Date/Time
Date(s) - 29 Jan 2016
10:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Location
501 Hamilton, Columbia University
Category(ies) No Categories
The Medieval Seminar of the Department of Italian announces its first meeting of 2016: Friday January 29 @ 10:30 AM in 501 Hamilton.
Professor Susanna Barsella, Fordham University, will speak on
The Garden of Arts: Techne and Grace in Boccaccio’s Comedía delle ninfe fiorentine
From Professor Barsella:
“Boccaccio’s Comedía delle ninfe fiorentine (1341/2) illustrates the transformative power of poetic education through two connected stories. The first one narrates the young Ameto’s progress from a life based on animal instinct to a life inspired by virtue under the guidance of seven Nymphs. The second story presents a mirror-image of Ameto’s transformation: an unseen disenchanted observer witnesses Ameto’s initiation but remains untouched by such revealing experience. From the standpoint of this fictionally realistic observer, Boccaccio presents a structural mise en abîme of the positive myth of Ameto. I argue that the mirror-like architecture of the Comedía allows us to discern a further level of interpretation of this work, one that is centered on the practical application of knowledge in the transformative process that learning may (as in Ameto’s story)– or may not (as in the observer’s story) – initiate. Boccaccio’s reflection on the art of production (techne) inspired by Grace is essential to understanding his ideas on education and the crucial role that poetry plays in it. Symbolic of the importance Boccaccio attributes to poiesis in the process of education is Pomena’s garden, which Boccaccio situates at the center of the text. This garden of crafts, arts, and cultivation represents the space where “poiesis” and “operative” grace find a synthesis in an intrinsically educative idea of poetry. This space, I argue, is key to the interpretation of the Comedía.”