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The Canterbury Tales Critical Essay #10
Writing
over twelve hundred years after Statius, Giovanni Boccaccio undertook in the Teseida
to compose the first martial epic in Italian. He placed epic formulae of
invocation at the beginning of the poem, and equally conventional addresses to
his book and to the Muses at its conclusion; he imitated epic structure (the Teseida,
like the Aeneid and the Thebaid, has twelve books) and diction,
reinforcing the latter by some nearly verbatim translations from Statius. But
if, in all these ways, Boccaccio self-consciously donned the epic mantle, he
also brought to his encounter with Statius literary sensibilities formed by
medieval courtly romance and lyric, and thereby created in the Teseida a
new, hybrid version of the noble life. Boccaccio's eclecticism declares
itself at...
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This section contains 1,987 words (approx. 7 pages at 300 words per page) |
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