James Kriesel Seminar

Seminar: Boccaccio on Love and Hate

Prof. James Kriesel, Assistant Professor of Italian, Colby College, will lead a seminar exploring Boccaccio’s ongoing dialogue with Petrarch about erotic literature. Topics to be discussed include Dante, Ovid and elegy, the Decameron, as well as the theological implications of using erotic images.

Professor Kriesel’s interests include medieval literary theory, Neoplatonism, Boccaccio, and Dante. He is currently finishing a book titled Boccaccio’s Corpus: Allegory, Ethics, Vernacularity in 14th c. Italy. The book examines Boccaccio’s role in some of the key cultural debates of the early-modern period. A graduate of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, he has published articles on Boccaccio’s poetics, as well as on Boccaccio’s Renaissance reception.

Suggested readings: Boccaccio, Decameron VIII.7 “The Scholar and Widow”; X.10 “Gualtieri and Griselda”; Boccaccio, Corbaccio; Petrarch, Seniles XVII.3.

Co-sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame and the William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies.