The English Boccaccio: A History in Books (Toronto Italian Studies) - Softcover

Armstrong, Guyda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442628774 ISBN 13: 9781442628779

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2015

Synopsis

The Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio has had a long and colourful history in English translation. This new interdisciplinary study presents the first exploration of the reception of Boccaccio’s writings in English literary culture, tracing his presence from the early fifteenth century to the 1930s. Guyda Armstrong tells this story through a wide-ranging journey through time and space – from the medieval reading communities of Naples and Avignon to the English court of Henry VIII, from the censorship of the Decameron to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, from the world of fine-press printing to the clandestine pornographers of 1920s New York, and much more.

Drawing on the disciplines of book history, translation studies, comparative literature, and visual studies, the author focuses on the book as an object, examining how specific copies of manuscripts and printed books were presented to an English readership by a variety of translators. Armstrong is thereby able to reveal how the medieval text in translation is remade and re-authorized for every new generation of readers.

About this title

About the Author:

Guyda Armstrong is a senior lecturer in Italian in the School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures at the University of Manchester.

Review:

‘The English Boccaccio is a splendid example of what can be done with the biography of a text or, in this case, of a corpus of texts.... This book stands already as a model for future scholarship on the reception, remediation, and translation of medieval authors and texts.’

(Yuri Cowan SHARP News vol 25:01:2016)

‘This beautifully produced, referenced and indexed volume covers an impressive range from the manuscript tradition to the popular book trade.’

(Anne O'Connor Translation Studies September 2014)

‘Some big books are merely big; this one is monumental... This is a masterly contribution not only to Boccaccio scholarship but also to book history, translation studies, reception theory and the understanding of cultural relationships between English-speaking world and Italy. Essential. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.’ (S. Botterill Choice Magazine; vol 51:07:14)

‘A monumental work that bridges synchronic and diachronic perspectives, manuscripts and print cultures, medieval and early modern studies, Italian studies, pre-modern and modern literary studies... I shall be hanging very close to my personal, unique, hard copy, as I know I will be coming back to it again and again.’

(Warren Boutcher Italian Studies vol69:03:2014)

‘Spanning seven centuries of editorial history, Armstrong’s volume offers an invaluable contribution to students and teachers of Boccaccio, whether Italianists or Anglists, as well as to cultural and print historians.’

(Marina Della Putta Johnston Modern Language Quarterly vol 110:01:2015)

‘What emerges from this ambitious work, aside from admiration for Armstrong’s scholarship and translation skills is a new vision of Boccaccio’s relation to English literature.’

(Paul Budra University of Toronto Quarterly vol 84:03:2015)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1442628774
• ISBN 13: 9781442628779
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496