Reading the Decameron from Boccaccio to Salviati A

READING THE DECAMERON FROM BOCCACCIO TO SALVIATI A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Daniel Thomas Tonozzi February 2010 © 2010 Daniel Thomas Tonozzi READING THE DECAMERON FROM BOCCACCIO TO SALVIATI Daniel Thomas Tonozzi, Ph.D. Cornell University 2010 My dissertation analyzes the assumptions and anxieties the Decameron, in complete and expurgated forms, reveals about the practice of reading, the category of reader, and the materiality of the text. I also consider stories from the Decameron as a dialogue among the narrators who discuss the responsibilities of readers and writers. My introduction sets up how I engage existing concepts of hermeneutics, reader-response theory, and imitation. In Chapter 1, I discuss the practice of reading in terms of humanist imitation. I privilege an appreciation and examination of method, highlighting two responsibilities that weigh on the Decameron’s readers: to recognize useful textual models and to execute those models in a way that balances their replication with innovation. In Chapter 2, I consider the Decameron’s assumptions about how readers judge useful models and discern opportunities for pleasure. I propose a reader who simultaneously acts as an individual agent and a member of a larger community. I identify two divergent models for communal participation that are marked by gender. In Chapter 3, I analyze the interventions of expurgators Vincenzo Borghini and Lionardo Salviati, illustrating how their editions manipulate the tensions inherent in any censored book between its status as literature and its mandate to represent and support a specific ideology. Salviati’s successful expurgation owes itself both to the way he justifies textual extractions in the terms of humanist discourse and to the way his edited pages serve as visual reminders of Church authority. Salviati’s edition highlights the central role the materiality of the text plays in its interpretation and circulation. In Chapter 4, I trace how certain narrators use their stories to create a dialogue about effective strategies for communication and interpretation. Their dialogue emphasizes the reader’s responsibility to recognize the abundance of meaning available in a text and the writer’s capacity to manage that abundance. This method teases out a tension in the Decameron between preservation and innovation in regards to hermeneutic ideals, a tension central to understanding the Decameron’s enigmatic final tale and the brigata’s return to Florence. My conclusion sets up further discussions prompted by my work. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Daniel Tonozzi began his scholarly career in the second-floor classrooms of his mother and of Mrs. Kathy Martin at St. Bede Academy in Peru, Illinois. He moved on to study history, Italian literature, and music at the University of Notre Dame, where he also worked with Christian Dupont in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections of Hesburgh Library. Eager to explore the connections between his various interests and studies, Tonozzi came to Cornell University immediately following the completion of his undergraduate degree. iii To my family: My parents, my sisters, and my brother iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would, first of all, like to thank the members of my Special Committee: Marilyn Migiel, William J. Kennedy, Timothy Campbell, and Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg. Marilyn Migiel and William J. Kennedy are responsible for having identified the numerous instances where changes needed to be made in my writing. Gratitude also goes to Tim Campbell and Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg for participating in my dissertation’s defense even through abroad in Italy at the time. Beyond the assistance of my Special Committee, I greatly benefited from the attention and assistance of the entire faculty of the Department of Romance Studies during my years at Cornell. Special mention goes to Richard Klein, Maria-Antonia Garcès, and Kathleen Perry Long for reading and offering specific comments on individual chapters. Zygmunt Baranski, my supervisor while I was an exchange student at Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge, guided the research and early writing that led to my chapter on the sixteenth- century censored editions. My thanks as well goes to the Cornell University Graduate School for providing a travel grant for additional research for that chapter and to the staff of the British Library for their assistance in doing that research. The Italian Language Lecturers – Michela Baraldi, Flaminia Cervesi, Kora Bättig von Wittelsbach, and Ti Alkire – and my teaching colleagues – Peggy Renwick and Elisabeth Fay – helped me to develop language skills and pedagogical techniques that not only influenced the work included here but will continue to serve me for years to come. v Distinct gratitude goes to my mentor and friend Pina Swenson. Pina’s unwavering support and encouragement – not to mention her critical eye on these pages – played no small role in the completion of this project. I was fortunate enough to enjoy many strong and beneficial friendships while working at Cornell University. The exceptional dedication of Cory Browning and Henry Berlin, who read and revised my work with me, here merits special attention. I am also thankful to Kathleen Martin for helping me format my pages for submission. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the influence and assistance of my family: my parents, Thomas A. and Mary Jane Tonozzi, and my siblings Maria, Caroline, Angela, and Nicholas. They have inspired and shaped my work and my words as no one else has, and I am so grateful. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch………………………………………………………………iii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………..iv Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………….…v Introduction…………………………………………………………………………1 I: Anything the Decameron Can Do…………………………………………..14 II: I, We, and the Decameron Makes Three…….……………………….….69 III: Editors and Expurgators: Preserving and Destroying the Decameron after the Council of Trent….…………………………………………………115 IV: Reading, Writing, and Responsibility………………………………….167 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….206 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..214 vii INTRODUCTION While an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame, I worked with Dr. Christian Dupont in the Hesburgh Library Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts. The thrill I found working with incunabula editions of Dante’s Divina commedia and rummaging through collections of sixteenth-century papal correspondence prompted me to pursue graduate studies in Italian Literature. It comes as no surprise, then, that once at Cornell University, my dissertation project began with a visit to the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of Kroch Library. As part of a Decameron seminar, the class viewed antique and illustrated editions of Boccaccio’s stories at the Kroch Library. One of the volumes on display was a 1582 expurgated version of the Decameron in which the censor, Lionardo Salviati, rendered the story of Alibech and Rustico (Decameron 3.10) utterly incomprehensible. Hardly more than two words succeeded each other before little asterisks interrupted them. Salviati’s remarkable treatment of the Decameron prompted a seminar paper that also introduced me to the 1582 edition’s Florentine predecessor, an expurgated Decameron completed in 1573 by a group of scholars known as I Deputati. Both Salviati and the Deputati replace the priests, monks, and nuns that misbehave in the original Decameron – breaking their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience – with teachers, notaries, and widows. Making such changes, together with others, saved the Decameron from complete prohibition in era of the Index of Prohibited Books. An 1 analysis of these expurgated editions became the basis for Chapter Three of this dissertation. As studying the expurgated Decameron became more central to my work, my family in Illinois, wondering how I was spending my days in Upstate New York, took an interest in Boccaccio’s writings. Acquainting himself with the text and a bit of its circulation history, my father became a bit concerned. After a reunion with a friend of his from law school, my father found out that several stories from the Decameron had appeared in Playboy. I was, at the time, unaware of this fact, which pleased my father, first of all because he had offered a new bit of information on my topic, and secondly, no doubt, because it meant that I was ignorant of the illustrations that Playboy used to accompany these tales. I did not remain ignorant for long, however, because I soon found myself again in the Kroch Library reading room, this time requesting Playboy’s first issues from the 1950s. Starting with its premiere in December of 1953, Playboy included a monthly column called “Ribald Classics” that featured “a new translation of one of the choicest stories from Boccaccio’s bawdy classic.”1 In March of 1954, letters to the editor start to applaud the magazine for including these tales. One reader, apparently already familiar with Boccaccio’s stories, congratulates Playboy for exercising discretion and choosing only the best parts of the long work: “Some of the Decameron’s stories are boring, but the ones you choose are really laugh producing.”2 Another 1 Giovanni Boccaccio, “A Humorous Tale of Adultery,” trans. Norman Holland, Playboy, December 1953: 39-40. 2 “Letter to the editor,” Playboy, June 1954: 28. 2 reader notes that “tales from the Decameron…are

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