Boccaccio in Germania tra fine Settecento e inizio Ottocento

Abstract

The article examines the rediscovery of Boccaccio over the decade 1795-1805, which lays the groundwork for modern criticism on the Italian author. Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, the two most influential Romantic critics, wrote fundamental and groundbreaking essays on Boccaccio, celebrating his works, according to the principles of Romantic aesthetics, as an accomplished expression of literary subjectivity. They reappraise the novella as a specific narrative form, which is not only devoted to comic and licentious themes, but elaborates a complex vision of human passions and observes the reality of contemporary society. In the same years, Goethe introduces the novella into German literature with his Conversations of German Refugees, a collection of novellas within a frame story, which is inspired by Boccaccio, thus establishing the Decameron as a model for the modern novella.