A course on Mediterranean Boccaccio originates from the awareness that the Mediterranean occupies an important role in the Decameron not only as a protagonist of many stories, but also as a structural element of the Novella genre. How does Boccaccio represent the Mediterranean? Who travels through the Mediterranean and why? Men and women cross the sea: did they chose to travel? Do these individual modify when and if they go home? The course intends to approach the Mediterranean as a network of knowledge: a mobile and hybrid space of exchanges and aims at following the journey of goods, men, women and stories as they cross the Mediterranean. Within this perspective a special attention is given to the narration of cities facing the Mediterranean, the Orient and otherness, pirates and slavery in the Decameron. In XIV Century, Boccaccio offers a faithful observatory of the medieval Mediterranean as a political and commercial network of exchanges: a chessboard regulated by piratery and politics from Genova to Alexandria of Egypt, from Armenia to Sicily and from Marseille to Cyprus and Crete. The Decameron narrates tales of the sea and the course intends to evoke those tales, voices of cities and cultures facing the Mediterranean.

Required Texts: G. Boccaccio, Decameron, a cura di V. Branca, Torino, Einaudi, 2005, ISBN-9788806177027 2 Voll.- Boccaccio geografo. A cura di R. Morosini, Firenze, Polistampa, 2010. – F. Cardini, Incontri (e scontri) mediterranei. Il Mediterraneo come spazio di contatto tra culture e religioni diverse, Salerno Editrice 2014