R. Kuhns, Decameron and the Philosophy of Storytelling

À paraître prochainement:

KUHNS, Richard, Decameron and the Philosophy of Storytelling, Columbia University Press, 2005, 208 p.

ISBN: 0-231-13608-0

Boccaccio´s highly entertaining and occasionally bawdy fourteenth-century classic Decameron, which has influenced Shakespeare, Chaucer, Melville, Calvino, and countless other writers, offers contemporary readers a range of literary pleasures and philosophical insights. In this creative and engaging reading of the book, Richard Kuhns presents original ways of interpreting and discovering the hidden meanings of Decameron.

Kuhns approaches the work from a variety of literary, philosophical, and historical perspectives. He argues that Decameron contains a theory of storytelling within the stories themselves, showing that a philosophy of the genre can be expressed in the process of telling. Kuhns reveals the ways in which Decameron´s comic and sexual elements lead into philosophical debate and moral argument. In uncovering the meanings of sexual metaphors in the work, Kuhns also shows how Boccaccio viewed the relationship between storyteller and audience in sexual terms. Finally, Kuhns suggests that Decameron is one of the first self-conscious creations of "A Total Work of Art." Throughout the stories, Boccaccio draws on trecento Italian culture, integrating painting, poetry, musical performance, and dramatic scenes into his work.

Contents:

List of Illustrations    
Acknowledgments    
Preface    
Introduction. Storytelling: The Bankruptcy of Reality    
Chapter 1. Trecento Story and Image    
Chapter 2. Aspects of Storytelling: Dreams and Masks    
Chapter 3. Aspects of Storytelling: Reflections on the Metaphoric Power of Metamorphosis    
Chapter 4. Interpretative Method for a Decameron Tale: An Enchanted Pear Tree in Argos    
Chapter 5. The Creation of a Total Work of Art.    
Chapter 6. Storytelling and Truth    
Notes    
Bibliography    
Index    

About the Author:

Richard Kuhns is professor emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University. He is the author of a number of works on the philosophical analysis of literature, including Tragedy: Contradiction and Repression; Psychoanalytic Theory of Art; Structures of Experience, and a study of Aeschylus´s Oresteia