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Abstract
In this dissertation I explore Giovanni Boccaccio's revolutionary method of reading classical myth in his Humanist treatise, the Genealogia deorum gentilium. My main goal is to show how Boccaccio redirected the study of myth from mere theological, natural, or moral interpretation to a more modern analysis of the human god-making process, which he saw as being rooted in the human imagination. I locate the origins of Boccaccio's unique historical approach in a medieval tradition of historicist interpretation and I claim that the Genealogia represents a Humanist hermeneutic of the past that diverges from that of Francesco Petrarch but is no less sophisticated. I present readings of the central myths in each of the thirteen books, which I link to the defense of poetry in Book XIV and to the author's self-defense in Book XV by suggesting that Boccaccio's historical method and genealogical structure seek to create a lineage of the human poetic imagination from its primitive origins to the poetry of his own age. Finally I show how Boccaccio's Humanist mythography is a turning point in the birth of modern Humanist scholarship.
The first chapter traces the origins of historical approaches to myth in from Cicero to Boccaccio. In it I show how medieval historicization of myth and translation of ancient wisdom exemplifies a growing awareness of the historical rupture between ancient and modern. This tradition, which includes Boccaccio's the Neapolitan mythographer, Paolo da Perugia, and the Florentine Humanist, Brunetto Latini, is the background to Boccaccio's Genealogia .
In the second chapter, I define Boccaccio's method of interpretation in the Genealogia and show how his historical method both grows out of and surpasses medieval historicism. I argue that Boccaccio's theory of allegory understands the meanings veiled by myth has having developed through time. The historicity and immanence of allegorical meaning are what allows for the connections between ancient and modern views on the world. I proceed to show how Boccaccio's presentation of his scholarly endeavor represents an alternative to Petrarch's highly subjective and imitative sense of scholarship.
The third chapter shows how Boccaccio's theory of allegory plays itself out in the main body of the Genealogia from the initial gods of Nature to the later ethico-political figures of deified humans. I show how in Book I of the Genealogia Boccaccio traces the development of the human imagination from marvel to contemplation of Nature and its effects. Using as examples the multiple instantiations of Jove, Venus, and Mercury, I argue that Boccaccio overcomes the fragmentary nature of his sources by allowing these instantiations to be connected to one another across time and space by a principle of historical and cultural translation. I conclude this chapter by analyzing how Boccaccio relates the figures of Prometheus and Orpheus to Pan. I show how Boccaccio's concept of the poet as creator connects civilization with natural order.
In the fourth chapter I compare Boccaccio's defense of poetry in Book XIV to that of Petrarch in the Invective contra medicum. I argue that the two intellectuals present opposing ideas for the role that poetry should play in the modern world. Boccaccio defends poetry both against the scholastic philosophers who would replace rhetoric with logic and against Petrarch who, in order to secure the social weight of poetry, would bind himself to tyrants despite their ethical principles.
In the conclusion I argue that in Book XV Boccaccio presents his readers with the terms of a distinct kind of Humanism that he “founds” in the Genealogia. I show that Boccaccio addresses his self-defense primarily towards the Humanists who surrounded Petrarch and I conclude by suggesting possible genealogical lines of influence for a Boccaccian Humanism.
The result of my dissertation is both a new understanding of the Genealogia itself and a new conception of Boccaccio's role in the birth of Humanism. Once the theoretical apparatus and true aim of the Genealogia have been laid out, it becomes clear that Boccaccio presented posterity with an alternative to Petrarchan modernity, a modernity that does not seek to rebuild its fragmented identity upon a idealized past, but one that would link the scattered fragments of antiquity to the present by means of a lineage of the human imagination.
