Adventures in Speech
eBook - PDF

Adventures in Speech

Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio's "Decameron"

  1. 176 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Adventures in Speech

Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio's "Decameron"

About this book

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1996The Decameron is a narrative account of a situation in which narration takes place-a collection of one hundred stories set within a larger story. As a group of young men and women fleeing the plague trade stories to pass the time of crisis, storytelling occurs in a social context that allows for comment upon the tales by the tellers themselves, in a setting that elicits one story in return for another.In his close and original analysis, Pier Massimo Forni uses the notion of rhetoric as a guiding principle for a critical assessment of the Decameron. He explores the discursive tools with which the narrators connect the contents of their stories to their audience's environment, and goes on to argue that the book is significantly marked by Boccaccio's habit of exploring the narrative potential of rhetorical forms.By showing how the Decameron marks a new stage in the development of vernacular realism, Forni also charts a new course in Boccaccio criticism. Viewing the cultural and rhetorical context of the medieval masterpiece from a fresh perspective, he offers intriguing insights into the functioning of Boccaccio's narrative. Adventures in Speech maps the cognitive poetic processes that rule the complex authorial network of relationships involving speech, event, received culture, and narrative objects.

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Yes, you can access Adventures in Speech by Pier Massimo Forni in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Content
  2. Preface
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Part I. The Rhetoric of Selection and Response
  5. Chapter 1: Configurations of Discourse
  6. Chapter 2: Pleasure and Response
  7. Part II. The Rhetoric of Beginnings
  8. Chapter 3: Realism and the Needs of the Story
  9. Part III. Rhetoric and Imagination
  10. Chapter 4: The Poetics of Realization
  11. Chapter 5: Rhetoric and Narration in the Story of Zima
  12. Afterword
  13. Appendix: Horror of Incest and Seduction of Literature in Boccaccio’s Decameron
  14. Notes
  15. Works Consulted
  16. Index