Visualizing Boccaccio: Studies on Illustrations of the Decameron, from Giotto to Pasolini

Description

Originally published in 1997, Visualizing Boccaccio represents an intriguing approach to the interpretation of Boccaccio's classic book of erotic tales, The Decameron. Using literary, critical, psychoanalytic, and film theories, Jill Ricketts offers a feminist critique of these stories, exposing tensions generated by sexual difference that motivate privilege and investigating the possibilities of change in power relations associated with that privilege. In a comparison of selected tales from The Decameron with works by Cimabue and Giotto, fifteenth-century manuscript illumination, a series of paintings by Botticelli, and Pier Paolo Pasolini's cinematic interpretation of the tales, Ricketts also demonstrates how the juxtaposition of verbal and visual renditions permit new interpretation of each of these works.

"...a book rich in enlightening analysis of visual detail and eager to assess the symbolic weight of such intangibles as color and form..." Choice "Ricketts has set out to write an ambitious book, covering some six centuries and a variety of literary and visual forms. Its topic is important and its approach is potentially illuminating." Envoi ...very insightful analysis, especially of the visual art, which ranges from the paintings of Giotto and Bruegel and some anonymous fifteenth-century French manuscript illustrations to Pasolini's film, Decamerone." Studies in Iconography "As rich and multi-faceted as the works of Boccaccio are, it is not surprising that they have been the impetus for hundreds of studies over several centuries." MANUSCRIPTA Vol 42 1998 Historical Review Dec 2001