Appel à contribution – Locating Boccaccio in 2013

Locating Boccaccio in 2013 is a series of events to be held at the University of Manchester, UK, to commemorate 700 years since Boccaccio’s birth. Individual papers and panel proposals are now invited for this international conference, to be held at the historic Manchester Town Hall and John Rylands Library, 10-12 July 2013.

Where is Boccaccio in 2013? We seek to problematize the field of Boccaccio studies, and the historical figure of Boccaccio himself, in this anniversary year seven centuries after his birth.

Boccaccio’s status as one of the canonical tre corone of Italian medieval literature remains unchallenged (or perhaps, little discussed), yet his standing in the academy sometimes seems to be regarded as rather less impressive than that of his ‘senior’ colleagues Dante and Petrarch. How and why has this conception of Boccaccio and his writings come about? Does this critical trend derive from Boccaccio’s own articulations of his authorial anxieties? Or is this historiographical strand in fact a by-product of the long-standing Dante and Petrarch industries, which have sidelined Boccaccio to a supporting role in the narratives of these great authors?

In our conference we will seek to locate Boccaccio temporally (in 2013 and in the past), materially (in the forms of his writings and the forms of their subsequent incarnations), geographically (within Italy and beyond), and critically.

Papers and panel proposals are invited on all areas of Boccaccio studies, but issues we specifically hope to address include:

Boccaccio and material/textual/visual cultures
Palaeographical and bibliographical approaches
Textual and intermedial translation and transmission
The critical history of Boccaccio studies; historiography and national traditions
Boccaccio and the tre corone; inside and outside the canon
Gender and queer readings of Boccaccio and Boccaccio studies

Papers may be delivered in English and Italian and should be no more than 20 minutes in length, while panel proposals should contain three papers. Single papers and panel submissions should be submitted by 30 October 2012, and we hope to publish the provisional programme by 15 December 2012. Enquiries and submissions may be addressed to the organizers:

Guyda Armstrong (guyda.armstrong@manchester.ac.uk)

Rhiannon Daniels (r.j.daniels@leeds.ac.uk)

Stephen J. Milner (stephen.j.milner@manchester.ac.uk)