Daniela D'Eugenio, assistant professor of Italian, will initiate the University of Alabama's five-part seminar series "Comic Relief: Making the Best of Things in the Italian Tradition." D'Eugenio's talk, titled "The Hopeless Tricked and the Clever Trickster from Boccaccio to Basile," will take place via Zoom at 4 p.m. CDT Friday, Sept. 18. For information on D'Eugenio's presentation, see her abstract below.

To register, please visit the series website. Medieval and early modern Italian literary texts include abundant tricks, usually played by clever people on simple-minded victims for amusement or profit. What makes a series of actions a trick? Are tricks only comic or can they cause tragic consequences? How does the interaction between the trickster and the tricked develop throughout the story and how is a larger community involved?