Authorizing the Reader: Dante and the Ends of the Decameron

Authorizing the Reader: Dante and the Ends of the Decameronby Natalie Ann Cleaver Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and Medieval Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Albert Ascoli, ChairWe now speak easily of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch as the tre corone of Italian literature, the three great foundational authors of the tradition, but there is no question who stands first among them. Not just for his historical primacy of place, or his commanding self–presentation, but also for his truly daunting range of influence, Dante Alighieri is the Italian poet with whom all others must reckon. He influenced the development of virtually every aspect of Italian culture, from literature and the Italian language itself, to theology, political philosophy, historical memory, and even constructions of national identity. Though this influence has been long–lasting, it was every bit as pervasive in his own age.Few felt Dante’s shadow more than Giovanni Boccaccio, one of the first in subsequent generations of writers in the vernacular who had to negotiate his relationship to his illustrious predecessor. Boccaccio was a great Dantista in his own right; in addition to giving the first set of public lectures on the Commedia, he also composed the Trattatello in laude di Dante, in which he is the first to apply the epithet divina to the Commedia. Boccaccio obviously respected and admired Dante as a poet deeply. His minor works in particular demonstrate a profound engagement with the Commedia, and this relationship has been the subject of much recent scholarship.The most puzzling case of Boccaccio’s debts to Dante is his own great vernacular masterpiece: the Decameron. On the one hand, the Decameron signals its relationship to the Commedia in some very obvious ways: the structure of the 100 stories, its title, and the appearance of many of the same characters who populate the Commedia. On the other, past these obvious signs, the relationship begins t