Reading for atmosphere: pleasure, lyric, and community in the cornice of Boccaccio’s Decameron

Journal article

Abstract:: In dialogue with recent critical studies on atmosphere and its relationship to aesthetics, this article analyses the ballate of the Decameron in the context of their setting within the frame tale, focusing on the relationship forged between lyric, pleasure, and community among the brigata. Reading the lyrics of the cornice for atmosphere – that is, with attention to the collective experience associated with their performance and their embeddedness in the wider environment Boccaccio describes – enables a shift of perspective from what a particular song may mean to the effect it creates within an affective assemblage of voices and bodies, both human and non-human, and their interactions. Further dimensions discussed include the pleasures of lyric practice relative to that of storytelling, lyric’s role in forming and sustaining community, and the extent to which the ballate imply or resist discrete subjectivities within the brigata.

Files:: Southerden_2025_Reading_for_atmosphere.pdf

(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 3.3MB, Terms of use)

Copyright holder:: Francesca Southerden
Rights statement:: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which thisarticle has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record