Recent Graduate Wins National Essay Contest
With Paper Written in Bryn Mawr Italian Course

At its annual convention in Washington, D.C., the American Association of Teachers of Italian recognized Molly Leonard '07 as one of just four winners in its nationwide essay contest.

Leonard's winning paper, titled "Deducing Fiammetta: Reading (Too Much) Into Boccaccio's Decameron," was originally written for a course on Petrarch and Boccaccio taught by Professor and Chair of Italian Nicholas Patruno. Patruno, a member of the AATI, nominated it for the award.  

"The Decameron is a collection of stories told by different narrators," Leonard explains. "There are 10 characters, and each character tells 10 stories. Professor Patruno asked us to examine all of the stories told by one character and analyze the character on the basis of the stories.  

"The character I chose, Fiammetta, is said to be based on a historical figure. Many of the stories she tells in the Decameron deal with adultery, deception and sexual coercion, and she presents them as cheerful stories with happy endings. The way she is characterized strikes me as deeply misogynistic, and I did a feminist analysis of the character."  

"In her elegantly written paper, Molly, with her close examination of the character of the storyteller Fiammetta, makes a very persuasive argument that Boccaccio shows his misogynistic attitude, despite his claim that his Decameron is intended to comfort and entertain women," says Patruno. "Molly's paper sheds some interesting new light on an old subject, thus inviting the reader to take a closer look at Boccaccio's supposedly innovative view of society."

Leonard, a native of Rochester, N.Y., graduated last May with an A.B. in classics and is now in her first semester of law school at the University of Toronto. She plans to make Canada her home, and she hopes to help others do the same as an immigration lawyer.  

Having worked for the past two summers at a Rochester law firm that practices in the field, she thinks she has a pretty good grasp of the practical, day-to-day realities of the work.  

"This area of law appeals to me because it offers some of the security of corporate law, but I can still do good work for individuals. People who practice immigration law typically have many, many petitions in process all the time, so there are little successes all the time. It feels great to help with a process that benefits everybody involved: it's good for the immigrant, it's good for the sponsor who is bringing the immigrant into the country, and it's good for Canada."  

Studying languages, Leonard says, was useful in ways that go beyond helping her understand the difficulties many immigrants face in achieving competency in a new language.  

"Language study helps you learn to organize your thoughts," she says. "You learn to break things down into their constituent parts to understand them better, which is an important skill in legal analysis. Understanding Latin grammar, which is radically different from English grammar, was great training that really stretched my mental muscles."  

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