Law and Mimesis in Boccaccio's Decameron
Realism on Trial

Steinberg's field-defining work shows how Boccaccio's Decameron reveals unexpected connections between the contemporary emergence of literary realism and legal inquisition in early modern Europe.

Justin Steinberg (Author)

9781316512746, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 June 2023

270 pages
23.6 x 16 x 1.5 cm, 0.53 kg

'This brilliant, revisionary account of the history of Western mimesis lays aside what we have 'long known' about verisimilitude, realism, and law in Boccaccio (and Dante) in favor of original research, and original thought. It impacts understanding not only of 'the rise of the novel,' but also our current consumption of procedural drama, suspended between 'the poetics of likelihood' (in TV courtroom argumentations) and the hard fact of the smoking gun. Written open-handedly, and a joy to read, this book grounded in historical inquiry speaks to issues of prime importance in our own troubled, story-driven times. Recommended.' David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania

In Boccaccio's time, the Italian city-state began to take on a much more proactive role in prosecuting crime – one which superseded a largely communitarian, private approach. The emergence of the state-sponsored inquisitorial trial indeed haunts the legal proceedings staged in the Decameron. How, Justin Steinberg asks, does this significant juridical shift alter our perspective on Boccaccio's much-touted realism and literary self-consciousness? What can it tell us about how he views his predecessor, Dante: perhaps the world's most powerful inquisitorial judge? And to what extent does the Decameron shed light on the enduring role of verisimilitude and truth-seeming in our current legal system? The author explores these and other literary, philosophical, and ethical questions that Boccaccio raises in the Decameron's numerous trials. The book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval and early modern studies, literary theory and legal history.

Introduction
1. The Novella on trial
2. The artist and the Police
3. The widow and the sovereign
4. Torture and the sense of an ending
5. Another way of possessing
6. The author on trial.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]