Adventures in Speech

by Pier Massimo Forni

• ISBN13: 9780812233384
• ISBN10: 0812233387
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2016-11-11
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Summary

The 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. Puzzling narrative segments and stories make new sense once they are understood to dramatize or enact metaphors and other figures of speech.

Author Biography

Pier Massimo Forni is Professor of Italian Studies at The Johns Hopkins University.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
The Rhetoric Of Selection And Response	p. xv
Configurations of Discourse	p. 1
Pleasure and Response	p. 29
The Rhetoric Of Beginnings	p. 41
Realism and the Needs of the Story	p. 43
Rhetoric And Imagination	p. 55
The Poetics of Realization	p. 57
Rhetoric and Narration in the Story of Zima	p. 89
Afterword	p. 113
Appendix: Horror of Incest and Seduction of Literature in Boccaccio's Decameron	p. 115
Notes	p. 129
Works Consulted	p. 141
Index	p. 153
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