Works Consulted 329
Index 347
Acknowledgments
Like the Fiesole and Florence described in Giovanni Villani’s Cronica,
this book has been partly razed, refurbished, and rebuilt innumerable
times. Each draft, like each successive stage of the growth of a city, has
been shaped in part by the hands and minds of those generous-spirited
readers who have wandered through its pages, filling its margins with
exclamations, exhortations, and suggestions for revisions.
Teodolinda Barolini, the first of these readers, and the one to whom I
owe the greatest debt, could justly say of my book what Augustus allegedly
said of Rome: that she found a city of clay and left one of marble. Who
else would have seen in this mud-and-wattle miscellany of material – the
spawning of fish, garrulous trees, denuded muses, and bastardies – the
basis for a solid book? Every sentence (and there was no lack of these!)
was written with Teodolinda, my ideal reader, in mind. Without her gen-
erous guidance and numerous incisive interventions, this book might
well have been written, but would not, I think, have been worth reading.
Like Martianus’s Grammar with her file, Dialectic with her hook, and
Rhetoric with her flashing arms, Joan Ferrante stormed through the
early drafts of this book marking up the margins with repeated appeals
to heed logic, aim for clarity, and prune, prune, prune! Were Wisdom
truly wise, she’d find another place to preach and grouse, and let Joanie
set her table in the seven-pillared house.
To Kathy Eden I will be forever grateful, and not just for her extensive
notes and revisions to my original manuscript. Whereas I gave Kathy
mere descriptions of the golden age diet, peaceful reign of Saturn, and
the terrestrial paradises of the Tuscan countryside, she gave me the real
thing, gold for bronze. Purveyor of Edens – for Montreal is nothing less
– Kathy is living proof that nomina sunt consequentia rerum.
viii Acknowledgments
To Giuseppe Mazzotta, my first teacher of Dante, Marilyn Migiel, my
first teacher of Italian, and Barbara Spackman, my first teacher of Boc-
caccio, I owe a debt that cannot possibly be repaid. It was in their com-
pany that I first found my vocation; their teaching is the invisible
foundation upon which I have built this book: per loro studioso fui, per loro
italianista.
While there’s no single page of this book that isn’t somehow shaped
and quickened by Vittore Branca’s guiding spirit, his influence is most
immediately felt in the third section of chapter 3 – ‘The Restoration of
Knowledge: The Poet as Pedagogical Pimp’ – which has been vastly
improved by the numerous corrections and recommendations made by
Professor Branca in the course of editing the article, originally published
in Studi sul Boccaccio, upon which this section is based. Though I would
gladly honour him with a handsome marble sepulcher, like Boccaccio’s
Guido he would simply vault over it, for death has no sway over such
active intellects.
I must also thank Pier Massimo Forni, scholar of civility and most civil
of scholars, for a fertile exchange of Boccaccio-related articles, confer-
ence papers, and emails. Christian Moevs, epitome of humanitas and car-
itas, has earned my thanks many times over not only for reading this
book in chrysalid form but for his many unsolicited acts of kindness and
support. To Michael Papio, I am grateful for so graciously allowing me to
use passages from his forthcoming translation and edition of Boccac-
cio’s Esposizioni sopra la Comedia. To friends and fellow students from my
Columbia years, I’m thankful for companionship, support, and many
an engaging chiacchierata at conferences and in the corridors, offices,
and classrooms of Hamilton Hall: Karina Attar, Martin Eisner, Scott
Failla, Elsa Filosa, Manuele Gragnolati, Andrea Malaguti, and Patrizia
Palumbo. Particular thanks must go to Kristina Olson, longtime interloc-
utor on Boccaccio-related matters, a dear friend and a friend in deed. To
Madeline Aria, classicist, cabinetmaker, and cat-lover, I shall be forever
indebted for her early and unstinting help in wrestling with medieval
Latin passages; even the contumacious Nimrod – that ‘most stupid of
men’ – no match for her dry wit and keen linguistic powers, was soon
stripped of Latin rhetoric and forced to speak an unfamiliar tongue.
Could I build cities, in lieu of books, I’d gladly raise a seven-walled cit-
adel, a nobile castello governed by the late Harvey Shulman, maestro di color
che sanno (and, no less impressively, of those who get things done), for my
friends, colleagues, and students at Concordia University’s Liberal Arts
College. Certainly, they deserve no less. This book has greatly benefited
Acknowledgments ix
from the meticulous proofreading carried out by three of these excep-
tional students: Zoe Dickinson, James Phelan, and Jean-Olivier Richard.
It was the laudevoli consolazioni of my wonderful colleagues at the Liberal
Arts College, in particular Ariela Freedman and Katharine Streip, that
made it possible for me to continue work on my book over the course of
several extremely difficult years.
Books, like cities, have their resident genies, their penates and their
lares. Mine are my grandmother, Cicely Foster, and her brother, Kenelm
Foster. Cicely, in her way as skilled a storyteller as Boccaccio, kindled my
love of narrative, and Kenelm, though no doubt blissfully unaware of the
fact, had an important role in prompting my own, enormously reward-
ing excursion into Italian studies. It was beneath a certain Cambridge
quince tree that I, entranced by Kenelm’s austere grace and eloquence,
first turned from childish reveries to thoughts of academic life.
Books have their patrons as well, and it has long been clear to me that
without the generous support of my parents, Lois Severini and Enrique
Foster Gittes, I would have fared no better than Rabelais’s Xerxes,
reduced to hawking mustard in limbo – a profession easily learned but
one with little else to recommend it.
Liane Miller, my friend, companion, and witness to my writing
progress Ab urbe condita knows better than anyone else the toll it took in
sleepless nights, but knows as well the frequent interludes of pleasure
and pure joy. Croce e delizia, delizia al cor.
Had it not been for the praise of the two anonymous evaluators of the
manuscript originally submitted to University of Toronto Press, this book
would never have been considered for publication; had it not been for
their helpful criticism, it would, though published, have been a far less
polished book.
I would like to extend the warmest of thanks to my editor Ron Schoeffel
and copy editor Ruth Pincoe of the University of Toronto Press. Without
Ron Schoeffel’s gracious good-will, generosity, and patient encourage-
ment, this project would have remained a castle in Spain, rather than a
beautifully produced book. Without Ruth Pincoe’s sensitive and thor-
ough work on the final manuscript, this text would not have answered
either of Horace’s directives; neither delightful nor useful, it would soon
have been sent to join the volumes, ‘llenos de viento y de borra,’ kicked
about by Altisidora’s devils in the vestibule of hell. Even a casual glance at
the index reveals the scholastic precision – and supernatural patience –
of my indexer, Sarah Patterson; her remarkable diligence and reliable
good humour will not soon be forgotten. Many thanks must also go to