Italian Bookshelf (download as PDF) - Ibiblio

448 “Italian Bookshelf.” Annali d’italianistica 25 (2007)
nel suo contenuto, nel suo lessico e nella sua struttura logica. Ezra Pound riscopre la
poesia di Cavalcanti e la rivaluta sotto una luce nuova, dove gli elementi della cultura
medievale risultano molto vicini a quelli presenti nel dibattito intellettuale del suo tempo.
Pound ammira le scelte lingustiche di Cavalcanti individuando nelle sue metafore
significati profondi basati sulla fisica e legati ad una forma di linguaggio ideogrammatico
occidentale.
L’Ardizzone col suo lavoro e la sua ricerca offre un notevole contributo alla
comprensione della poesia e del pensiero filosofico medievale. Il suo libro è frutto di un
elaborato esame critico della poesia di Cavalcanti e di un attento studio analitico delle
filosofie medievali. A lei si deve il merito di aver presentato un aspetto meno conosciuto
del Cavalcanti cioè quello di una filosofia naturale e di una logica che nelle canzoni
esprime il legame tra fisica e logica da cui sarebbe poi nata la scienza moderna.
Nicla Riverso, University of Washington
Elissa B. Weaver, ed. The Decameron First Day in Perspective. Vol. 1 Lectura
Boccaccii series. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2004. Pp. 270.
This collection, sponsored by the American Boccaccio Association, comprises twelve
interesting essays written in large measure by some of the most noteworthy Boccaccio
scholars of North American universities. Unlike the slightly longer Lecturae Boccaccii
Turicensis (edited by Picone and Mesirca and also published in 2004), this first volume
of the University of Toronto Press’s new Lectura Boccaccii series aims to provide
readings of the Decameron based on the traditional Lectura Dantis format, spread out
over ten volumes, one for each Day.
Robert Hollander’s opening essay on the significant parallelisms between the
Decameron’s proem and Ovid’s Remedia amoris is a fitting prelude to a collection that
means to venture into some insufficiently explored, yet earnestly valuable aspects of
Boccaccio’s masterpiece. Hollander convincingly argues for seeing the proem as grounds
for believing the Decameron, a “descendant” of the Remedia, to have “appetite” ― rather
than Dantean moralization ― as its major premise, whether that appetite is “corrected” or
“compassionately studied” (23).
Thomas Stillinger’s lectura of the Decameron’s introduction takes the notion of
“title” as its starting point and then goes on intriguingly to examine not only the
Decameron’s title and subtitle as metonymy and metaphor, but also the pseudonyms of
the members of the brigata and the meaning contained in rubrics. The introduction, then,
may be seen as “a heading that stands in marked contrast to the text that it heads” (49)
and that “allows Boccaccio to move beyond rhetorical self-critique” (49).
The reading of the Decameron’s first tale is presented by Franco Fido who begins
with an overview of the novella’s critical history. Drawing insights from the juxtaposition
of Ciappelletto with Frate Cipolla, Martellino and Brunetto Latini, Fido shows that,
despite (or on account of) the absence of an “immutable frame of reference” (74)
apparently required by religious themes, Boccaccio creates a fiction that meaningfully
portrays the real power of words, proved through experience.
Marga Cottino-Jones takes up the tale of Abraham the Jew. Minimizing the
importance of previous source studies, she concludes that the real key to unlocking
Boccaccio’s intentions here is to be found in the tales that frame it, I.1 and I.3. Whereas
“mercantile logic” leads Ciappelletto to turn truth into believable falsehoods, it serves