Eclogues by Giovanni Boccaccio (review)

REVIEWS GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. Eclogues. Trans. Janet Levarie Smarr. Garland Library of Medieval Literature, Series A, vol. 11. New York and London: Garland, 1987. Pp. lxxii, 263. $47.00. Vittorio Zaccaria published a new edition ofDe muiieribus clans in 1967, and (with PierGiorgio Ricci) of De casibus in 1983, greatly facilitating access to the Latin Boccaccio. Now English readers will also welcomeJanet Smarr's translation ofBoccaccio's entire Bucoiicum carmen. Heretofore we have had only Israel Gollancz's English version of Eclogue 14, "Olympia" (London, 1913). The sixteen Latin pastorals are unique among Boccaccio's works for having been composed over many-probably more than thirty-years, then arranged and revised during the later 1360s or early 1370s, near the end of his career. Very influential in the Renaissance, they survive in numerous manuscript copies and early editions as well as a much-emended autograph manuscript from Boccaccio's personal library. Boccaccio wrote a prose introduction to the pastorals in or around 1374, addressedto Martino da Signa, which contains observations on their Virgilian and Petrarchan models as well as notes on their principal allusions. The first two poems are love complaints, with the familiar charges of celestial injustice,calls forsudden death, andthe author's playfulmixing of terms for "venerie." The next seven poems form a sequence that, like Virgil'sfirst and fourth eclogues, brings into the pastoral landscape echoes ofgreat urban events, in this case the internecine strife that threatenedthe Guelph monarchy in Naples after 1343, and they contain some ofBoccac­ cio's most explicit political statements. The later poems extend that poetic landscape well beyond the conventional limits of pastoral, to include the Dantean underworldand, most notably in Olympia, a striking analogue to the Middle English Pearl, the celestial Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. The Eclogues are summed up and ended in the remarkable envoy poem "The Messenger," which presents the collection to Boccaccio's friend Donato degli Albanzani. Smarr's volume has a short "Life of the Author," a substantial critical introduction, and notes on each Eclogue, forging prudently beyond Boc­ caccio's general remarks in the letter of 1374 to give a largely complete account ofthe allegory and to explicate the mythological allusions. In both areas the author has used earlier studies with prudence and has made significant contributions of her own. I missed an equally thorough treat­ ment of lexical matters. Boccaccio's Latin usage is largely tetra incognita, gloomy in the absence ofa concordance. Here we are especially in need of 183 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER enlightenment concerning his variations on the classical pastoral vocabu­ lary.For example, does Boccaccio use terms such aspueri, which can mean "slave" in Virgil's Eclogues, with refererrce to the agricultural economy he knew in Italy or that of hisliterarymodel? And if the former, then how does hedistinguish the social station of the inhabitants of hiscountryside:pueri, ministri, pastores, bubulci, and subulci? The Latin texts are reprinted from the edition of Massera (Bari, 192 8), and just the poetic texts at that.There are none of the interesting variants from Boccaccio's autograph and no Latin text of Boccaccio's letter to Mar­ tino da Signa (with only a partial translation, divided among the notes on the separate poems).The texts here are not framed by Boccaccio's titles and colophon. These appear in the autograph, identifying the speaking per­ sonae in each eclogue and giving each eclogue a name; the first title and the concluding colophon contain Boccaccio's dedication to Donato degli Albanzani. Smarr chose to cast the English translations in unrhymed pentameter verse, and although she would also stay "as close as possible to the Latin text" (p.lxxi), the demands of her meter cause some simplification of verbal material, as, for example, when these conventional adjectives are implied rather than stated: ( 3.5 9: niveos. ..agnos= "lambs"; 15.6 9: atrol ...san­ guine taun·= "bull's blood") or force some expansion, especially in short speeches.Smooth verse and generally idiomatic diction make these transla­ tions a pleasure to read, but in exchange for their vigorous, Boccaccio-like style, they sometimes lose the precise construction of Boccaccio's word or phrase.I note especially these instances...