In Boccacio's Decameron, Cervigni sees a parodic echo of the circles of Dante's Divine Comedy, and asks whether Bocaccio envisions the voyage of the brigata as similar to Dante the Pilgrim's journey toward the center, first the abysmal center of Lucifer, then towards the highest center, God.

From Divine to Human is the sixteenth in a series of publications occasioned by the annual Bernardo Lecture at the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) at Binghamton University. This series offers public lectures which have been given by distinguished medieval and Renaissance scholars on topics and figures representative of these two important historical, religious, and intellectual periods.