This book examines Boccaccio's pivotal role in legitimizing the vernacular literature of Dante, Petrarch and Cavalcanti through argument, narrative and transcription.

Martin Eisner is Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at Duke University, North Carolina.

Introduction: Boccaccio between Dante and Petrarch: cultivating vernacular literary community in the Chigi codex; 1. Dante's dirty feet and the limping republic: Boccaccio's defense of literature in the Vita di Dante; 2. Dante's shame and Boccaccio's paratextual praise: editing the Vita nuova, Commedia, and canzoni distese; 3. The making of Petrarch's vernacular Book of Fragments (Fragmentorum liber); 4. The inventive scribe: glossing Cavalcanti in the Chigi and Decameron 6.9; Epilogue: the allegory of the vernacular: Boccaccio's Esposizioni and Petrarch's Griselda.