Boccaccio: Decameron

3 units

The unrivaled master of late medieval Italian prose, Boccaccio is also a strikingly modern author whose works address such questions as the relationship between literature and history; God and man; storyteller and audience; gender, language, and power; literature and truth. With these and other concerns in mind, we will read his masterpiece, the DECAMERON, a collection of 100 tales set in the Black Plague of 1348. We will then contrast it to his late CORBACCIO, ostensibly a misogynist novel but a text that finally resists such a flattening judgment. Readings in Italian or English; discussion in English. Prerequisite: 3 units of literature.