Literary Analysis of Worldbuilding in Boccaccio’s Decameron
Assignment
Conduct a close reading of a story from Wayne Rebhorn’s abridged translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron. Consult the other stories of the day in which your selected story is told as provided in our edition, as well as the introduction and conclusion if available. Construct an interpretive thesis about how this story relates to a larger theme of the day, or of the Decameron as a whole, and provide specific textual evidence from the passage to support your argument. As you develop your ideas and claims, consider the following questions: How are meanings and themes created by Boccaccio’s imagery and figurative devices as well as his translator’s choices in diction and syntax? Why and how do literary features of the story—including narration, character, setting, and plot—help the narrator to build their storyworld? How does the story’s style and mode (i.e., its attitude, approach, or mood) contribute to its particular storyworld? Does this story ask its audience to reflect on the way worlds and stories are built or constructed, either in Boccaccio’s time or our own?
Your final paper will be about 4–5 pages in length and will be worth 40% of your writing grade. For the purposes of this assignment, you will treat Rebhorn’s translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron as the primary source.
Learning Goals
- Make specific, complex, arguable claims
- Produce unified, cohesive body paragraphs that contain arguable topic sentences, well-selected and properly-integrated evidence from the primary source, and rhetorically-effective introduction, conclusion, and transitions between ideas
- Adopt the appropriate stance, style, and genre conventions of literary analysis (close reading, narrative, stylistic, and figurative analysis, and part-to-whole connections)
- Develop summarization, paraphrase, and quotation skills
- Practice process-oriented writing and learn flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading drafts while also reflecting on the process of writing itself
Required Reading
You must read the following to successfully navigate the writing process of this assignment:
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Selections from The Decameron. Translated and edited by Wayne Rebhorn, Norton, 2016.
Shemek, Deanna. “Genre and Mode.” Humanities Core Handbook: Worldbuilding 2023–2024, XanEdu, 2023, pp. 105–14.
Garceau, Ben. “Literary Analysis and Close Reading.” Humanities Core Handbook: Worldbuilding 2023–2024, XanEdu, 2023, pp. 115–27.
Beauchamp, Tamara. “Evaluating Essay Organization and Transitions.” Humanities Core Handbook: Worldbuilding 2023–2024, XanEdu, 2022, pp. 128–38.
