Boccaccio’s Corpus

"This is an original study of Boccaccio that offers the first extended inquiry into both questions related to the body/corpus in his works and his allegorical interests and practices. In addition, the volume provides a sustained close reading of several of his works in relation to these themes and to questions about ethics and the vernacular across his oeuvre. . . . [The book] is an important and updated approach to Boccaccio." —Simon Gilson, University of Oxford

"James Kriesel makes a distinct and original contribution to the study of Boccaccio's role as a leading intellectual in the cultural turmoil between medieval and Renaissance conceptions of literature. The book has the potential to reorient the current debate on several key issues in Boccaccio studies for the wide scope it takes as well as the pointed analyses of central texts it provides throughout." —Simone Marchesi, Princeton University

“As Kriesel shows definitively, these aspects of Boccaccio’s vernacular and erotic writings stemmed from literary genres that had been designated ‘female’ and the ongoing debates about the spirituality of women.” —Choice

"Kriesel's new book is a welcome addition to the study of Boccaccio's writings, positioning the poet in relation to his two near contemporaries, Dante and Petrarch, and examining his writings in the context of many important philosophical, linguistic, and theological debates taking place in the Italian Middle Ages. . . . It is an excellent book." —Sixteenth Century Journal