Les « erreurs » de Boccace : les bévues de copiste, les fautes de l’auteur, la variété de la langue du Trecento

The present work aims to describe the evolution of Boccaccio’s “mistakes” from 16th century on through the use of different approaches (namely historical, ecdotic, linguistic, and stylistic). The dissertation starts with a chapter divided in three sections: the first two sections deal with the perception of Boccaccio’s model in the linguistic controversy characterizing the 16th century. The third section analyses how the syntax of the Decameron came to be considered incorrect by scholars of the time. I will concentrate on the commentaries by Ruscelli, Borghini, Salviati and Beni. The second chapter is about the manuscript tradition of the Decameron and on the most recent ecdotic theories formulated by modern philologists on the issue. In the third chapter I focus on such linguistic phenomena as the repetition of “che”, para-hypotaxis, “che” followed by the infinitive, and the coordination between dependent clauses with both finite and nonfinite verbs. In this part of my dissertation, I make use of a comparative method, bringing together Old Italian and Old French. In the last chapter I intend to reflect on the presence (and absence) of these linguistic phenomena in the Decameron, in order to understand Boccaccio’s writing choices, and taking into account other elements such as elocution and the different diegetic levels acting in the novellas.