The Shades of Aeneas: The Imitation of Vergil and the History of Paganism in Boccaccio’s Filostrato, Filocolo, and Teseida by James H. McGregor (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER that, but also to justify it as an insight to his own high standards of intellectual significance. In this as well as in the more straightforwardly substantiveaspects ofhis work, he has created for us not only a monument but a model. PAUL THEINER Syracuse University JAMES H. MCGREGOR. The Shades ofAeneas: The Imitation ofVergzland the History of Paganism in Boccaccio's Filostrato, Filocolo, and Teseida. Athens, Ga., andLondon: University ofGeorgiaPress, 1991. Pp. ix, 133. $30.00. James H. McGregor's study is both a continuation and a completion of his work of 1990, published as The Image ofAntiquity in Boccaccio's "Filo­ strato," "Fzfocolo," and "Teseida," where he posed the question of veri­ similitude in Boccaccio's approach to the religious aspects of the pagan world. That question is now answered by The Shades ofAeneas, where McGregor's aim is to show that Boccaccio's interest in a verisimilar represen­ tation of the past is not just a matter of style and decoration but also a thematic choice and the expression of a critique of that past. The Introduction deals with the way the Italian poet reads Vergil through Orosius, a way close to Dante's. According to McGregor, who accepts Robert Hanning's view (in The Vision ofHistory in Early Bn"tain, 1966), history is thus interpreted in Orosian terms, so that the events of Roman history and of Troy constitute a means of God's providential plan to establish Christianity universally. McGregor's point ofdeparture to support a "Vergilian" reading ofthe classical past by Boccaccio is Genealogie 14.13, where Vergil's justification for writing the Aeneid is discussed in terms of passion and how passion is overcome. In all three romances under examination, Fzfostrato, Filocolo, and Teseida, the central issue is considered to be the managing and mastering of individual emotions with the ultimate purpose of demonstrating the necessary failure ofthe effort in a pre-Christian world. As the extensiveness ofquotations reveals, Robert Hollander's works on Dante and Boccaccio are the main sources for this reading. Chapter 2 (on Ftfostrato), after a long summary of the poem, aims at 172 REVIEWS combining Hollander's allegorical analysis of it in Boccaccio's Two Vtmuses (1977) with a profounder insight of the historical setting. A close link between the love affair and war is set up together with a comparison between Troilus (I would recommend the use ofthe Italian name, Troiolo) and Aeneas. On the one hand, Troy is fated to destruction by war, and Troilus in his failure to control passion will be destroyed by love; on the other hand, the Trojans who follow Aeneas and the gods will be the founders of Rome, the future seat of Christianity. Without denying the importance of the historical dimension of the poem, I must point out that the proem is clear in defining Boccaccio's scope: the "stilo assai pietoso" is used to recount a love story, although a painful one. To disregard the senhal, the artificial idealized story of love with the related myth of the beloved lady (here Filomena, afterward Fiammetta) is to overlook a fundamental part of Filostrato: Chaucer, who eliminates the convention, starts from that convention in his repeated reference to Love and the service of Love. The allegorical reading also informs the analysis ofFtfocolo in chapter 3. A useful summary of the complicated plot is followed by a thorough explanation of the continual references to the Aeneid in the work. Once again Boccaccio uses Orosius to relate the Trojan heritage to the Christian period: Felice is a Roman pagan, while the Rome he fights against is already Christian. Central to the text is, in McGregor's view, Felice's antagonism to Rome and Rome's response to it with the appearance of Biancifiore, who brings about the conversion of Felice's reign. Thus the love of Florio and Biancifiore is a forceful means of provoking the providential shaping of history through individual life. Unlike Troilus, who ignores the gods' commandments, Florio and Biancifiore collaborate with the pagan gods in mysteriously transforming Felice's earthly kingdom into a Christianized reign. To interpret the narrative in allegorical terms does not...