Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio's Decameron.

Pier Massimo Forni. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. xiv + 155 pp. $29.95. ISBN: n.a.

The first word in the title of this new book, "adventures," conveys both the excitement and pleasure it will spark in its readers. Forni's project yokes classical rhetoric and contemporary literary theory - esthetic domains in which he is equally at ease - to argue notions that are as profound in their insightfulness as they are elegant in their simplicity. Adventures in Speech is a brilliant analytical mapping of the cognitive poetic processes that rule complex interrelationships in the Decameron between verba and res, sententia and eventum. It probes the process of inventio to demonstrate how Boccaccio's technique as a fiction writer sometimes reverses the traditional relationship between narrative (the "plot" that comes first) and rhetoric (the "ornament" added later). When that happens, rhetoric is privileged with priority and itself generates the narration.

This investigation of "logomimesis" innovatively broadens the conventional notion of Boccaccian "realism" and breaks open a challenging new dimension in Boccaccio studies. Traditional philology, which has devoted considerable effort to tracing sources and analogues for many tales in the Decameron, is based on the assumption that Boccaccio inherited a huge body of oral and written material, a repertoire he then adapted to his own purposes. Forni's approach beautifully complements this scholarship, revealing how in Boccaccio's mind a story can take its shape not only from a pre-existing plot, but also merely from a figure of speech. We witness the "rhetorical realization of rhetoric"; not only do "words imitate extratextual reality, but textual reality imitates words." For example, the abbess of a nunnery (Dec. IX, 2), in her haste to dress when summoned during the night, accidentally puts on her head the britches of a priest who was with her in bed instead of her wimple. As a consequence, all the other sisters will henceforth be able to continue enjoying their own lovers without fear of punishment from the mother superior. Her embarrassing act illustrates the Italian proverb "andare con le brache in capo" ("to go around with one's trousers on one's head"), which means "to get things wrong," "to always mix things up." Here the novella is born not of an event, but of a proverb; not of a thing, but a word.

This book marks a logical continuation of Forni's last one, Forme complesse del Decameron (Florence: Olschki, 1992). There, applying definitions of inventio and dispositio, Forni sought to understand what "complex forms" of verbal allusion weave a single novella into the wider texture of the Decameron. Adventures in Speech is a natural continuation of his probings into the creative process, activity to which he is keenly sensitive, given his own serious work as an Italian poet. Here the focus is not on the "complex forms" of interaction among tales in the Decameron but rather on the chain of communication that extends from the author's interaction with his inspiration to our reception of the text. Along the continuum, Forni's chief area of interest now is the process of narrative genesis: how does a novella come into being?

Forni writes authoritatively and engagingly with taut narrative economy. The well-paced unfolding of ideas and lucid power of his words propel the reader. Serious in its theoretical dimension, this study is at the same time remarkably accessible, consistently understandable. Centered on the Decameron, the book reaches forward to twentieth-century narrative (e.g., Kafka, Calvino) for provocative comparisons. It will appeal not only to Italianists, but also to comparativists, to scholars with an interest in the novella and theory of fiction, to students of narratology. Original, subtle, and sensitive, this book will be an enduring statement. In my opinion, it will go down as a classic study.

VICTORIA KIRKHAM Philadelphia, Pennsylvania