Abstract
This article discusses Pier Paolo Pasolini's cinematic adaptation of Boccaccio's Decameron. Taking as a point of departure the issue of filmmaking by the book, as it has developed among scholars in the field of film studies, the article addresses the issue of Pasolini's strategy for the construction of authorship through his Decameron. In particular, the article takes up and develops Patrick Rumble's reflections on Pasolini's choice to replace Boccaccio's narrative frame with a kind of cinematic frame, constituted by the presence of two main characters: Ciappelletto and Giotto. Through the analysis of specific episodes of the movie and of Pasolini's own script of the Decameron, the article concludes that the strategiy of the “cornice” both works as a means for the construction of Pasolini's own authority and allows a masochistic process, in Pasolini's Decameron and in his entire career, to emerge.
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