Reconsidering Boccaccio highlights the great Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio's remarkable achievements in the fourteenth century as a cultural mediator; his exceptional social, geographic, and intellectual range; and the influence of his legacy on numerous cultural networks. Grounded in Boccaccio's own writings, Reconsidering Boccaccio brings a variety of methodologies and critical approaches to the works of one of the 'three crowns' of Italian literature. Containing essays by scholars not only of Italian literature, but also history, law, classics, and Middle Eastern literature, this collection is part of a vital movement to open up a dialogue among researchers in various areas of study that touch on the works of Boccaccio. The volume highlights the necessity of a technical and historical framework when approaching Boccaccio studies, while also shedding new light on the lives of women and their role in the reception of Boccaccio's works.

John Freccero is internationally renowned for his scholarship on Dante, Petrarch, Macchiavelli, and other authors. Currently Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at New York University, he has also taught at Yale, Stanford, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins. His numerous honours include Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships and awards from the city of Florence and the Republic of Italy. His publications encompass articles on film, philosophy, and literature of virtually all time periods. All the authors in this Festschrift are former students of Freccero. All the articles appertain to Italian literature - from Dennis Costa's literary analysis of Bonaventure's Itinerarium to Patricia Parker's tracing of the State of Maryland's medieval Italian motto back through its English Renaissance sources. Many pieces are concerned with Dante directly (Kleiner, Schnapp, Jacoff, Cornish, Ginsberg, Hawkins, Chiarenza), and several others dealing with medieval and Renaissance Italian subjects do so indirectly (Costa, Stephens, Quint). Two are concerned with pre-modern cultural and literary implications of the history of science (Stewart, Reeves); the remainder trace the afterlife of medieval or Renaisance Italian motifs in modern culture (Parker, West, Marcus).