articles - Boccaccio by Victoria Kirkham
Studi sul Boccaccio, vol. 50, 2022
Medieval and Renaissance journeys into the visionary sphere bring spiritual renewal to their prot... more Medieval and Renaissance journeys into the visionary sphere bring spiritual renewal to their protagonists, typically with help from a guide symbolizing Reason, personified in Western literature more often than any other human faculty and in multiform guises: Reason’s goal, Truth; its ally, Prudence; its sibling, Wisdom; its lover, Philosophy. Reason’s incarnations may be divine or human, ghostly or living, imaginary or historical, youthful or aged, powerful or fallible, male or female. The last polarity rests on a paradox at the meeting point of poetry and philosophy, precisely where Boccaccio practiced his craft. The noun ratio and its Romance derivatives are feminine, but in Western epistemology, from Plato and Aristotle onward, rationality is firmly masculine, an ordering power that dwells in the citadel of the body to dominate the lower forces associated with femaleness--chaos, materiality, sensuality. How do the Amorosa visione, its antecedents, and descendants cast light on the curious instability of Reason in Poetry? And why should a power metaphysically male be so often symbolized in figures of the female sex?
Bibliotheca Dantesca, 2020
WRONG ARTICLE WAS IN THIS SLOT: NOW CORRECTED. 11-4-23.
Boccaccio tells us little about the Dec... more WRONG ARTICLE WAS IN THIS SLOT: NOW CORRECTED. 11-4-23.
Boccaccio tells us little about the Decameron frame narrators except their pseudonyms and ages. Eldest of the seven ladies, Pampinea is in her twenty-eighth year, while the youngest is 18. The three men, ready to serve female reliance on male guidance, are young, but none is under 25. Commentators, caught up by riddles of nomenclature, have all but ignored the numerals. Spelled out so carefully, 28th-18 and 25 tease our curiosity. Why should the Author express his ladies’ ages as a ten-year span, while for the gentlemen a single anchoring number suffices? If the seven women allude to the Virtues, as I have argued, and Pampinea chief among them personifies Prudence, what logic connects her to 28? And if the men point to the tricameral soul, in which Reason (Panfilo) controls the lower appetites of wrath (Filostrato) and lust (Dioneo), why does it matter that all three be over 25? Why is Pampinea, solicitous of orderly activity and happiness, the one to suggest a daily rotation of rulers in their rustic sojourn? Answers lie in medieval protocols for express-ing age and its peak on the parabola of human life, lore that Boccaccio well knew. His own practices reflect fascination with Pythagorean numerology, immersion in Aristotle as transmitted by Aquinas, and a man trained in the law whose poetic North Star was Dante. The ages of the seven women and three men in the brigata, incidental details to modern readers, stand tall from a me-dieval outlook. They are sign posts in a philosophical system that perfects the novella portante (master novella) as an ideal allegorical realm, hovering in a hierarchical relationship over the tales it carries.
Archivio Novellistico Italiano (ArNoVit), 2016
Monograph on three Italian short story writers in the tradition of Boccaccio and their first Engl... more Monograph on three Italian short story writers in the tradition of Boccaccio and their first English translations, by the learned and witty Victorian Italophile William George Waters, a country gentleman who made his home in London as a scholar of leisure.
Paper from Boccaccio letterato, proceedings of the 2013 conference on Boccaccio in Florence and C... more Paper from Boccaccio letterato, proceedings of the 2013 conference on Boccaccio in Florence and Certaldo. An essay on Boccaccio's portraits from the Trecento to 1600 in the context of the emergence of the Three Crowns (from an older canon defined by Filippo Villani of 5 poets) as the classic Italian canon.
This essay is a reading of Decameron I,8.
Cf. also the version published in Italy, "A Pedigree f... more This essay is a reading of Decameron I,8.
Cf. also the version published in Italy, "A Pedigree for Courtesy, or, How Dante's Purser Cured a Miser (Decameron I,8)," Studi sul Boccaccio 25 (1997): 213-38.
Article in Autori e lettori di Boccaccio. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Certaldo (20-22 set... more Article in Autori e lettori di Boccaccio. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Certaldo (20-22 settembre 2001), edited by Michelangelo Picone, 377-86. Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 2002.
Article in Gli Zibaldoni di Boccaccio: memoria, scrittura, riscrittura. Atti del Seminario intern... more Article in Gli Zibaldoni di Boccaccio: memoria, scrittura, riscrittura. Atti del Seminario internazionale di Firenze-Certaldo (26-28 aprile 1996). Edited by Michelangelo Picone and Claude Cazalé Bérard. Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 1998, pp. 455-68.
This essay traces the genealogy of the wine label image for Boccaccio Chianti, marketed in late 1... more This essay traces the genealogy of the wine label image for Boccaccio Chianti, marketed in late 1980s in S Lunga supermarkets. Its sources are the poster for the 1913 Boccaccio centennial, in turn derived from Henry Holiday's painting of Dante and Beatrice, dependent on Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, all ultimately derived from Dante's Vita Nuova 3.
Penntip, the Penn Text-Image Project to create a database of images centermg around the works of ... more Penntip, the Penn Text-Image Project to create a database of images centermg around the works of Giovanni Boccaccio, has completed its first phase of investigation. Penntip was conceived in 1988 by Victoria Kirkham and Ivy Corfis of the Department of Romance Languages at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. It has proceeding in conjunction with Penn Boccaccio, a continuing team project directed by Kirkham that will computer-link full texts of Boccaccio's works with their Renaissance illustrations.
Italica, 1985
Italica 82.1 (Spring, 1985): 1-23. Available in JStor
(Decameron III,10), The Romanic Review 72.1 (Jan., 1981): 79-93.
Metropolitan Museum Journal, 1975
Metropolitan Museum Journal 10 (1975): 35-50. Available in JStor
MLN, 1974
Essay on the Love Debate in the Filocolo. MLN 89.1 (1974): 47-59
articles - Dante by Victoria Kirkham
Supplement to MLN, Italian Issue 127.1 , 2012
Uploads
articles - Boccaccio by Victoria Kirkham
Boccaccio tells us little about the Decameron frame narrators except their pseudonyms and ages. Eldest of the seven ladies, Pampinea is in her twenty-eighth year, while the youngest is 18. The three men, ready to serve female reliance on male guidance, are young, but none is under 25. Commentators, caught up by riddles of nomenclature, have all but ignored the numerals. Spelled out so carefully, 28th-18 and 25 tease our curiosity. Why should the Author express his ladies’ ages as a ten-year span, while for the gentlemen a single anchoring number suffices? If the seven women allude to the Virtues, as I have argued, and Pampinea chief among them personifies Prudence, what logic connects her to 28? And if the men point to the tricameral soul, in which Reason (Panfilo) controls the lower appetites of wrath (Filostrato) and lust (Dioneo), why does it matter that all three be over 25? Why is Pampinea, solicitous of orderly activity and happiness, the one to suggest a daily rotation of rulers in their rustic sojourn? Answers lie in medieval protocols for express-ing age and its peak on the parabola of human life, lore that Boccaccio well knew. His own practices reflect fascination with Pythagorean numerology, immersion in Aristotle as transmitted by Aquinas, and a man trained in the law whose poetic North Star was Dante. The ages of the seven women and three men in the brigata, incidental details to modern readers, stand tall from a me-dieval outlook. They are sign posts in a philosophical system that perfects the novella portante (master novella) as an ideal allegorical realm, hovering in a hierarchical relationship over the tales it carries.
Cf. also the version published in Italy, "A Pedigree for Courtesy, or, How Dante's Purser Cured a Miser (Decameron I,8)," Studi sul Boccaccio 25 (1997): 213-38.
articles - Dante by Victoria Kirkham
Boccaccio tells us little about the Decameron frame narrators except their pseudonyms and ages. Eldest of the seven ladies, Pampinea is in her twenty-eighth year, while the youngest is 18. The three men, ready to serve female reliance on male guidance, are young, but none is under 25. Commentators, caught up by riddles of nomenclature, have all but ignored the numerals. Spelled out so carefully, 28th-18 and 25 tease our curiosity. Why should the Author express his ladies’ ages as a ten-year span, while for the gentlemen a single anchoring number suffices? If the seven women allude to the Virtues, as I have argued, and Pampinea chief among them personifies Prudence, what logic connects her to 28? And if the men point to the tricameral soul, in which Reason (Panfilo) controls the lower appetites of wrath (Filostrato) and lust (Dioneo), why does it matter that all three be over 25? Why is Pampinea, solicitous of orderly activity and happiness, the one to suggest a daily rotation of rulers in their rustic sojourn? Answers lie in medieval protocols for express-ing age and its peak on the parabola of human life, lore that Boccaccio well knew. His own practices reflect fascination with Pythagorean numerology, immersion in Aristotle as transmitted by Aquinas, and a man trained in the law whose poetic North Star was Dante. The ages of the seven women and three men in the brigata, incidental details to modern readers, stand tall from a me-dieval outlook. They are sign posts in a philosophical system that perfects the novella portante (master novella) as an ideal allegorical realm, hovering in a hierarchical relationship over the tales it carries.
Cf. also the version published in Italy, "A Pedigree for Courtesy, or, How Dante's Purser Cured a Miser (Decameron I,8)," Studi sul Boccaccio 25 (1997): 213-38.
In Letteratura italiana e arti figurative. Atti del XII Convegno dell'Associazione Internazionale per gli Studi di Lingua e Letteratura Italiana. Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, 6-10 maggio, 1985, ed. Antonio Franceschetti, 3 vols. 1:229-36. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1988.
“Laura Battiferri (anticamente Battiferra), Il primo libro dell’opere toscane di M. Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati, alla illustrissima, ed eccellentissima signora, la duchessa di Fiorenza, e di Siena, in Firenze: appresso i Giunti, 1560.” Catalog entry for exhibit curated by Bruce Edelstein and Valentina Conticelli, Eleonora di Toledo e l’invenzione della corte dei Medici di Firenze, Florence, Le Gallerie degli Uffizi / Palazzo Pitti / Tesoro dei Granducati, 7 febbraio – 14 maggio 2023. Livorno: Sillabe, no. 99, pp. 392-93.
Splendidly illustrated and published at the renowned presses of Aldus Manutius in 1499, the Hypnerotomachia Polifili remains eccentric to literary canons. By a “relaxed” Venetian monk, the book is in an artificial, brain-numbing idiolect and ironically fuses the very classics from whose company history has banished it. This essay situates Polifilo’s love story in an encyclopedic classical and medieval heritage ranging up to the great Trecento trio Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Cast as a dream vision, with the author’s name concealed in an old-fashioned acrostic, these curious pages are cultural anachronism, a cul-de-sac soon bypassed by Ariosto’s enormously popular Orlando furioso, mainstream renewals of Boccaccio’s seductive fiction, and the Cinquecento cult of Petrarchismo.
"Poetic Ideals of Love and Beauty," in Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's "Ginevra de' Benci" and Renaissance Portraits of Women," edited by David Alan Brown, 48-60. Washington and Princeton: National Gallery of Art and Princeton University Press, 2001.
Reviewed:
Sixteenth Century Journal, by Andrea G. Pearson, 33.4 (Winter, 2002): 1191-92.
Women’s Art Journal, by Lilian H. Zirpolo, 24.1 (Spring-Summer, 2003): 34-36.
Renaissance Quarterly, by Caroline Springer, 56.2 (Summer, 2003): 475-77.
Sixteenth Century Journal (review of paperback edition), by Sara Nair James, 35.3 (Fall, 2004): 923-24.
Full catalog available online at:
http://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/virtue-and-beauty.pdf
For an earlier version of material in the Introduction, see my article "Numerology and Allegory in Boccaccio's Caccia di Diana," Traditio 34 (1978): 303-29. Available online at JStor.
Some of the reviews (available online at JStor or Project Muse):
Renaissance Quarterly, by Mauda Bregoli-Russo, 55.4 (2002): 1380-82.
Italica, by Janet Smarr, 80.1 (2003): 91-92.
Speculum, by Marga Cottino-Jones, 79.4 (2004): 1107-1108.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Roberta Morosini, 76 (2004): 403-6.
Illustrated.
A chapter by a different author on each work by Boccaccio with critical bibliography and analysis. Available from University of Chicago Press. Parts of it are online.
The book is available from Olschki.