An Imperfect Rescue: Lionardo Salviati’s Edition (1597) of Boccaccio’s Decameron

Professor Fabian Alfie will talk on an important classic of Italian literature by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), the Decameron.  The literary work consists of a series of 100 stories by 10 tellers who escaped the Black Death of 1348.  Two hundred years later, although it was considered a model of literary Italian, the Decameron was suppressed by the Inquisition because of its bawdy content and anti-clericalism.  Professor Alfie will discuss the volume edited by Leonardo Salviati (1540-1589), who censored the Decameron in the hopes of preserving as much of Boccaccio’s language as possible for posterity.