Famous Women by Giovanni Boccaccio (review)

humanities 377 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 gauge the dialectical interplay between the fiction of oral poetry and the visual/readerly quality of the poetic text. Such an interplay (the economy of which the pilgrim=s encounter with Casella retrieves in the form of nostalgia for a time when the two modes went hand in hand) depends on a premise that effectively organizes the differences and oscillations between >oral= and written poetry. The conceptual import of such an interplay was grasped by St Augustine , who in his Confessions describes how, on entering Ambrose=s study in Milan, he sees the bishop engaged in silent reading. The experience is tied to Augustine=s discovery of interiority and subjectivity, which is not at all the individualism of the modern epoch but a turning inward. In reading rather than in listening, words are rendered entirely accessible to the individual self-consciousness. At the same time, listening opens the way to thinking about the self as communal as well as about the discursive or oral origins of culture. (GIUSEPPE MAZZOTTA) Giovanni Boccaccio. Famous Women. Translated and edited by Virginia Brown Harvard University Press. xxv, 530. US $29.95 This is the first offering in the I Tatti Renaissance Library series by Harvard University Press, which presents finely edited Latin texts with a facing modern English translation designed to appeal to the non-specialist reader. The text used in this volume is based on the edition of Vittorio Zaccaria, whose Italian translation is graciously acknowledged by Brown as a source of insight into Boccaccio=s often difficult Latin. Virginia Brown is best known as a paleographer, especially for her pioneering yet comprehensive work on the production and dissemination of Beneventan manuscripts. The technical aspects of the present volume B the careful annotation of departures from Zaccaria=s edition, the complete (to my eye) lack of typographical errors, the judiciously chosen bibliography B all attest to the meticulous attention to detail characteristic of the best paleographers. The translation is smooth and lucid, suitable for the specialist and appealing to the novice reader. Boccaccio=s De claris mulieribus, a compendium of famous women, is one of the central works of the early humanist movement in northern Italy. Its often ornate Latin syntax attests to the classicizing influence of Petrarch, who is credited (or blamed) for leading Boccaccio away from the >vulgar= works of his youthful prime, such as the Decameron. While the work is described as a >Renaissance= text for the purposes of the I Tatti series, De claris mulieribus was a widely disseminated work of the medieval tradition, translated into Old French by Laurent de Premierfait and subsequently into Middle English by John Lydgate. Chaucer was also familiar with the work, incorporating parts of it into his >Monk=s Tale= and Legend of Good Women, 378 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 and (in the translation of Premierfait) Boccaccio=s compendium was a strong influence on the work of Christine de Pizan. De claris mulieribus, in Brown=s fine translation, would make an excellent addition to courses centred on the changing image of women in literature, or on the (often contested) transition from >medieval= to >Renaissance= modes of thought. In a curious sense, the extraordinary virtue of the book B its combination of well-edited text and fluent translation B creates a problem as well. Because these volumes are intended for use by non-specialists, the translation does not correspond to the Latin text word for word, but rather strives for a natural flow of modern English. For the reader whose Latin is competent, however, the translation can sometimes be a source of frustration, for the same Latin word is sometimes translated using different English terms, while different Latin words are sometimes translated using the same English term. Perhaps the most interesting example of this phenomenon occurs in the opening sentences of the Dedication, where the volume is offered by Boccaccio to Andrea Acciaiuoli, Countess of Altavilla. >A short time ago, gracious lady,= he writes, >I wrote ... a slim volume in praise of women. ... Since women are the subject of the...