Boccaccio 2025: Narratives, Society and Legal Culture

Boccaccio 2025: Narratives, Society and Legal Culture / Boccaccio 2025: narracje, społeczeństwo i kultura prawna

On May 22–23, 2025, we invite you to a series of academic and educational events dedicated to The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and to the social and legal culture of fourteenth-century Italy. The program includes student workshops and a guest lecture by a researcher from Lancaster University.

In fourteenth-century central Italy, a new literary form emerged: the short prose story known as the novella. This genre reached its peak with Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron in the mid-1300s. But the influence of the novella was not confined to literature. From the 1320s onward, its narrative style also appeared in practical documents like court records. Known for their realistic settings, focus on human emotions such as love, friendship, and wit, and their complex ethical reflections, novelle developed during a time of major change—not only cultural and literary, but also institutional, legal, and political. Italian cities were losing their independence as power became increasingly concentrated in the hands of oligarchies, whether under princely rule (signorie) or in republican systems. These shifts profoundly affected the legal system, which played a crucial role in regulating life in the divided and turbulent cities of late medieval Italy. In this talk, we will explore how novelle—both in their traditional literary form and in judicial narratives with similar features—became powerful means for writers to reflect on and even critique the changes unfolding around them.

📍 Venue: Room 125 (and Room 1256), Faculty of History, University of Warsaw

Program:

Thursday, May 22, 2025, 4:45–6:30 PM
Beffa from the syndicate? Legal culture in the Decameron
Student workshop
Led by Dr Anna Pomierny-Wąsińska (Faculty of History, UW)

Friday, May 23, 2025, 1:15–2:45 PM
The Decameron and Italian mercantile literature
Student workshop
Led by Dr Piotr Białecki (Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, UW)

Friday, May 23, 2025, 3:00–4:30 PM The world of the Italian city-states in fourteenth-century short stories Guest lecture by Dr Lorenzo Caravaggi (Lancaster University) Room 125, Faculty of History, University of Warsaw

📩 Event contact:
Dr Anna Pomierny-Wąsińska — a.pomierny-wasinska@uw.edu.pl