Difficult as it is to find English equivalents for Cipolla’s nonsensical place-names, his account of his dealings with the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Besokindas Tocursemenot (Nonmiblasmete Sevoipiace), and the list of sacred relics he claims to have acquired from that venerable dignitary of the Church, place even greater obstacles in the path of Boccaccio’s translators. To take a single instance, the relic described by Cipolla as ‘una delle coste del Verbum-caro fatti alle finestre’ assumes more curious forms in some of the earlier English translations than the author himself can ever have imagined in his wildest fantasies. The gross error committed by his earliest English translator in the version first published in 1620 (‘one of the ribbes of the Verbum Caro, fastened to one of the Windowes’) was repeated with monotonous regularity by later translators and editors. In his elegant but archaically worded translation published in 1886, John Payne supplied an absolutely literal translation of Cipolla’s relic (‘one of the ribs of the Verbum Caro Get-thee-to-the-windows’), but a more recent translator, whether through ignorance, perverseness, or subtle design, calls it, in a version first published in 1930 that is cluttered with similar curiosities, ‘a rib of the Verbum Caro made at the factory’.
* * *
Apart from Dante’s Commedia, no work by any Italian writer has been translated so often, either wholly or in part, as the Decameron. Quite apart from the twelve separate English or American versions that have been published, there are so many English translations or adaptations of individual stories, or groups of stories, that their total defies accurate computation. And no other Italian writer has supplied English literature with so rich a store of narrative material.
The reasons for Boccaccio’s perennial appeal to the English translator or reader are not far to seek, although it is clear that the aura of equivocation surrounding the name of Boccaccio is by no means the most important factor. His earliest translators directed their attention to those tales that remained strictly within the bounds of propriety and afforded the maximum amount of moral uplift to their hearers. The sixteen tales from the Decameron included in Painter’s The Palace of Pleasure, first published in 1566, are carefully selected, and judiciously doctored, to present Boccaccio as a rigid moralist, and it was not until the nineteenth century was drawing to a close that the English reader was first made acquainted with the full range of Boccaccio’s narrative versatility. Before the appearance in 1886 of John Payne’s magniloquent English version, Boccaccio’s taste for the erotic and the profane had been consistently glossed over or toned down in varying degrees by his English translators, so that it would be quite wrong to attribute his enduring popularity to this particular aspect of his work. Boccaccio’s gifts as a storyteller, his phenomenal and absolute mastery in a genre of which there are few if any outstanding examples in English literature (a genre which nourishes and sustains other forms of literature such as the drama and narrative poetry), provide a more plausible explanation of his extraordinary fortuna in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Nevertheless, when one considers the problems which the Decameron poses for the would-be translator, it is perhaps surprising that the task has been attempted so often. On the one hand, there are those long, elaborate, beautifully balanced sentences, with their trailing clusters of dependent clauses, often arranged so as to reproduce the characteristic hendecasyllabic rhythms of Italian classical poetry, and employing all the stylistic devices of medieval rhetoric. On the other hand, one has a whole range of vivid and racy colloquialisms, found more especially in the tales that are set in the more humble milieux of medieval Italy. The variations and complexities of Boccaccio’s style and language are limitless, and no translator can ever hope to do them full justice. But because, like Everest, the Decameron is there, and because it is inconceivable that a truly satisfactory English translation of this great European prose masterpiece will ever be produced, there will always be someone who is foolhardy enough to attempt the task, even if he is familiar with Dante’s sombre warning that ‘nothing that is harmonized by the bond of the Muse can be transformed from its own language into another without upsetting all its sweetness and harmony’.83
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
The bibliography consists for the most part of books and articles cited in the Introduction and Notes to the present volume. It also includes several additional items that are relevant to further study of Boccaccio and the Decameron. For more detailed bibliographical data, the reader is referred to Joseph P. Consoli’s splendidly comprehensive and informative Giovanni Boccaccio: an Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1992).
A WORKS BY BOCCACCIO
Amorosa visione, bilingual edition, translated by R. Hollander, T. Hampton and M. Frankel, with introduction by V. Branca (Hanover, New Hampshire and London, 1986).
Caccia di Diana, Filocolo, a cura di V. Branca e A. E. Quaglio, in Tutte le opere, í (Milan, 1967).
Comedía delle ninfe fiorentine, a cura di A. E. Quaglio, in Tutte le opere, II (Milan, 1964).
Corbaccio, a cura di T. Nurmela (Helsinki, 1968).
De casibus virorum illustrium, a cura di P. G. Ricci e V. Zaccaria, in Tutte le opere, IX (Milan, 1983).
De mulieribus claris, a cura di V. Zacearía, in Tutte le opere, X (Milan, 1967).
Decameron, a cura di V. Branca, in Tutte le opere, IV (Milan, 1976). But see also the edition published in the series Nuova Universale Einaudi (Turin, 1980, 3rd edition 1987), containing updated notes, bibliography and indexes, as well as introductory essays on the Decameron and on B.’s life and works.
Elegia di madonna Fiammetta, a cura di C. Salinari e N. Sapegno. In Boccaccio, G., Decameron, Filocolo, Ameto, Fiammetta, a cura di E. Bianchi, C. Salinari e N. Sapegno (Milan and Naples, 1952).
Esposizioni sopra la Comedía di Dante, a cura di G. Padoan, in Tutte le opere, VI (Milan, 1965).
Filocolo, a cura di A. E. Quaglio, in Tutte le opere, I (Milan, 1967)
Filostrato, a cura di V. Branca, in Tutte le opere, II (Milan, 1964).
Genealogia deorum gentilium libri, a cura di V. Romano (Bari, 1951).
Ninfale fiesolano, a cura di A. Balduino, in Tutte le opere, III (Milan, 1974).
Rime, Caccia di Diana, a cura di V. Branca (Padua, 1958).
Teseida delle nozze di Emilia, a cura di A. Limentani, in Tutte le opere, II (Milan, 1964).
Trattatello in laude di Dante, a cura di P. G. Ricci, in Tutte le opere, III (Milan, 1974).
B ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS
Ameto (Comedía delle ninfe fiorentine), translated by Judith Serafini – Sauli (New York and London, 1985).
Concerning Famous Women, translated by Guido A. Guarino (reprint, London, 1964) (New Jersey, 1963).
The Corbaccio, translated and edited by Anthony K. Cassell (Urbana and London, 1975).
Diana’s Hunt (Caccia di Diana), Boccaccio’s First Fiction, translated and edited by A. K. Cassell and V. Kirkham (Philadelphia, 1991).
Eclogues, Latin text with translation by J. L. Smarr (New York and London, 1987).
The Elegy of Madonna Fiammetta, translated by Mariangela Causa-Steindler and Thomas Mauch (Chicago and London, 1990).
Filocolo, translated by David Cheaney and Thomas G. Bergin (New York, 1985).
Havely, Nicholas R., Chaucer’s Boccaccio: Sources of Troilus and the Knight’s and Franklin’s Tales (Cambridge, 1980). Contains Havely’s prose translation of the Filostrato.
Osgood, Charles (editor), Boccaccio on Poetry, Being the Preface and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Books of Boccaccio’s ‘Genealogia Deorum Gentilium’ (reprint, Indianapolis, 1956) (Princeton, 1930).
C BOOKS IN ITALIAN
Almansi, Guido, Il ciclo della scommessa dal ‘Decameron’ al ‘Cymbeline’ di Shakespeare (Rome, 1976).
Baratto, Mario, Realtà e stile nel ‘Decameron’ (Venice, 1970).
Barbina, Alfredo (editor), Concórdame del ‘Decameron’, sotto la direzione di Umberto Bosco (2 vols.) (Florence, 1969).
Billanovich, Giuseppe, Restauri boccacceschi (Rome, 1947).
Bonomo, Giuseppe, Scongiuri del popolo siciliano (Palermo, 1953).
Bosco, Umberto, Il ‘Decameron’: Saggio (Rome, 1929). Of special interest is chapter VIII, ‘Il poeta dell’intelligenza’, pp. 190–95.
Branca, Vittore, Boccaccio medievale (revised edition, Florence, 1996).
Branca, Vittore, Giovanni Boccaccio, profilo biografico (Florence, 1977).
Branca, Vittore, Tradizione delle opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, I, Un primo elenco dei codici e tre studi (Rome, 1958).
Bruni, Francesco, Boccaccio, I’invenzione della letteratura mezzana (Bologna, 1990).
Cavallini, Giorgio, La decimagiomata del ‘Decameron’ (Rome, 1980).
Curato, Baldo, Introduzione al Boccaccio (Cremona, 1961).
Di Pino, Guido, La polemica del Boccaccio (Florence, 1953).
Fido, Franco, Il regime delle simmetrie imperfette: Studi sul ‘Decameron’ (Milan, 1988).
Galletti, Salvatore, Patología al ‘Decameron’ (Palermo, 1969).
Getto, Giovanni, Vita di forme e forme di vita nel ‘Decameron’ (Turin, 1958).
Giacalone, Giuseppe, Boccaccio minore e maggiore (Rome, 1959).
Givens, Azzurra B., La dottrina d’amore nel Boccaccio (Messina and Florence, 1968).
Grabher, Carlo, Boccaccio (Turin, 1945).
Leone, Giuseppe, Johannes Utilitatum: Saggio sul ‘Decameron’ (second edition, Bologna, 1967).
Moravia, Alberto, L’uomo come fine e altri saggi (fifth edition, Milan, 1976).
Muscetta, Carlo, Boccaccio (Ban, 1972).
Padoan, Giorgio, II Boccaccio, le Muse, il Parnaso e l’Amo (Florence, 1978).
Russo, Luigi, Ritratti e disegni storici, serie III (Bari, 1951).
Sabatini, Francesco, Napoli angioina: Cultura e società (Naples, 1975).
Sapegno, Natalino, II Trecento (Milan, 1960).
Trasselli, C, Sicilia, Levante e Tunisia nei secoli XIV e XV (Trapani, 1952).
D BOOKS IN ENGLISH
Almansi, Guido, The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the ‘Decameron’ (London and Boston, 1975).
Auerbach, Erich R., Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, translated by W. R. Trask (Princeton, 1953). See in particular chapter 9, Frote Alberto.
Bergin, Thomas G., Boccaccio (New York, 1981).
Caporello-Szykman, Corradina, The Boccaccian Novella, The Creation and Waning of a Genre (New York, Bern, Frankfurt-am-Main and Paris, 1990).
Cottino-Jones, Marga, An Anatomy of Boccaccio’s Style (Naples, 1968).
Cottino-Jones, Marga, Order From Chaos: Social and Aesthetic Harmonies in Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’ (Washington DC, 1982).
Curtius, Ernst Robert, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, translated by W. R. Trask (Princeton, 1973).
Dombroski, Robert S. (editor), Critical Perspectives on the ‘Decameron’ (London, 1976).
Fisher, J. H. (editor), The Medieval Literature of Western Europe (New York, 1966).
Forni, Pier Massimo, Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’ (Philadelphia, 1996).
Hastings, Robert, Nature and Reason in the ‘Decameron’ (Manchester, 1975).
Hollander, Robert, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses (New York, 1977).
Huizinga, Johan, The Waning of the Middle Ages, translated by F. Hopman (Harmondsworth, 1955).
Kirkham, Victoria, The Sign of Reason in Boccaccio’s Fiction (Florence, 1993).
Lee, Arthur Collingwood, The ‘Decameron’: Its Sources and Analogues (reprint, New York, 1967) (London, 1909).
Marcus, Millicent Joy, An Allegory of Form: Literary Self-consciousness in the ‘Decameron’ (Saratoga, California, 1979).
Marino, Lucia, The ‘Decameron’ Cornice: Allusion, Allegory, and Iconology (Ravenna, 1979).
Mazzotta, Giuseppe, The World at Play in Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’ (Princeton, 1986).
Menocal, María Rosa, Writing in Dante’s Cult of Truth: from Borges to Boccaccio (London, 1991).
Ó Cuilleanáin, Cormac, Religion and the Clergy in Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’ (Rome, 1984).
Olson, G., Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London, 1982).
Potter, Joy Hambuechcn, Five Frames for the ‘Decameron’ (Princeton, 1982).
Scaglione, Aldo D., Nature and Love in the Late Middle Ages: an Essay on the Cultural Context of the ‘Decameron’ (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963).
Serafini-Sauli, Judith Powers, Giovanni Boccaccio (Boston, 1982).
Smarr, Janet Levarie, Boccaccio and Fiammetta: the Narrator as Lover (Urbana, Illinois, 1986).
Tournay, G. (editor), Boccaccio in Europe (Proceedings of the Boccaccio Conference, Louvain, December 1975) (Leiden, 1977).
Wallace, David, Giovanni Boccaccio: ‘Decameron’ (Cambridge, 1991).
Watson, Paul F., The Garden of Love in Tuscan Art of the Early Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1979).
Whit field, John Humphreys, The Barlow Lectures on Dante, 1959 (Cambridge, 1959).
E ARTICLES IN ENGLISH
Blackbourn, B. L., ‘The Eighth Story of the Tenth Day of Boccaccio’s Decameron. An Example of Rhetoric or a Rhetorical Example?’, Italian Quarterly, XXVII (1986), 5–13.
Cottino-Jones, Marga, ‘Magic and Superstition in Boccaccio’s Decameron’, Italian Quarterly (Spring, 1975), 5–32.
Durling, Robert M., ‘Boccaccio on Interpretation: Guido’s Escape (Decameron, VI, 9)’, in Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio: Studies in the Italian Trecento in Honor of Charles S. Singleton, edited by A. S. Bernardo and A. L. Pellegrini (Binghamton, New York, 1983), 273–304.
Hastings, R., ‘To Teach or not to Teach: the Moral Dimension of the Decameron Reconsidered’, Italian Studies, XLIV (1989), 19–40.
Kern, Edith G., ‘The Gardens in the Decameron Cornice’, PMLA, LXVI (June, 1951).
Kirkham, Victoria, ‘An Allegorically Tempered Decameron’, Itálica, 62, 1 (1985), 1–23.
Kirkham, Victoria, ‘Boccaccio’s Dedication to Women in Love’, in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, edited by A. Morrow, F. Superbi Gioffredi, P. Morselli and E. Borsook (2 vols.) (Florence, 1985). I, 333–43
Kirkpatrick, Robin, ‘Giovanni Boccaccio: the Decameron’, in Medieval Literature: The European Inheritance (New Polican Guide to English literature, Vol. 1, Part 2), edited by Boris Ford (Harmondsworth, 1983), 287–300.
McWilliam, G. H., ‘On Translating the Decameron’, in Essays in Honour of John Humphreys Whitfield, edited by H. C. Davis, D. G. Rees, J. M. Hatwell and G. W. Slowey (London, 1975), 71–83.
Marcus, Millicent Joy, ‘The Sweet New Style Reconsidered: a Gloss on the Tale of Cimone (Decameron, V, 1)’, Italian Quarterly, 81 (1980), 5–16.
Marcus, Millicent Joy, ‘Misogyny as Misreading: a Gloss on Decameron VIII, 7’, Stanford Italian Review, 4, 1 (1984), 23–40.
Thrall, W. F., ‘Cymbeline, Boccaccio, and the Wager Story in England’, Studies in Philology, XXVIII, October (1931), 107–19.
Usher, J., ‘Simona and Pasquino: “Cur moriatur homo cui salvia crescit in horto?”’, Modem Language Notes, 106, 1–14.
Usher, J., ‘Boccaccio’s “Ars moriendi” in the Decameron’, Modern Language Review, 81 (1986), 621–32.
Usher, J., ‘The Fortune of “Fortuna” in Salviati’s “rassettura” of the Decameron, in Renaissance and Other Studies: Essays Presented to Peter M. Brown, edited by Eileen D. Millar (Glasgow, 1988), 210–22.
Usher, J., ‘Rhetorical and Narrative Strategies in Boccaccio’s Translation of the Comcedia Lydiae’, Modern Language Review, 84, 2 (April 1989), 337–44.
Usher, J., ‘Frame and Novella Gardens in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Medium Aevum, 58, 2 (1989), 274–85.
Usher, J., ‘Frate Cipolla’s Ars praedicandi or a “récit du discours” in Boccaccio’, Modern Language Review, 88, 2 (April 1993), 321–36.
Watson, Paul F., ‘On Seeing Guido Cavalcanti and the Houses of the Dead’, Studi sul Boccaccio, XVIII (1989), 301–18.
F ARTICLES IN ITALIAN
Balduino, Armando, ‘Divagazioni sulla ballata di Mico da Siena (Decameron, X 7)’, Studi sul Boccaccio, 12 (1980), 47–69.
Barbi, Michelle, ‘II “sabato inglese” nell’antica Firenze’, Pan, III, 8 (1 agosto 1935), 598–602.
Carrai, Stefano, ‘Un musico del tardo Duecento (Mino d’Arezzo, in Nicole de’ Rossi e nel Boccaccio’, Studi sul Boccaccio, 12 (1980), 39–46.
Chiecchi, G., Review of F. Bruni: Boccaccio: L’invenzione delta letteratura mezzana, Lettere italiane, 43 (1991), 116–21.
Croce, Benedetto, ‘La novella di Andreuccio di Perugia’, in Storie e leggende napoletane (Bari, 1926).
Ferreri, R., ‘Rito battesimale e comparatico nelle novelle senesi della vii giornata’, Studi sul Boccaccio, 16 (1987), 307–14.
Grassi, C, ‘Di Lippo Topo presunto pittore’, Storia della letteratura italiana, 168 (1991), 271–3.
Levi, G. A., ‘Sconcezze quattrocentesche nel Trecento’, La Nuova Italia, IV (1933).
Mazzarino, A., ‘II basilico di Lisabetta’, Nuovi Annali della Facoltà di Magistero di Messina, II, (1984).
Pertile, L., ‘Dante, Boccaccio e l’intelligenza’, Italian Studies, 43 (1988), 60–74.
G OTHER RELEVANT WORKS
Anon., Gesta Romanorum: or, Entertaining Moral Stories, translated by the Rev. Charles Swan, revised and corrected by Wynnard Hooper (London, 1891). Swan’s translation was originally published in London in 1824.
The Panchatantra, translated from the Sanskrit by Arthur W. Ryder (Chicago, 1964).
Ambrose, Saint, Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel, translated by John J. Savage (New York, 1961).
Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, introduced and translated by John Jay Parry (reprint, New York, 1970) (New York, 1941).
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