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Maria Elisa Raja. Le muse in giardino: Il paesaggio ameno nelle opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2003. Pp. 212.
The topos of the garden is a familiar point of departure for studies of the Decameron. But, although Le muse in giardino dedicates much space and energy to Boccaccio's masterpiece, this study is a reading of the "garden-locus amoenus" in the complete works of Boccaccio, with the Decameron as the high point. A number of books of North American criticism, such as Victoria Kirkham's Sign of Reason (1993) and Janet Smarr's Boccaccio and Fiammetta (1986), have sought to do the same in different contexts. Here the author's main purpose is to unearth the parallel between the garden and Boccaccio's own concept of "making literature" by tracing a system of loci from the Caccia di Diana to the Decameron. Unfortunately, the reader must wait until the last third of the study before the author's thesis is developed, although Raja eventually establishes a system that permits her to argue that the garden is a privileged place in Boccaccio's fiction for ethical growth and understanding, and that it is a model for the role of literature itself.
In the first chapter, "In giardino," the author briefly introduces the role of the "garden-locus amoenus" in ancient and medieval literature and gives a quick review of gardens in Boccaccio's works, both fictional and nonfictional. In the second chapter, "Il sistema," Raja walks the reader through the natural, poetic, and rhetorical...