Law and Mimesis in Boccaccio's Decameron: Realism on Trial

ISBN-13: 9781316512746 / Angielski

Justin Steinberg

Opis

Justin Steinberg's field-defining work on Boccaccio's Decameron shows how historical changes in the prosecution of crime profoundly influenced literary realism. Arguing that the Decameron's trials respond to a crisis in verisimilitude, the book engages scholars and students of medieval and early modern studies, literary theory and legal history.

Recenzje

'This brilliant, revisionary account of the history of Western mimesis lays aside what we have 'long known' about verisimilitude, realism, and law in Boccaccio (and Dante) in favor of original research, and original thought. It impacts understanding not only of 'the rise of the novel,' but also our current consumption of procedural drama, suspended between 'the poetics of likelihood' (in TV courtroom argumentations) and the hard fact of the smoking gun. Written open-handedly, and a joy to read, this book grounded in historical inquiry speaks to issues of prime importance in our own troubled, story-driven times. Recommended.' David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. The Novella on trial; 2. The artist and the Police; 3. The widow and the sovereign; 4. Torture and the sense of an ending; 5. Another way of possessing; 6. The author on trial.