The Corbaccio
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. Hardcover. 8vo. Fine / Near Fine. Item #006776
Quarter brown cloth, grey cloth boards. xxvii, 194 pp. B&W frontis. One small stain to outer margin of p. xi, else fine and clean. Dust jacket is price clipped, sunned at spine, bumped at top edges. In 1631 the Spanish Church placed it on the Index. So greatly did its ribaldry offend the nineteenth-century historian John Addington Symonds that he deplored it as a "profoundly disgusting composition, odious and profligate." Others have found it delightful. The Corbaccio has long puzzled scholars. Its extreme misogynistic bias, its bewildering inconsistencies in moral outlook, and its unevennes of tone and style have led to two divergent schools of thought concerning its intent: one views it as an allegorical and edifying tale, while the other maintains that it is purely autobiographical. Cassell shines light on many of the issues involved in these two approaches, pointing out its structural, stylistic, and linguistic conventions of broad literary traditions as well as the work's similarities to Boccaccio's other writings.
Price: $38.00