Chapter Ira e compassione. Fonti aristotelico-tomiste di Decameron VIII 7
Abstract
This essay aims to examine the philosophic sources behind the representation of passions in Boccaccio’s tale of the scholar and the widow (Decameron VIII 7). If the definition of anger is attributable to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, I believe that it is possible to assume that the description of compassion, only mentioned in the moral treatise, derives instead from the Aristotle’s Rhetoric, where compassion is seen as a passion opposed to a kind of wrath, that is, indignation. The paper also investigates Boccaccio’s reception of the Latin translation of Aristotle’ Rhetoric. Did Boccaccio have direct knowledge of the Aristotelian text? Or had it been mediated to him by Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae?
Keywords
Decameron; intertextuality; passions; compassion; wrath.DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-236-2.07ISBN
9788855182362, 9788855182362Publisher
Firenze University PressPublisher website
https://www.fupress.com/Publication date and place
Florence, 2020Series
Studi e saggi, 219Classification
Biography, Literature and Literary studies