Bøger af N.R. Cartier

Aquila, aseries planned for biennial publication, is presented to scholars with a broad interest in modem languages and literatures. Each volume contains original material contributed by specialists within tbis general area, with minimallimitations as to language or length of the studies, the criteria being significance of the content and clear, interesting presentation. Aquila II includes four important monographs conceming Luther, literary criticism, Dante, and a French avant-garde salon featuring Mallarme, Verlaine, Charles Cros, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, etc . . . . There are excellent articles on a French poetic form in the late Middle Ages, the concept of "Encyclopedia" and general education during the Renaissance, Voltaire's Candide, Gide's Faux-Monnayeurs, and hidden satire in Don Quijote. To the Administration of Boston College, we acknowledge a debt of gratitude for the generous subsidy which has given wings to Aquila, for the advancement of knowledge in modem languages and literatures. The Editors TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE v MONOGRAPHS HEINZ BLUHM, Das Erlebnis und die Interpretation in Luthers Erstlin- schr~ 1 ERICH VON RICHTHOFEN, Limitations of Literary Criticism 78 MARIA PICCHIO SIMONELLI, La prosa nutrice dei verso: dal Convivio aUa Divina Commedia 117 GEORGES ZAYED, Un salon parnassien d'avant-garde: Nina de Villard et ses hOtes 177 ARTICLES MARCEL FRAN~ON, Encyclopedie et culture genereale 230 MARCEL FRAN~ON, Sur la theorie du rondeau litteraire 244 JOSEPH D. GAUTIDER, S. J. , The Organic Unity ofLes Faux-Monnayeurs 260 ERNEST A.

13occaccio's 'Revenge or the Old (9row 3 notes 64 Index 76 Introduction If Giovanni Boccaccio had encountered the deadly widow in black when he was ten years younger, he might have laughed oft'the humiliating incident and dressed it up for a rollicking episode of the Decameron, instead of laying the lady bare in a vitriolic satire under the name of the Old Crow. According to the most logical interpretation of his personal account, how­ ever, he was a greying man of forty-two; the bloom of youth had withered within him; and by the end of 1355, when he wrote the bitter denunciation, his "inimical Fortune" had dealt him a series of nasty blows. Since the publication of the Decameron, new material responsibilities had complicated his life; his diplomatic missions for the government of Florence were marked by some cruel disappointments, -in particular the defection of his beloved Petrarch to the Republic's arch-enemy, the hated Visconti. His old, undependable friend, Niccola Acciaiuoli, a glittering star at the court of Naples, had used his influence to have his own secretary, Zanobi da Strada, crowned poet laureate by the emperor, while Boccaccio himself had cul­ tivated the Muses for years in the footsteps of Dante and P('trarch, without the recognition he deserved.