"In this invaluable study, Kristina Olson offers the first comprehensive treatment of the Decameron's numerous, and strategically placed, 'political' novellas. Olson persuasively reinscribes the merchant/aristocrat opposition through which the Decameron has long been read in terms of a more nuanced battle between 'avarice' and 'cortesia,' where partisan politics is ideally sublimated into personal ethics. In its wise insistence upon the intersections of literary, political, and social history in the Decameron, Courtesy Lost points out genuinely new and important possibilities for developing our understanding of Boccaccio's cultural project." -- Albert Russell Ascoli, Terrill Distinguished Professor of Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley "Courtesty Lost presents a compelling and novel account of how Boccaccio used Dante as the source material for his own formulation of Florentine and Italian political history. What is most satisfying about this study is the way the author ably and repeatedly moves between the three principal texts: Dante's Commedia, Boccaccio's Decameron, and his Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante." -- Jason Houston, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, University of Oklahoma

In Courtesy Lost, Kristina M. Olson analyses the literary impact of the social, political, and economic transformations of the fourteenth century through an exploration of Dante’s literary and political influence on Boccaccio. The book reveals how Boccaccio rewrote the past through the lens of the Commedia, torn between nostalgia for elite families in decline and the need to promote morality and magnanimity within the Florentine Republic.

By examining the passages in Boccaccio’s Decameron, De casibus, and Esposizioni in which the author rewrites moments in Florentine and Italian history that had also appeared in Dante’s Commedia, Olson illuminates the ways in which Boccaccio expressed his deep ambivalence towards the political and social changes of his era. She illustrates this through an analysis of Dante’s and Boccaccio’s treatments of the idea of courtesy, or cortesia, in an era when the chivalry of the declining aristocracy was being supplanted by the civility of the rising merchant classes.

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“Employing a theoretically diverse methodology and careful attention to historical detail, Olson offers new insights on the relationship between Dante and Boccaccio, the social and literary culture of 14th-centuiry Italy, and the increasing tensions between the aristocracy and the rising middle class.”

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‘In this interesting study, Olson offers new insights on the relationship between Dante and Boccaccio, the social and literary culture of 14th-century Italy, and the increasing tensions between the aristocracy and the rising middle class.’

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‘An enjoyable and very informative work… This book would be an indispensable addition to any medievalist’s library.’

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‘Olson’s daring and intelligent book on the whole is stimulating and innovative.’