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New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., Oxford, Wien,
2002. Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures.
Vol. 116 General Editors: Tamara Alvarez-Detrell and Michael G.
Paulson The first epic poem written in Italian is the Teseida delle
nozze di Emilia (Theseid of the Nuptials of Emilia) by Giovanni
Boccaccio, the well-known author of the Decameron. Conceived and
composed during the Florentine author's stay in Naples, it combines
masterfully both epic and lyric themes in a genre that may be
defined as an epic of love. Besides its intrinsic literary value,
the poem reflects the author's youthful emotions and nostalgia for
the happiest times of his life. The Translator: Vincenzo Traversa,
a United States citizen born and educated in Italy, has taught
Italian language and literature at UCLA, Stanford University, and
the University of Kansas. He holds a Doctorate in English language
and literature and a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures
from UCLA. He is Professor of Italian and Humanities at California
State University, Hayward, where he served as Chairman of the
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures for thirteen years.
His works include Parola e Pensiero, Idioma in Prospettiva,
Frequency Dictionary of Italian Words (coauthor), Racconti di
Alberto Moravia, Luigi Capuana: Critic and Novelist, and The Laude
in the Middle Ages (Peter Lang, 1994). The Italian government
awarded him the Cross of Knight in the Order of Merit and he was
honored in the 2000 edition of Who's Who Among America's Teachers.
Any one wishing to investigate the literary development of the
golden century of early Italian literature, the Trecento, must read
Natalino Sapegno's extensive writings on the subject, in particular
his Storia Letteraria del Trecento (A Literary History of the
Fourteenth Century). The original Italian edition appeared in April
1963 as part of the vast collection, La Letteratura Italiana -
Storia e Testi (Italian Literature - History and Texts), directed
by Raffaele Mattioli, Pietro Pancrazi, and Alfredo Schiaffini for
the Riccardo Ricciardi publishing house. Storia Letteraria del
Trecento focuses equally on Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio while
minor writers are introduced in proportion to their importance and
position in the cultural, historical, and social events of the
time.
Several poetic and prose compositions in early Italian literature
contain references to the bubonic plague and other illnesses that
were used in the language both literally and metaphorically. The
first detailed description of a plague epidemic, however, was
written by Giovanni Boccaccio in the introduction to The Decameron.
It is a precise and dramatic view of the physical, social, and
medical conditions of Florence during the epidemic of 1348. The
Theme of the Plague in Italian Letters follows the subsequent
developments, both in poetic and prose works, until the time of the
plague of Milan of 1630. With the report of Giuseppe Ripamonti and
other writers, the plague became not only a medical issue but also
a topic involving the laws of the time as they appear in the trials
of the presumed untori (spreaders of the disease). A combination of
faith, fear, and superstition led the legal officials and the
populace to imagine that the plague was a divine punishment and was
deliberately spread by individuals of criminal nature. Arrests and
trials involving interrogations and the use of merciless physical
tortures (a legitimate procedure in Europe at that time) brought
about a formidable reaction led by early humanitarians, such as
Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Verri, who determined the eventual
changes in the laws and legal procedures. The Plague of Milan of
1630 by Giuseppe Ripamonti, the treatise by L. A. Muratori Del
Governo della Peste, 1720, and several interventions contributed to
a series of radical changes that appeared in the works of
Alessandro Manzoni, such as The Betrothed and The History of the
Pillar of Infamy that are discussed in part or in full in this
study.
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