The Short Story and the Italian Pictorial Imagination, from Boccaccio to Bandello and Beyond

Dear Colleagues,

(1) We seek to focus on evidence for the history of imagination that lies in texts not directly connected with projects in the visual arts, but which complements and perhaps affects the history of imagery and form, as laid out by historians of art. Art historians sometimes read short stories of the period because they mention artists: the challenge here is to go further than that and read the texts as part of the history of seeing and imagining, so as to augment the history of art. It is hoped that experts who are not primarily art historians (including writers, historians, and scholars of literature) will be instrumental in opening up art historians to these texts and showing their value beyond the limits of direct references to the visual arts (e.g., as early loci of generalized irreverence, of gender role testing, of attitudes about city and provincial pride, as indications of class and profession, and of period-specific habits of seeing).

(2) Much scholarly attention has been directed toward explicating the concept of “ut pictor poësis”, i.e., the idea that painters compete with poets, particularly in regard to creative freedom. Attention has also been paid to the epic ambitions of painters of “istorie”, those complicated narratives that make some claim to communicating, visually, significant truths. But less attention has been directed to the growth of prose vernacular fiction (e.g., raccontis, novelles, collections of brief anecdotes, and set pieces in the context of dialogues; authors of interest include Boccaccio, Sachetti, Firenzuola, Manetti, Piccolomini, Alberti, Poliziano, Machiavelli, and Bandello), and specifically, to the possible interactions between the literary imagination exercised in this genre (a distinctively free-wheeling and uninhibited imagination, often more grounded in some understanding of daily reality than higher literature tended to be) and the pictorial arts, including prints. Art historians will be familiar with Norman Land’s art historical writings on such subjects and Lauro Martines’ An Italian Renaissance Sextet: Six Tales in Historical Context, New York, 1994.

Prof. Dr. Patricia Emison
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

References:

Classic studies:

Otto Pächt, “Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape,’’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XIII, 1950, 13-47.

Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, tr. W.R. Trask, Princeton, 1953.

Millard Meiss, Giotto and Assisi, New York, 1960.

Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist observers of painting in Italy and the discovery of pictorial composition, 1350-1450, Oxford, 1971.

Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths?, tr. Paula Wissing, Chicago, 1988.

More recent or topical scholarship, abbreviated list:

Fritz Schalk, “Bandello und die novellistik der italienischen Renaissance,” Romanische Forschungen, 85. Bd., H. 1/2 (1973), 96-118.

Robert Clements and Joseph Gibaldi, Anatomy of the Novella: The European Tale Collection from Boccaccio and Chaucer to Cervantes, New York, 1977.

Paul Barolsky, Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art, Columbua, Missouri, 1978.

Ugo Rozzo, ed., Matteo Bandello, Novelliere europeo, Atti del convegno internazionali di studi, 7-9 Novembre 1980, Tortona, 1982.

Charles Hope, “Religious Narrative in Renaissance Art,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 134, No. 5364 (NOVEMBER 1986), 804-818.

Norman Land, The Viewer as Poet: The Renaissance Response to Art, University Park, 1994.

Thomas E. Mussio, “Bandello's "Timbreo and Fenicia" and "The Winter's Tale," Comparative Drama, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Summer 2000), 211-244.

Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, “(In)alienable Possessions: Griselda, Clothing, and the Exchange of Women,” Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, Cambridge, 2000, 220-44.

Lauro Martines, Strong Words: Writing and Social Strain in the Italian Renaissance, Baltimore, 2001.

Peter Gahan, “Fouquet’s Boccaccio,” Shaw, Vol. 22 (2002),  83-98.

Barbara Bowen,  Humour and Humanism in the Renaissance, Aldershot, 2004.

Barbara Alfano, “Il narratore delle "Novelle" del Bandello e la funzione mediatrice della scrittura,” Italica, Vol. 81, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), 16-23.

David Marsh, Lucian and the Latins: Humor and Humanism in the Early Renaissance, Ann Arbor, 1998.

Idem, ed. and tr., Renaissance Fables: Aesopic Prose by L.B. Alberti, B. Scala, Leonardo da Vinci, B. Baldi, Tempe, 2004.

Margaret Franklin, “Boccaccio's Amazons and Their Legacy in Renaissance Art: Confronting the Threat of Powerful Women,” Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1 (SPRING / SUMMER 2010), 13-20.

Patricia Reilly, "Raphael's Fire in the Borgo and the Italian Pictorial Vernacular" The Art Bulletin, v. XCII, December 2010, 308-325.

Rhiannon Daniels, “Rethinking the Critical History of the Decameron : Boccaccio's Epistle XXII to Mainardo Cavalcanti,” The Modern Language Review, Vol. 106, No. 2 (April 2011), 423-447.

Andrea Rizzi and Eva Del Soldato, “Latin and Vernacular in Quattrocento Florence and Beyond: An Introduction,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, Vol. 16, No. 1/2 (Fall 2013), 231-242.

• imagination
• narrative
• humanism
• vernacular
• humor
• genre subjects
• characterization
• reportage