English Boccaccio

Guyda Armstrong is a senior lecturer in Italian in the School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures at the University of Manchester.

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsNote on Translation and TranscriptionIntroduction “Here begynneth the book callyd J. Bochas”: The De casibus virorum illustrium between Italy and England The Production Context of Boccaccio’s De casibus virorum illustrium (1360–1373)Form and Functions of the De casibus’s Internal StructuresThe Production Context of Laurent de Premierfait’s Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes (1400–1409)The Production Context of John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (1431–1439)Conclusion The De mulieribus claris in English Translation, 1440–1550 00 The Production Context of Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (1361–1375)The Middle English Translation of the De mulieribus claris (c. 1440–1460)Henry Parker, Lord Morley’s Of the Ryghte Renoumyde Ladies (c. 1543)Conclusion Boccaccio in Print in the Sixteenth Century European Romance and the French Sending CultureThe 1560s: Pleasant Reading (The Palace of Pleasure and A Pleasaunt Disport of Diuers Noble Personages)The 1580s: Amorous Fiammetta The 1590s: A Famous Tragicall Discourse of Two Lovers, Affrican and Mensola Conclusion “One Hundred Ingenious Novels”: Refashioning the Decameron, 1620–1930 The Seventeenth Century: The Translatio PrincepsThe Eighteenth Century: Excision and RestorationThe Nineteenth Century: Through the Peephole Establishing Canonicity: Dubois’s 1804 EditionThe 1820s: Griffin’s Serial Decameron and Sharp’s DecameronMid-century Editions and Popular Readerships: Daly, Bohn, and BlanchardA Limited Licentiousness: John Payne’s TranslationThe 1890s: Eroticism and Display The Twentieth Century: A Multitude of Decamerons The Decameron in 1930 Conclusion The Minor Works in the Nineteenth Century: Dante and Chaucer Neo-medievalism, Dante, and ChaucerBoccaccio and the Academy: The Case of the TrattatelloConclusion The Early Twentieth-Century Recovery of the Minor Works The Author as Lover: The 1907 FiammettaThe Latin Boccaccio Rediscovered: Olympia and the GenealogiaTwo American Filostratos of the 1920sThe Republication of the Historic English Translations The Fall of PrincesThe De mulieribus clarisThe FiammettaThe Thirteen Questions Conclusion ConclusionBibliographyIndex

‘Some big books are merely big; this one is monumental… This is a masterly contribution not only to Boccaccio scholarship but also to book history, translation studies, reception theory and the understanding of cultural relationships between English-speaking world and Italy. Essential. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.’ - S. Botterill (Choice Magazine; vol 51:07:14) ‘This beautifully produced, referenced and indexed volume covers an impressive range from the manuscript tradition to the popular book trade.’- Anne O'Connor (Translation Studies September 2014) ‘Spanning seven centuries of editorial history, Armstrong’s volume offers an invaluable contribution to students and teachers of Boccaccio, whether Italianists or Anglists, as well as to cultural and print historians.’- Marina Della Putta Johnston (Modern Language Quarterly vol 110:01:2015) ‘A monumental work that bridges synchronic and diachronic perspectives, manuscripts and print cultures, medieval and early modern studies, Italian studies, pre-modern and modern literary studies… I shall be hanging very close to my personal, unique, hard copy, as I know I will be coming back to it again and again.’- Warren Boutcher (Italian Studies vol69:03:2014) ‘What emerges from this ambitious work, aside from admiration for Armstrong’s scholarship and translation skills is a new vision of Boccaccio’s relation to English literature.’- Paul Budra (University of Toronto Quarterly vol 84:03:2015) ‘The English Boccaccio is a splendid example of what can be done with the biography of a text or, in this case, of a corpus of texts…. This book stands already as a model for future scholarship on the reception, remediation, and translation of medieval authors and texts.’- Yuri Cowan (SHARP News vol 25:01:2016)