“Employing a theoretically diverse methodology and careful attention to historical detail, Olson offers new insights on the relationship between Dante and Boccaccio, the social and literary culture of 14th-centuiry Italy, and the increasing tensions between the aristocracy and the rising middle class.”
D. Pesta, Choice
‘In this interesting study, Olson offers new insights on the relationship between Dante and Boccaccio, the social and literary culture of 14th-century Italy, and the increasing tensions between the aristocracy and the rising middle class.’
D.Pesta, Choice Magazine vol 52:09:2015
‘An enjoyable and very informative work… This book would be an indispensable addition to any medievalist’s library.’
Alfred R. Crudale, Annali D’Italianistica vol 35:2016
‘Olson’s daring and intelligent book on the whole is stimulating and innovative.’
Roberta Morosini, Speculum vol 92:03:2017
“In this invaluable study, Kristina Olson offers the first comprehensive treatment of the Decameron’s numerous, and strategically placed, ‘political’ novellas. Olson persuasively reinscribes the merchant/aristocrat opposition through which the Decameron has long been read in terms of a more nuanced battle between ‘avarice’ and ‘cortesia,’ where partisan politics is ideally sublimated into personal ethics. In its wise insistence upon the intersections of literary, political, and social history in the Decameron, Courtesy Lost points out genuinely new and important possibilities for developing our understanding of Boccaccio’s cultural project.”
Albert Russell Ascoli, Terrill Distinguished Professor of Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
“Courtesty Lost presents a compelling and novel account of how Boccaccio used Dante as the source material for his own formulation of Florentine and Italian political history. What is most satisfying about this study is the way the author ably and repeatedly moves between the three principal texts: Dante’s Commedia, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and his Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante.”
Jason Houston, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, University of Oklahoma
