A Boccaccian Renaissance : Essays on the Early Modern Impact of Giovanni Boccaccio and His Works [1 ed.] 9780268105921, 9780268105891

Citation preview

A BoccAcciAn RenAissAnce

The William and Katherine Devers series in Dante and Medieval italian Literature Zygmunt G. Barański, Theodore J. cachey, Jr., and christian Moevs, editors Volume 17

A Boccaccian Renaissance: Essays on the Early Modern Impact of Giovanni Boccaccio and His Works • edited by Martin eisner and David Lummus

Volume 16

The Portrait of Beatrice: Dante, D. G. Rossetti, and the Imaginary Lady Fabio A. camilletti

Volume 15

Boccaccio’s Corpus: Allegory, Ethics, and Vernacularity

Volume 14

Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text

Volume 13

Interpreting Dante: Essays on the Traditions of Dante Commentary edited by Paola nasti and claudia Rossignoli

Volume 12

Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy • Dennis Looney

Volume 11

Dante’s commedia: Theology as Poetry and Matthew Treherne

Volume 10

Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition Zygmunt G. Barański and Theodore J. cachey, Jr.

Volume 9

The Ancient Flame: Dante and the Poets

Volume 8

Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy • Justin steinberg

Volume 7

Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture • Manuele Gragnolati

Volume 6

Understanding Dante

Volume 5

Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body

Volume 4

The Fiore and the Detto d’Amore: A Late 13th-Century Italian Translation of the Roman de la Rose, Attributable to Dante • Translated, with introduction and notes, by santa casciani and christopher Kleinhenz

•

•

James c. Kriesel

• •

sarah Mcnamer •

edited by Vittorio Montemaggi

•

•

•

edited by

Winthrop Wetherbee

John A. scott •

Gary P. cestaro

A B o ccAcc i A n R en A i s s A n c e Essays on the Early Modern Impact of Giovanni Boccaccio and His Works

Edited by

MARTin eisneR and

D AV i D L u M M u s

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

university of notre Dame Press notre Dame, indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu copyright © 2019 by the university of notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the united states of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: eisner, Martin, 1978– editor. | Lummus, David, editor. Title: A Boccaccian renaissance : essays on the early modern impact of Giovanni Boccaccio and his works / edited by Martin eisner and David Lummus. Description: notre Dame, indiana : university of notre Dame Press, [2019] | series: The William and Katherine Devers series in Dante and medieval italian literature ; volume 17 | includes bibliographical references and index. | identifiers: Lccn 2019011961 (print) | Lccn 2019016517 (ebook) | isBn 9780268105921 (pdf ) | isBn 9780268105914 (epub) | isBn 9780268105891 (hardback : alk. paper) | isBn 0268105898 (hardback : alk. paper) subjects: LcsH: Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313–1375—influence. | Literature, Modern—History and criticism. classification: Lcc PQ4284.5 (ebook) | Lcc PQ4284.5 .B63 2019 (print) | DDc 858/.109—dc23 Lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011961 Ó This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected]

A B o u T T H e W i LLi A M A n D K AT H eR i n e D eV eR s s eR i es i n DA n T e A n D M eD i eVA L i TA Li A n Li T eR AT u R e

The William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante studies at the university of notre Dame supports rare book acquisitions in the university’s John A. Zahm Dante collections, funds an annual visiting professorship in Dante studies, and supports electronic and print publication of scholarly research in the field. in collaboration with the Medieval institute at the university, the Devers program initiated a series dedicated to the publication of the most significant current scholarship in the field of Dante studies. in 2011 the scope of the series was expanded to encompass thirteenth- and fourteenth-century italian literature. in keeping with the spirit that inspired the creation of the Devers program, the series takes Dante and medieval italian literature as focal points that draw together the many disciplines and lines of inquiry that constitute a cultural tradition without fixed boundaries. Accordingly, the series hopes to illuminate this cultural tradition within contemporary critical debates in the humanities by reflecting both the highest quality of scholarly achievement and the greatest diversity of critical perspectives. The series publishes works from a wide variety of disciplinary viewpoints and in diverse scholarly genres, including critical studies, commentaries, editions, reception studies, translations, and conference proceedings of exceptional importance. The series enjoys the support of an international advisory board composed of distinguished scholars and is published regularly by the university of notre Dame Press. The Dolphin and Anchor device that appears on publications of the Devers series was used by the great humanist, grammarian, editor, and typographer Aldus Manutius (1449–1515), in whose 1502 edition of Dante (second issue) and all subsequent editions it appeared. The device illustrates the ancient proverb Festina lente, “Hurry up slowly.” Zygmunt G. Barański, Theodore J. cachey, Jr., and christian Moevs, editors

A DV i s o Ry

B oA R D

Albert Russell Ascoli, Berkeley Teodolinda Barolini, columbia Piero Boitani, Rome Patrick Boyde, cambridge Alison cornish, new york university claire Honess, Leeds christopher Kleinhenz, Wisconsin Giuseppe Ledda, Bologna simone Marchesi, Princeton Giuseppe Mazzotta, yale Lino Pertile, Harvard John A. scott, Western Australia

conTenTs

List of illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

introduction: Finding the Renaissance Boccaccio martin eisner and david lummus

xiii

PART 1. Boccaccio and Renaissance Humanism 1.

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism james hankins

2.

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata: Reading the Decameron in the Quattrocento timothy kircher

3

36

PART 2. Framing the Renaissance Boccaccio 3.

Poets Prefer company: Boccaccio’s Portraits and the Three crowns of Florence victoria kirkham

59

4.

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book: Boccaccio’s Pastoral Project jonathan combs-schilling

94

5.

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture: A new Model for the study of Biography rhiannon daniels

112

viii 6.

contents

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century italy: notes on niccolò Liburnio’s Delli Monti, Selve, Boschi and Giuseppe Betussi’s Genealogia de Gli Dei simon a. gilson

151

PART 3. Boccaccio in Renaissance italy 7.

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose michael sherberg

185

8.

“For instruction and benefit”: The Renaissance Boccaccio as Model of Language and Life brian richardson

202

9.

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae: italian comedy Receives Boccaccio’s Decameron (1486–1533) ronald l. martinez

222

PART 4. Boccaccio in Renaissance europe 10.

Boccaccio’s second Life in French: Anthoine Le Maçon’s Decameron and Marguerite de navarre’s Heptaméron marc schachter

253

11.

Boccaccio in the spanish Renaissance: Juan de Flores’s Grimalte y Gradisa ignacio navarrete

279

12.

Regendering Griselda on the London stage janet levarie smarr

293

contributors index

311 315

i L L u s T R AT i o n s

Dante alla Grotta di Tolmino, drawing by G. Derif and engraving by [Giacomo] Aliprandi, from Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia (udine, 1823), vol. 1: Inferno, facing p. 1 (851.15D192DVG vol. 1). Photo from David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke university. 60

FiGuRe 3.1.

Boccaccio in His Study, full-page, full-color illumination by an unknown artist, Rouen, early sixteenth c., in De casibus virorum illustrium, trans. Laurent de Premierfait, book 1, proem. (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale), Ms. Fr. 128, fol. 1r. Photo from Bibliothèque nationale, Paris. 61

FiGuRe 3.2.

Detail: Boccaccio, from Domenico castagno, Uomini famosi, 1449–51, detached fresco (Florence: Galleria degli uffizi). Photo from soprintendenza dei Beni Artistici, Florence, on Wikimedia commons.

63

Traditional Portraits of Boccaccio and Fiammetta in edward Hutton, Giovanni Boccaccio (London, 1910), frontispiece. Details from Andrea di Buonaiuto, Via Veritatis, 1360s, fresco, s. M. novella, Florence. inset: Francis MacManus, Boccaccio (London, 1947), jacket cover by c. L. Barringer.

64

Detail, Boccaccio, from Dante, Petrarch, Zanobi, Boccaccio, attrib. to niccolò Gerini, 1381/82–1406, fresco in a lunette, Palazzo del Proconsolo (Guild of the Judges and notaries), Florence. Photo courtesy of Massimo Gennari.

67

FiGuRe 3.3.

FiGuRe 3.4.

FiGuRe 3.5.

x

illustrations

Boccaccio, pen-and-ink drawing by Giovanni dal Ponte, 1450, in Boccaccio’s fiction work Corbaccio (Venice: Biblioteca Marciana), Ms. 10.127, fol. 47r. Photo from Biblioteca Marciana, Venice.

68

Six Tuscan Poets, oil on panel, by Giorgio Vasari, 1544 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis institute of Art), William Hood Dunwoody Fund 71.24. Photo from the Minneapolis institute of Art.

71

FiGuRe 3.6.

FiGuRe 3.7.

opening of the text. Filocolo (Venice: Gabriele and Filippo di Pietro, 1472), oxford, Bodleian Library, Holk. c. 2, fol. 1r. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the university of oxford. 125

FiGuRe 5.1.

opening of the text. Filocolo (Venice: Filippo di Pietro, 1481), cardiff, university Library, incunabula 42, fol. a2r. Reproduced with the kind permission of special collections and Archives, cardiff university.

126

end of the text, colophon, and opening of squarzafico’s Vita. Filocolo (Venice: Gabriele and Filippo di Pietro, 1472), oxford, Bodleian Library, Holk. c. 2, fol. 222r. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the university of oxford.

130

FiGuRe 5.2.

FiGuRe 5.3.

end of squarzafico’s Vita and five distichs. Filocolo (Milan: Domenico da Vespolate, 1476), oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. 2 Q 1.28, fol. y7r. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the university of oxford. 131

FiGuRe 5.4.

end of squarzafico’s Vita, colophon, and opening of the table of contents. Filocolo (Venice: Donino Pincio, 1503), oxford, Bodleian Library, 4 Delta 34, fol. n2v. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the university of oxford.

FiGuRe 5.5.

133

Title-page. Filocolo (Venice: Bernardino da Lesona, 1520), cardiff university Library, PQ4270.F5.B20, fol. Ú1r. Reproduced with the kind permission of special collections and Archives, cardiff university. 137

FiGuRe 5.6.

AcKnoWLeD GeMenTs

This book is a long time coming, and we would like to thank all of the contributors for their patience and belief in the value of this project. The ideas that inspired it were originally explored by a larger group of scholars at a conference organized by Albert Russell Ascoli and David Lummus on the campuses of the university of california, Berkeley, and stanford university between october 24 and 26, 2013. The editors would like to thank the participants in that conference and those who assisted the organizers, especially Linda Louie and nicole DeBenedictis. in the process of making this collection into a book, we owe a debt of gratitude to the editors of the Devers series for not giving up on us. The editorial staff of the university of notre Dame Press has furthermore been incredibly efficient, patient, and professional. our thanks go to them, especially eli Bortz, Matthew F. Dowd, Wendy McMillen, and Marilyn Martin. The careful work that Demetrio yocum put into the index is also very much appreciated. Finally, the editors would like to recognize the contribution of Albert Russell Ascoli, whose scholarly imagination motivated our collective inquiry into Boccaccio and the Renaissance.

xi

introduction Finding the Renaissance Boccaccio

m art in e is n e r an d dav i d lummus

The persistence of Petrarch’s association with the idea of the Renaissance is well established, from his rediscovery of cicero’s Letters to Atticus in Verona to the fashion for the Petrarchan lyric sequence that pervades the early modern period. Boccaccio’s equally wide-ranging influence on early modern thought and literature, however, has received considerably less attention.1 This volume aims to correct this imbalance by examining Boccaccio’s prevalent place in the period, from his articulation of new protoHumanist political ideals to the impact of his works on several genres in multiple languages. one reason for the absence of sustained attention to Boccaccio’s important position in the Renaissance is likely his own selfpresentation. Whereas Petrarch offers himself as a guide to others who want to pursue the path of poetry in his “coronation oration,” Boccaccio imagines his role in much less grand terms. in the introduction to Day Four of the Decameron, for example, he conceives of his fortune as similar to “fine dust in a whirlwind.” He writes: Per ciò che io non veggio che di me altro possa avvenire, che quello che della minuta polvere avviene, la quale, spirante turbo, o egli di xiii

xiv

A Boccaccian Renaissance

terra non la muove, o se la muove, la porta in alto, e spesse volte sopra le teste degli uomini, sopra le corone dei re e degli imperadori, e talvolta sopra gli alti palagi e sopra le eccelse torri la lascia; delle quali se ella cade, piú giú andar non può che il luogo onde levata fu. (4.intro.40)2 [For i do not see that anything can happen to me that is different from what happens to fine dust in a whirlwind. either it remains where it is on the ground, or if it is moved, it is carried aloft and often deposited on the heads of men, on the crowns of kings and emperors, sometimes even on high palaces and lofty towers, from which, if it falls, it cannot go lower than the place from which it was lifted up.]3 Thus does Boccaccio imagine his fate, with typical self-deprecation, as he evades the attacks of imagined critics. Boccaccio’s apparent lack of concern for the reception of his controversial masterpiece, of course, also evinces a preoccupation with his own posterity. He imagines himself as being ever present, if invisible, and as making a mark, if all but imperceptible, upon the world. Boccaccio’s vision prophesies the realities of the fortune of his works across europe—spread out like dust and sitting unobtrusively in high places—as mediated by translation, unacknowledged imitation, reanthologization, and censorship. The fiction that he built around himself as author of the Decameron and other works complicated his authority not only in his own time but also for his future readers. in his early works he was a lover drawn to write by a consuming passion and longing for the imaginary Fiammetta. in the Decameron he was a lovelorn man who had survived a bout of lovesickness thanks to the conversation of friends. He wrote in an “istilo umilissimo” [most humble style] for women and aimed low, positioning himself and his works in an inimitable place below the heights of great poetry (Dec. 4.intro.3).4 in his early Filocolo, too, he warns his work to steer clear of the haunts where the verses of Dante’s Comedy are sung: “né ti sia cura di volere essere dove i misurati versi del fiorentino Dante si cantino, il quale tu sì come piccolo servidore molto dei reverente seguire. . . . A te bisogna di volare abasso, però che la bassezza t’è mezzana via.” [And don’t worry about wanting to be where the measured verses of the Florentine Dante

introduction

xv

are sung, that poet whom you must follow reverently like a lowly servant. . . . you need to fly low, because lowness is your middle way.] (Filocolo 5.97.6–7).5 or one could think of another passage from the introduction to Day Four of the Decameron, where he defends the source of his inspiration, real ladies instead of the Muses of Mount Parnassus: che io con le Muse in Parnaso mi debbia stare, affermo che è buon consiglio, ma tuttavia né noi possiam dimorare con le Muse né esse con esso noi; se quando avviene che l’uomo da lor si parte, dilettarsi di veder cosa che le somigli, questo non è cosa da biasimare. Le Muse son donne, e benché le donne quello che le Muse vagliono non vagliano, pure esse hanno nel primo aspetto simiglianza di quelle; sí che, quando per altro non mi piacessero, per quello mi dovrebber piacere. senza che le donne già mi fur cagione di comporre mille versi, dove le Muse mai non mi furon di farne alcun cagione. (intro.iV.35)6 [That i should dwell with the Muses on Parnassus is good counsel, i agree, but we cannot always live with the Muses, any more than they can live with us. And so, if a man sometimes happens to leave them, he is not to be blamed if he delights in seeing that which resembles them, for the Muses are women, and although women are not as worthy as the Muses, yet at first sight they do look like them, so that if they pleased me for no other reason, they should do so on this score. Besides, women have been the occasion of my composing a thousand lines of poetry, whereas the Muses never caused me to write anything.]7 These key moments of self-reference have given rise to critical stances toward Boccaccio’s works that, if we understand them literally and autobiographically, underestimate their sophistication and the importance of their reception by the Parnassus of italian literature. in his own words, Boccaccio and his works inhabit a sublunar realm in which value is shifting and unstable. He is no Dante. He is no Petrarch. indeed, even in his later Latin works, Boccaccio continued to fashion himself in a similarly modest way as Petrarch’s devout, if unworthy, student. At the beginning of his tome on myth, the Genealogie deorum gentilium, Boccaccio describes

xvi

A Boccaccian Renaissance

his most daring work as inevitably inferior to what Petrarch could have potentially produced. Petrarch, he writes, is “celesti ingenio preditus et perenni memoria” [endowed with a celestial talent and eternal memory], while he himself has a “ingenium tardum et fluxa memoria” [slow talent and a fluid memory] (Genealogie 1.Proem.20–21).8 in each case, we could read his self-deprecation literally, as an admission of some sort of lack in the face of someone else’s greatness, whether that of Dante or that of Petrarch. The persistence of this modest stance across his career, however, suggests that it is a sophisticated way of differentiating his efforts from those of Dante and of Petrarch and the poets of a new Parnassus. Given Boccaccio’s self-representation and presentation of his works as lowly, it is no wonder that his imprint on posterity has been distorted, especially within a literary historical tradition that took him at his word.9 The fact that Boccaccio was the mastermind behind the canonization of Dante and Petrarch as having written works at the core of a Florentine literary tradition has also contributed to his invisibility in the Renaissance. Boccaccio hid himself in the authorization of others.10 Furthermore, in his cultural project he was perhaps the closest of the three crowns of Florence to the generations that immediately followed.11 His rehabilitation of Dante and Petrarch as Florentines, the co-presence of Latin and vernacular in his oeuvre, the enthusiasm he showed for Greek and his engagement in learning it, and his dedication to the Florentine republic are just a few of the elements that link him to Renaissance Humanists. During the earliest period of his reception, then, Boccaccio did not demand the same kind of attention as the other two crowns, whose absence from Florence and often difficult ideological positions required explanation and rehabilitation within the Florentine context. The relative silence of his immediate heirs, combined with Boccaccio’s own humble self-representation, perhaps led to the haphazard reception of his works in the later Renaissance, which often found more to censor than to imitate. one thing that these Humanists shared with later Renaissance thinkers was an appreciation of Boccaccio’s prose, especially in the Decameron. Boccaccio clearly represented the best of vernacular eloquence, even if it was employed for an ethically questionable erotics.12 Being the best at prose, however, could also be considered faint praise if it is taken to mean (as it was) that he was inconsequential as a poet. early critical approaches to Boccaccio’s works, focusing on the Decameron, found in Boccaccio’s more licentious content the beginnings of

introduction

xvii

the secularization of culture associated with modernity.13 in response to this tradition that paid little respect to the historical context of the work’s creation and saw in Boccaccio’s Decameron a precursor to early modern hedonism and skepticism, new approaches were formulated to historicize Boccaccio’s works and to etch out a place for him in italian literary history on his own terms. Vittore Branca’s influential formulation of a medieval Boccaccio, author of a “mercantile epic,” must be seen in this light,14 as must Francesco Bruni’s idea of Boccaccio as the inventor of a “middling literature” (letteratura mezzana) that fell between courtly evasion and classicizing engagement.15 For Branca, Boccaccio sat firmly in a medieval world, looking neither forward nor backward. He was timely and representative of his contemporary world. For Bruni, however, he was neither medieval nor Renaissance, but rather in-between. He mediated the two different worldviews that form the two main stages of his writing, before and after the Decameron. Both approaches see this division in Boccaccio’s career in relation to a nostalgic dedication to Dante and to a reverence for Petrarch that brought about a complete change in perspective. only a certain brand of Boccaccio is functional for the ideal literary history constructed by these critics: a medieval Boccaccio who transformed the fabliaux and exempla of the medieval world into the updated literary form of the novella and paved the way for early modern short-form fiction. The study of Boccaccio’s impact on early modernity has been stymied to a certain extent by the ideologies behind the creation of an italian national literary history. Although Boccaccio’s influence on the italian prose tradition is undeniable, there was far more to his impact than merely his masterpiece’s status as a stylistic and linguistic model. Although it is right to situate Boccaccio firmly within a medieval worldview that was in a phase of social and epistemological transition, the teleological tendencies of literary history should not blind us to Boccaccio’s uncanny modernity or to the problems and opportunities that his work offered future generations of readers.16 Recent scholarship on Boccaccio, in fact, has become increasingly aware of the unity of Boccaccio’s ideology across his career and subsequently of its independence from that of the other two crowns.17 Decoupling Boccaccio from the expectations of a predetermined literary history has allowed for a reappraisal not only of the novelty of Boccaccio’s works but also of his role in formulating the questions that would obsess early modern writers.

xviii

A Boccaccian Renaissance

in the critical space that has been created in the flurry of scholarship around the seven hundredth anniversary of Boccaccio’s birth in 2013, we can reconsider the question of whether there is a Boccaccism lurking unacknowledged in the pages of early modern writers akin to the universally recognized european Petrarchism. We can look to the Humanists of Renaissance italy in search of their relationship to Boccaccio’s worldview. We can return to his works and ask without our tongues in our cheeks what kinds of “modernity” Boccaccio himself represents in his various works and how Renaissance authors received him as an author and his works as authoritative. This volume brings together essays from several critical and disciplinary perspectives to respond to the question of Boccaccio’s impact on early modern literature and culture in italy and europe. The essays build on papers that were originally delivered at a conference held in 2013 at the university of california, Berkeley, and at stanford university, organized by Albert R. Ascoli and David Lummus. The goal of the volume is to explore the figure and works of Giovanni Boccaccio from the point of view of early modernity to establish the limits of Boccaccio’s own modernity and to trace it into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. not only did Boccaccio’s Decameron  exert a strong influence on italian and european fiction in the Renaissance; his vernacular romances, alongside his Latin mythography, historiography, and bucolic poetry, experienced a lasting success well into the sixteenth century. Looking beyond his own source material, the essays collected here investigate how Boccaccio himself became a source and came to terms with what it meant to follow a Boccaccian model. While scholars have examined how Boccaccio’s Decameron served as a model both in italy, where it inspired sacchetti’s Trecentonovelle and Basile’s Cunto de li cunti, and abroad, where one thinks of well-known adaptations such as chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Marguerite de navarre’s Heptaméron, these essays also excavate the presence of some of Boccaccio’s less familiar works in different fields, including political theory, pastoral poetry, grammar, and theater.18 The volume opens with a section that examines the novelty of distinct elements of Boccaccio’s cultural project and their impact during the first century after Boccaccio’s death. in the opening chapter, James Hankins explores Boccaccio’s place in early modern political thought, with particular attention to his De casibus virorum illustrium and its relationship to later Humanist reflections. Hankins’s focus is on the nature of

introduction

xix

Boccaccio’s conception of virtue in human behavior and its manifestation in the state. Drawing attention to Boccaccio’s several civic responsibilities beginning in the 1350s, this chapter reveals a facet of Boccaccio’s thought that, although it has not drawn the attention of modern scholars, nonetheless shaped future discussions of the relationship between virtue and political power. While Hankins is careful to underline the presence of the more traditional features of Boccaccio’s thinking, what emerges from his analysis is a new appreciation for Boccaccio’s significance as a political thinker. in the second chapter in this section, Timothy Kircher reflects on how Renaissance Humanists perceived and imitated Boccaccio’s dialogic imagination in the Decameron. After a review of the lukewarm reception of Boccaccio’s vernacular prose, principally the Decameron, among fifteenth-century Humanists, he argues that writers as diverse as Leonardo Bruni, Leon Battista Alberti, and Poggio Bracciolini could find in the Decameron hermeneutical questions about the nature of the truth. Despite their differences, these men shared with Boccaccio a preoccupation with hypocrisy and deception. Attracted by Boccaccio’s narrative genius, they come closest to the dialogic and diegetic complexity of the Decameron in dialogues like Bruni’s Dialogi ad Petrum Istrum, Alberti’s Theogenius, and Bracciolini’s Contra hypocritas, but his narrative imagination is also lurking in the shadows of works like Alberti’s Intercenales or Bracciolini’s Facetiae. For Kircher, Boccaccio was the forerunner of these Humanists inasmuch as he represented meaning as unfolding in time, through language, and in the shifting relationships between speakers. Kircher’s reflection leads us to see how Boccaccio’s project was far closer to those of the Florentine Humanists than even they themselves would have ever admitted. The second section turns to examine the ways in which Boccaccio himself represented his works and how they were presented to a Renaissance readership visually, materially, and linguistically. Victoria Kirkham begins this section with a survey of early depictions of the “Three crowns” of Florence, showing how Boccaccio’s representation alongside Petrarch and Dante is interwoven with developing notions of the Florentine cultural and literary canon. included in this chapter is a chronologically organized appendix of portraits and descriptions of the Three crowns of Florence between 1350 and 1600. Jonathan combs-schilling’s chapter

xx

A Boccaccian Renaissance

examines Boccaccio’s “pervasive yet transgressive engagement with pastoral,” from the first eclogues in the vernacular that he includes in the Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine through the Ninfale fiesolano, Decameron, and Buccolicum carmen. scrutinizing Boccaccio’s remarkably wide-ranging deployment of the genre, combs-schilling argues that Boccaccio’s entire literary project can be seen in the light of pastoral, which is the privileged place of his literary experiments. combs-schilling develops this claim through close readings of three pastoral dialogues, one from the Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine and two from Buccoliucm carmen, where Boccaccio’s reflections on the pastoral genre are particularly prevalent. in the next chapter of this section, Rhiannon Daniels examines the material reception of early modern biographies of Boccaccio, highlighting their close connection to new editions of Boccaccio’s works and how they reflect shifting assessments of Boccaccio’s status. Her chapter pays particular attention to Girolamo squarzafico’s biography, which first appeared in a 1472 edition of Boccaccio’s Filocolo and was reproduced several times, so that it became the standard account of Boccaccio’s life in the period. emphasizing that the biography was originally produced to accompany Boccaccio’s work, Daniels situates it in the context of contemporary biographies to reveal the distinctive features of squarzafico’s account and analyzes the significance of its material layouts. simon Gilson concludes this part of the volume with a case study of translations of Boccaccio’s popular Humanist works Genealogie deorum gentilium and De montibus. He shows how Boccaccio’s Latin works circulated not only among the Humanists in Latin but also through vernacular translations that shaped the mythological imagination of non-Latinate literary and artistic circles. A close examination of two sixteenth-century vernacularizations offers a detailed account of the cultural context in which these works were produced. it also includes Betussi’s dedicatory letter for the Genealogie as an appendix. The third section of the volume presents different examples of how Boccaccio became a model in spite of, or perhaps because of, the controversial nature of the content of his Decameron. so much of Boccaccio’s fortuna in early modern italy was linked to Pietro Bembo’s choice of Boccaccio’s language in the Decameron as an ideal model for literary prose. While superficially this might seem to have ensured for Boccaccio the pride of place in Tuscan prose—a position that earlier Humanists also

introduction

xxi

gave him—a deeper reading of the matter shows that Bembo’s operation also carried dire consequences for Boccaccio’s work. in the first chapter of this section, Michael sherberg puts Bembo’s Boccaccism to the test by arguing that the qualified praise of Boccaccio in Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua put the Decameron “on the path to disaster” inasmuch as this work showed the same misgivings about the content of the Decameron and the moral judgement of its author that would lead to its condemnation on the index of Prohibited Books in 1559. in the second chapter of this italy-centered section, Brian Richardson examines how three kinds of readers (editors, grammarians, and lexicographers) engaged with the Decameron in the period after 1525, concluding with the fate of the book after its placement on the index. Despite the Bembian effort to make the Decameron a model for the prose of his time, its editors often sought just as much to adapt Boccaccio’s usage to their own conventions and, in several instances, rejected the reading of what we now know to be an autograph copy of the Decameron. The linguistic engagement with Boccaccio’s text was accompanied by a desire to make use of it for life. editors and readers applied an increasingly heavy hand to the content of Decameron in order to adapt it to the moral codes of the age. This form of engagement proved far more difficult to manage than the linguistic one. if Renaissance editors of the text took advantage of its problematic diffusion to update many of Boccaccio’s stranger modes of writing, the early Reformation censors so completely updated the moral messages of the book that by the end of the century a priest could publish without irony a Spiritual Decameron. in the third chapter of this section, Ronald L. Martinez shows how Boccaccio became the vernacular source of choice for the content of plays of the comedia erudita, alongside classical sources like Apuleius. Playwrights combined Boccaccian content with the comic structures of Plautus and Terrence, often imitating Boccaccio imitating Apuleius or other classical sources such as elegiac comedies. specifically, Martinez traces the prehistory of Boccaccio’s established place as the source for plays by Ariosto, Bibbiena, and Machiavelli in analyses of the contamination of classical and Boccaccian sources in texts by Piccolomini, Mantovano, del carretto, and Accolti. These three chapters together demonstrate how Boccaccio’s Decameron was attractive to writers in some circles for the same reasons it was problematic to readers in others.

xxii

A Boccaccian Renaissance

The chapters in the final section of the volume take up the question of Boccaccio’s influence on literature beyond the italian peninsula. in the first foray beyond the Alps, Marc schachter investigates Boccaccio’s mercurial place in the Renaissance historiography of Burckhardt, Michelet, and sainte-Beuve. His chapter reveals the almost immediate and sustained reception of Boccaccio among French authors beginning in the early fifteenth century and shows how Boccaccio’s works were transformed in French translations and adaptations. He argues that these transformations reflect twin anxieties about italian cultural influence and the adequacy of French, which he finds manifest in a French translation of the final story of Day Five of the Decameron. in his contribution, ignacio navarrete demonstrates the extent of Boccaccio’s popularity in Renaissance spain in a close analysis of his presence in Juan de Flores’s sentimental novel Grimalte y Gradisa. Based on Boccaccio’s Elegia di Madonna Fiametta, de Flores’s novel not only stages the reading of Boccaccio’s work within it but also has the Boccaccian characters Fiammetta and Panfilo interact with its protagonists. The spanish adaptation, which navarrete shows to be a metaliterary tour de force, establishes its own characters’ actions as an interpretative gloss on Boccaccio’s original, which explores reading and writing as acts of desire. in the final chapter, Janet Levarie smarr shows how the ethical questions surrounding gender and class relations in the Decameron continue to provide inspiration even in works that are great-grandchildren or third cousins of the Decameronian original. she offers a comparative analysis of two early seventeenth-century versions of the story of Griselda and Walter, thrice-removed from the original: The Pleasant Comedie of Patient Grissil, by Thomas Dekker, Henry chettle, and William Haughton, and The Honest Whore, Part 1, by Dekker and Thomas Middleton. in both plays, Dekker and his collaborators change the gender of Griselda for varying effect, even if the ultimate reason seems to be to test whether Griselda’s patience is a virtue that can become masculine and thus be applicable to all of humanity. These last three chapters show how Boccaccio’s texts and characters take on veritable lives of their own after they have been extricated from the ideological context of the italian literary canon. The text no longer needs an author in order to survive on its own; it becomes autonomous in the community of readers and raconteurs that it has created.

introduction

xxiii

The chapters in this volume collectively show how complex and far-reaching Boccaccio’s impact was on the readers and writers of early modern europe. individually, each chapter provides a new approach to questions that have heretofore either gone unexplored or to commonplaces that have been left unquestioned. They also leave signs of how much work still needs to be done and from what perspective that work must begin. if we are to find the Renaissance Boccaccio, we first have to know how to look for him. noTes

1. on Petrarch’s place in the historiography of the Renaissance, see Martin eisner, “in the Labyrinth of the Library: Petrarch’s cicero, Dante’s Virgil, and the Historiography of the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 67 (2014): 755–90. For studies of Petrarch’s influence as a poetic model, see William J. Kennedy, Authorizing Petrarch (ithaca, ny: cornell university Press, 1994); The Site of Petrarchism: Early Modern Sentiment in Italy, France, and England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins university Press, 2003); Petrarchism at Work: Contextual Economies in the Age of Shakespeare (ithaca, ny, and London: cornell university Press, 2016). 2. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca (Turin: einaudi, 1992), 469–70. 3. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, trans. Wayne A. Rebhorn (new york: W. W. norton, 2013), 306. 4. Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Branca, 460. if no source for a translation is indicated, then it is our own. 5. Giovanni Boccaccio, Filocolo, ed. Antonio enzo Quaglio, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 10 vols., ed. Vittore Branca, vol. 1, 46–675 (Milan: Mondadori, 1967), 674. 6. Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Branca, 467–68. 7. Boccaccio, Decameron, trans. Rebhorn, 305. 8. Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogie Deorum Gentilium, ed. Vittorio Zaccaria, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 10 vols., ed. Vittore Branca, vols. 7–8, 11–1813 (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), 20–21. 9. Boccaccio’s biographers from the fifteenth century onward have tended to understand his autofictions and rhetorical self-fashioning in literal terms. For Vittore Branca and Giuseppe Billanovich, this meant that Boccaccio was Petrarch’s most devoted disciple. For Amedeo Quondam and Francisco Rico, this means that Boccaccio was Petrarch’s most incapable follower. For a more detailed review of these positions, see Lummus, “Review essay: Boccaccio,” Medieval

xxiv

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Review 14.02.01 (February 2014). https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php /tmr/article/view/18509. 10. This argument is advanced at length in Martin eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature: Dante, Petrarch, Cavalcanti and the Authority of the Vernacular (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2013). on Boccaccio’s role in canonizing Dante, see also Jason M. Houston, Building a Monument to Dante: Boccaccio as Dantista (Toronto: university of Toronto Press, 2010). 11. This idea is suggested in Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Hellenism and the Foundations of Modernity,” Mediaevalia 33 (2012): 101–67 (154–55 n 5); eisner, “in the Labyrinth of the Library: Petrarch’s cicero, Dante’s Virgil, and the Historiography of the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 3 (2014): 755–90 (780–82); and Lummus, “Placing Petrarch’s Legacy: The Politics of Petrarch’s Tomb and Boccaccio’s Last Letter,” Renaissance Quarterly 71, no. 2 (2017): 435–73 (470). 12. on how Boccaccio’s erotic poetics were received in the Renaissance, an important point of reference is James c. Kriesel, “chastening the corpus: Bembo and the Renaissance Reception of Boccaccio,” Italianist 31, no. 3 (2011): 367–91. 13. see De sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana, 6th ed., vol. 1 (naples: Morano, 1893), 287–357. De sanctis most clearly expresses this idea of a modern Boccaccio when he writes of Boccaccio: “L’autore volge le spalle al medio evo e inizia la letteratura moderna. Di un mondo mistico-teologico-scolastico non è più alcun vestigio. oramai tocchiamo terra: siamo in cospetto dell’uomo e della natura.” [The author turns his back on the Middle Ages and begins modern literature. There is no more trace of a mystical-theological-scholastic world. We have by now touched ground: we are in the presence of man and of nature.] (317) 14. see Branca, Boccaccio medievale e nuovi studi sul Decamerone (Florence: sansoni, 1981), which is an expanded edition of his original 1956 collection of essays on Boccaccio. Recently the examination and interpretation of the manuscript tradition of the Decameron by Marco cursi has led to a re-evaluation and reversal of Branca’s idea of the Decameron as a mercantile epic that was immediately popular among a middle-class reading public. of cursi’s extensive paleographic work on Boccaccio, see especially Il Decameron: Scritture, scriventi, lettori; Storia di un testo (Rome: Viella, 2007). 15. see Bruni, Boccaccio: L’invenzione della letteratura mezzana (Bologna: il Mulino, 1990) and the illuminating review of this book by Victoria Kirkham, “Boccaccio: L’invenzione della letteratura mezzana; Francesco Bruni,” Speculum 68, no. 1 ( January 1993): 113–16, whose translation of Bruni’s title we have borrowed. 16. A major twentieth-century example of an approach that portrays Boccaccio’s medieval heritage as the key to his modernity is Giuseppe Mazzotta, The World at Play in Boccaccio’s Decameron (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 1986). More recently, a heightened awareness of the novelty of Boccaccio’s

introduction

xxv

medievalism also informs James c. Kriesel, Boccaccio’s Corpus: Allegory, Ethics, and Vernacularity (notre Dame, in: university of notre Dame Press, 2018). 17. Two demonstrative examples of this tendency in Anglophone approaches to Boccaccio are Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham, Michael sherberg, and Janet Levarie smarr (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2013), and The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, ed. Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels, and stephen J. Milner (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2015). 18. For some other recent attempts to address Boccaccio’s influence beyond the novella, see Johannes Bartuschat, ed., Boccace à la Renaissance: Lectures, traductions, influences en Italie et en France (Grenoble: Gerci, 2008); Gian Mario Anselmi, Giovanni Baffetti, carlo Delcorno, and sebastiana nobili, eds., Boccaccio e i suoi lettori: Una lunga ricezione (Bologna: Mulino, 2013); and Antonio Ferracin and Matteo Venier, eds., Giovanni Boccaccio: Tradizione, interpretazione e fortuna: In ricordo di Vittore Branca (udine: Forum, 2014).

PART 1 Boccaccio and Renaissance Humanism

cHAPTeR 1

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism ja me s han kins

For there is none of you so mean and base That hath not noble lustre in your eyes. —Shakespeare, Henry V

someone who wishes to learn about Boccaccio’s political thought and situate it amid the varied strands of political reflection in late medieval and Renaissance europe faces several obstacles at the outset. one is that Boccaccio simply has never been taken seriously by historians of political thought, especially in anglophone scholarship. There are, to take some key examples, only a couple of passing references to him in Quentin skinner’s canonical Foundations of Modern Political Thought and none at all in the relevant volume of The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought. it hasn’t helped that Boccaccio’s political ideas are developed at greatest length in the De casibus virorum illustrium, a text written in awkward and often obscure Latin and deploying considerably less narrative charm than the Decameron.1 Another obstacle is the persistent classification of 3

4

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Boccaccio as a “medieval” writer, most famously in Vittore Branca’s Boccaccio medievale, but the same conceptual framework is found in the writings of Giuseppe Billanovich and other postwar scholars as well.2 This classification has been reinforced, for the history of political thought, by the modern historiographical tradition, which emphasizes republican liberty and civic humanism as the central themes of humanist political thought. That interpretation was first laid out by Hans Baron and eugenio Garin in the middle decades of the twentieth century and corrected and elaborated by John Pocock, Quentin skinner, and other writers after them.3 it is still, broadly speaking, the consensus view. Among other things, the Baronian interpretation sees the origins of Renaissance political thought in the “crisis” years around 1402, when the folklore of the popular medieval commune was fused, in Florence, with the learned but politically quietist traditions of Petrarchan humanism, creating a new, hybrid political tradition Baron labeled “civic humanism.” This understanding of Renaissance political thought, it will be seen, places Boccaccio on the “medieval” side of Baron’s crisis date of 1402. it my goal in this chapter to approach Boccaccio’s political thought with a fresh eye, set aside the consensus view, and apply, as far as our horizons of thought permit, empirical tests to the task of situating Boccaccio. in it i will try to clarify how various remarks of a political tenor in Boccaccio’s works relate to the principal written traditions or discourses characteristic of late medieval and Renaissance italy. The three principal traditions are (1) scholasticism, that is, the formal political discussions of politics coming from the arts, theology and law faculties of medieval universities; (2) a courtly and communal literature, mostly in the volgare, on the art of ruling, the virtues of the ideal prince or magistrate, and the nature of good government; and (3) the writings of the early italian humanists, beginning with Mussato and Petrarch, mostly written in Latin. This third tradition or discourse is to some degree an elaboration of the second, but it also breaks new ground in various ways, becoming immensely more analytical, more historically informed, and more “secular” in the medieval sense of the word, that is, concerned with the temporal rather than the eternal ends of human society. My contention in this chapter will be that, though there may be certain elements of his political thought reflecting the scholastic, courtly, and communal discourses of late medieval italy, Boccaccio is best classified as a representative of Renaissance humanism.4

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

5

in situating Boccaccio this way, i begin, not from the consensus view of humanist political thought, but from my own interpretation, based, if i may be allowed to say so, on a much broader evidentiary base than the consensus view, including some hundreds of formal treatises, histories, orations, letters, dialogues, dramatic works, and so on, that touch on politics, written by humanists, mostly in Latin, between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.5 My own interpretation of humanist political thought does not attach any particular importance to the year 1402 and in this way opens up the possibility of taking Boccaccio’s political thought seriously and aligning him primarily with the humanist approach to political philosophy. Let me briefly outline the main features of my interpretation. My chief claim concerns the central theme of humanist political theory. That theme is not “republican liberty,” as has been assumed by many influential modern authorities. The kind of liberty enjoyed by citizens under popular regimes is praised by some humanists, including important ones like Leonardo Bruni and Bartolomeo scala, but this is a minority view overall and tends to emerge mostly in Florence and in specific, often propagandistic, contexts. Most humanists do not embrace what has been called the “non-domination” model of liberty, which goes back in some respects to the Romans and was revived in the popular commune of the thirteenth century.6 Generally, Renaissance humanists preferred what i would call the “philosophical” model of freedom, which sees freedom in terms of individual character, as a state supervening on the rational control of passions and appetites or as personal freedom of action delimited by justice and reason. only the virtuous merit freedom; in the humanist tradition, freedom is not usually considered a natural right.7 The humanist type of freedom, interior freedom, is compatible with voluntary obedience to a prince, and loss of moral liberty, that is, servility of character, can occur under any kind of regime. The belief that italian humanism, as a movement of thought, was centrally concerned with promoting popular or oligarchic regimes in preference to monarchical ones is, in my view, both false and anachronistic. it is an artifact of confirmation bias stemming from modern political interests and values. one reason for this mistaken view is that twentieth-century scholarship failed to appreciate that the word respublica did not acquire its modern meaning of “non-monarchical republic” until the middle of the fifteenth century. it did not specify a constitutional form before the 1440s,

6

A Boccaccian Renaissance

when Leonardo Bruni first used the word to translate politeia, Aristotle’s virtuous popular regime. For most Renaissance authors, the dominant sense of respublica remained “any virtuous regime that serves the common good and not particular interests.”8 it was a term of praise that could be claimed by any regime, whatever its constitution, just as the word “tyrannical” could be applied to popular, oligarchic, or princely regimes. Renaissance republicanism is, in my view, best understood as a movement to revive the moral principles of ancient government in general and does not necessarily advocate a particular type of regime or a particular understanding of political liberty. it is in this sense, too, that i would prefer to understand the term “civic humanism,” to the extent that that term remains useful. What is the central concern of humanist political theory, in my view, is the same question that animates Plato’s Republic and confucius’ Analects: how to produce wise and virtuous rulers and how to keep them from corruption once in power. The humanists saw virtue in the ruling class as the key to better government and the cure for corruption. in other words, they cared more about governors than governments, more about the morality of rulers than the legality of regimes. scholastic thinkers, by contrast, were primarily concerned with analytical issues such as the status and scope of politics in a fallen world, the correct juridical relations between church and state, the nature and extent of ecclesiastical authority, whether and how plenitude of power should be limited by consent or other means, the nature of law and the justifications for coercion, the moral status of property, and the legal and constitutional conditions that needed to be met for a government to be called legitimate.9 The humanists mostly ignored these questions. They changed the subject. While scholastic political thinkers were trained as lawyers and theologians, the humanists were teachers, diplomats, and administrators, men and women of letters, professionals in the language arts, and amateurs (in the best sense) of antiquity. They saw education and public eloquence as the most effective means to reform cities. it was believed that, if future elites were educated in the classics, if they immersed themselves in a world of thought and language populated by noble Greeks and Romans, they would absorb the values of that world. These values were thought to be superior, in secular matters, to those of the contemporary world and could be the basis for reforming it. By acquiring eloquence at

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

7

school, future leaders would also be able to articulate and promote pristine ancient virtue in modern circumstances. From the 1390s onward, humanists and their allies established an array of opportunities to speak in public—at funerals and weddings, at the beginnings of university courses and the terms of magistrates, at the beginnings and ends of wars, before battles, on diplomatic missions—and these occasions were used to persuade fellow members of the elite that ancient virtue and wisdom were the best guides to action. This was a kind of social technology: using praise and blame, shame and honor—eloquently expressed by respected figures—as a means of motivating fellow members of the ruling class. it involved persuasion by the use of admirable examples rather than coercion by laws and open force. The legal system in general was seen as venal and corrupt— and we remember here that many humanists, including Boccaccio, were failed lawyers. Hence humanists tended to regard what i call legitimacy of origins—inherited privilege, immemorial tradition, divine sanction— as unimportant; many of them, like Poggio or Guicciardini, maintained that all political power was violent and illegitimate in its origins. Like the modern chinese communist Party and its supporters, they did not want to think too much about where the power had come from and how it may have been used in the recent past. They saw prudent and just administration in the present, actuated by devotion to the common good, as the true source of legitimacy—what i call legitimacy of exercise. Virtue, in other words, was a necessary and sufficient claim to rule. As Giovanni nesi writes in his De moribus: “[Distributive justice is satisfied] when honors, ranks and other rewards and signs of virtue are so divided up in a state that everyone receives his due share, and those who deserve more distinction for service to the commonwealth are marked out with rewards of higher distinction, and those who excel others in virtue also excel the rest in authority. offices should be determined and ranks conferred in proportion to the merits and virtues of individual citizens.”10 if what has been said so far makes the humanists sound like elitists, confident in their own abilities and impatient with legal niceties, that impression is not a false one. But this does not mean that humanists in general were conservatives in the sense of “supporters of the status quo.” in fact, the humanists were in one respect quite radical, and that was in their insistence that any sociopolitical hierarchy be justifiable in moral terms. This radicalism is expressed in their insistence on merit as

8

A Boccaccian Renaissance

the basis for all claims to rule. Ancestry and hereditary privilege alone were not enough. The humanists made this point obsessively throughout their writings, most visibly in their treatises on true nobility, which, as Paul oskar Kristeller noted long ago, were far more numerous and widely circulated than their treatment of any other theme.11 The humanists’ goal was to open up the ranks of the political elite to those who were truly virtuous, not merely noble by descent, and to force noblemen to compete for power on the terrain of virtue. For some humanists, like Francesco Patrizi, even merchants and tradesmen and others of low position could and should participate in government provided that they were virtuous— government was not just for aristocrats and princes. The idea of a mercantile elite participating in political life was truly radical from the point of view of ancient political theory. The need for princes and other leading figures to acquire virtue was, to be sure, the central theme of the mirrorof-princes treatise, a form of literature that goes back to the early middle ages.12 What was new with the humanists was the idea of meritocracy, the idea that virtuous character was not merely desirable in princes but also a condition of exercising power in general. Furthermore, merit could be acquired by anyone, of any class, through an education in classical literature and philosophy. in this way the humanists introduced an entirely new concept of equality: equality in the capacity to be virtuous and therefore, potentially, in the right to rule. in an era in which the privileges of nobility were increasingly defined by law in terms of descent and it was common to believe that noblemen and noblewomen excelled commoners morally and intellectually thanks to superior breeding, most humanists, with only a few exceptions, insisted that the capacity for virtue could be found in all ranks of society and that ruling elites should be open to excellence wherever it was to be found. Today it seems naïve or far-fetched to regard a classical education and the ability to speak well as somehow automatically productive of virtuous behavior in elites—though the idea would be less strange, say, in confucian china. But it should be remembered that the humanists expected that a classical education would be the beginning of a life spent in the company of the noble ancients, like Machiavelli on his farm near san casciano—or Boccaccio with his libriciuoli in certaldo. in particular, the humanists expected that deep study of the history, poetry, and moral philosophy of the ancients would provide the kind of perspective

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

9

needed for wise rulership. From Petrarch to Machiavelli and long afterward, history was studied with a view to providing vicarious experience and a lucid understanding of human character and of how power worked: a clear, empirical sense of what types of behavior led to what outcomes. The assumption was that there were underlying patterns in human affairs that replicated themselves over and over again. Learning these would give you the virtue of prudence. Moral philosophy, on the other hand, provided arguments. Those arguments were intended to fix true beliefs in the soul, giving it integrity and stable judgment, or to undermine the common but false beliefs that created human misery— beliefs like “Money will make you happy” or “you can win lasting respect without moral goodness.” The humanists believed that an education like this would make members of the elite think and act better than italy’s traditional rulers in towns and the countryside: well-armed landowners, or butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers whose names had been pulled at random out of leather bags. enough has now been said about the leading features of humanist political thought to situate Boccaccio’s various statements on political issues. These appear primarily in the De casibus, though there are also key passages in the consolatory letter to Pino de’Rossi, in the life of Dante, and in other places scattered throughout his works. Regarding Boccaccio’s own political commitments, it needs to be emphasized that despite his love of princely courts, especially the neapolitan court, and despite the frigid attitude toward Florence expressed in his famous letter (no. V) to niccolò Acciaiuoli, written just after his unwilling return to his native city in 1341,13 Boccaccio was, by the early 1350s, an active participant in the public life of his native city. He served frequently as a paid official of the republic. indeed, it could be said that, after his repeated failures during the 1340s to find a princely benefactor, the comune of Florence itself became, for a time in the early 1350s, Boccaccio’s most reliable patron.14 some of the relevant facts have been known for many years, but our comprehension of Boccaccio’s role in Florence’s public life has recently been much enriched by the research of Laura Regnicoli for the exhibition Boccaccio autore e copista mounted by the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in 2013, as well as by that of stephen Milner.15 Among the positions held by Boccaccio from 1348 through 1374 were the following:

10

A Boccaccian Renaissance

1348—one of eight ufficiali delle gabelle [tax collectors] (R5) 1350—ambassador to the Romagna (R13) 1350—camarlengo della camera [communal treasurer] (R14, 17–23, 26–28) 1351—one of the Difensori del contado [those overseeing Florence’s rural territory] (R31–32) 1351—ambassador to the emperor Ludwig of Bavaria [Milner] 1352—emissary to Padua to invite Petrarch to lecture at the Florentine studio [Milner] 1352—official of the Gabelle del pane [collector of bread taxes] (R39–40) 1353—member of the ufficiali di torre [overseers of public works] (R41–42) 1354—[entered into scrutiny for appointment as] one of the capitani of orsanmichele (R43) 1354—ambassador to Pope innocent Vi (R44–48) 1354—ambassador in the Valdelsa (R49) 1355—officer of the Difetti [auditor of mercenary troops] (R55, 57–59) 1359—ambassador ad partes Lombardie (R69) 1364—[proposed by the Parte Guelfa to be scrutinized for appointment as] a member of the Tre Maggiori (i.e., the three highest civic boards, the signori, the “Good Men” (advising the signori) and the standard-Bearers of the civic militia] (R100) 1364–65—one of the ufficiali dei castelli [defense commissioners] (R109) 1365—one credentialed to the Doge of Genoa (R121) 1365—ambassador to Pope urban V (R123, 125-128) 1367—member of an arbitration committee evaluating orcagna’s work in orsanmichele (R132) 1367—one of the ufficiali della condotta [overseers of the army] (R133–132) 1367—ambassador to the Pope urban V (R135–136) 1368—one of the ufficiali della condotta (R138) 1373–74—Dante lecturer for the large sum of 100 florins (R164– 167, 169–170, 179)

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

11

in this impressive record of civic involvement, a hiatus is noticeable between the years 1355 and 1364, during which Boccaccio’s only service to Florence was a brief embassy to Milan in the summer of 1359. This gap invites speculation as to its cause.16 Boccaccio’s disappearance from communal office may have been the result of his identification with the pro-neapolitan party led by his boyhood friend niccolò Acciaiuoli, the grand senescal of the Kingdom of naples. Acciaiuoli’s visit to Florence in 1355, which ended up alienating Florentines from the neapolitan interest, could well have harmed Boccaccio’s political career.17 Florence’s foreign policy became pronouncedly anti-neapolitan in the later 1350s. Then, too, the later 1350s were years of bitter partisan strife in Florence, marked by the toxic politics of the conservative Parte Guelfa and its much-feared ammonizioni [sanctions]. As Milner has noted, Boccaccio’s political connections were all on the side of the magnate and the proneapolitan houses—the Bardi, Rossi, Acciaiuoli, and Peruzzi houses, led by Lapo da castiglionchio—who collectively sought to restore the comune nobiliare of the early fourteenth century.18 They were opposed by the more popular party, which was based in the guild community and more open to participation in government on the part of gente nuova. yet Boccaccio’s attitude toward the politics of his noble friends was not one of unquestioning support. A key principle of their political ideology was a kind of nativist opposition to gente nuova, but (as we shall see in greater detail below), Boccaccio championed bringing men of low social station into government so long as they were virtuous. in the letter to Pino de’ Rossi he explicitly refused to blame gente nuova exclusively for the political corruption of Florence (as one might have expected a member of the Rossi family to do), finding plenty to blame among the originali cittadini: i am not going to blame those coming from capalle or those from celiaula or from [s. Giovanni in] sugana or [s. Martino in] Viminiccio, who were taken away from their ploughs and trowels [i.e., gente nuova engaged in manual labor] and elevated to our highest magistracy. in fact [Attilius Regulus] serranus, led from sowing to the consulate of Rome, was perfectly able to hold the ivory scepter assigned to that magnificent office with hands used to

12

A Boccaccian Renaissance

breaking up hard clods in the field; and Gaius Marius, who grew up following his father’s army and setting up tent poles, conquered Africa and dragged Jugurtha in chains back to Rome. And to avoid talking about those people any longer—since i for one am not surprised at [their rise to power], because souls are not poured into mortals by God in the same way as fortunes are [i.e., one can have a good soul despite poverty]—even if we turn to whomever we want among the purest native citizens, these people, either because their souls are dominated by insatiable envy, or because they are swollen with pride or inflamed by unjustified anger, as they care about their own business rather than the public’s, they have drawn this city into misery and keep drawing it into slavery, a city that we call ours today, and, if nothing changes, we’ll one day regret being called its citizens. And in addition to that, we see (and to reduce our shame i won’t mention the gluttons, the toss-pots, the whoremongers, and similar scum) highly dishonest men, who, either by a most severe countenance, or by never uttering a word, or by scraping their feet against holy images [i.e., pretending to piety], or often by bloviating and presenting themselves as most loving fathers and defenders of the common good (though, if you inquire, they wouldn’t be capable of counting how many fingers they have on their hands—and yet they are grand masters at stealing or bribery, whenever they have a chance for that), these men, since they are considered good men by the deceived people, are set at the steering wheel of so a great a ship, a ship already worn out by so many storms.19 it is possible that Boccaccio’s standing with the regime was damaged a second time by his association with niccolò Acciaiuoli when the grand seneschal’s return to Florence in 1360 alarmed the popular forces within the government.20 The patrician party by that time had failed to establish its dominance, even with the help of ammonizioni, and slightly later in the same year, 1360, a group of malcontents, including Boccaccio’s friend Pino de’Rossi, attempted to overthrow the regime. The leaders of the coup were executed or, in Pino’s case, exiled. yet in his consolatory letter to Pino Boccaccio seems to be at pains to neither approve nor condemn the coup in which Pino had participated beyond saying that Pino himself did not deserve exile. Finally, around this same year, 1360,

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

13

Boccaccio received holy orders and the authorization to hold benefices con cura d’anime. Was this an insurance policy, brokered by friends in the church, or a sign of a deeper change of heart?21 By the time he wrote his Consolatory Letter to Pino de’Rossi, Boccaccio described himself as thoroughly disgusted with Florentine party politics, and it seems clear that his experiences had lifted his thinking about government onto a more philosophical, nonpartisan plane. it was a stance that later humanists would often adopt. Boccaccio declares that he has exiled himself from Florence to certaldo—and would have gone even further away to avoid the rumor of the city’s iniquity—had his poverty allowed it. in certaldo he has begun to enjoy his life wearing rough clothes and eating peasant food, and the ability to avert his eyes from the ambition and provocations of Florentine citizens gives him great consolation. in exchange for anxious involvements with citizens, he sees trees with green leaves, fields dressed with bright flowers, things produced simply by nature; where there are no citizens with their fraud, he sings sweet airs with a delight more than equal to the annoyance he felt in listening all day to the tricks and the treacheries of the Florentines.22 This biographical context is crucial for understanding Boccaccio’s mature thinking about the problems of human government. The first drafts of the De casibus and the Trattatello in laude di Dante were begun around 1355, just as Boccaccio was ending his first period of civic involvement.23 The consolatory letter to Pino de’Rossi was most probably written in 1361 or 1362, not long after the failure of the aristocratic coup.24 As previously stated, these are the most important sources of Boccaccio’s political thought. They reveal not only his bitter disillusionment with Florentine politics but also a strong conviction that involvement in the dayto-day passions of political life is bad for the soul. Boccaccio’s contempt is not just for Florentine politics, however. Wherever he turns his gaze, he finds corrupt political authorities. in the Prologue to the De casibus Boccaccio describes his search for someone to whom he might dedicate his treatise, someone with sufficient virtue to appreciate its contents. He looked first for a prelate, but all of them were armed to the teeth, eagerly spilling the blood of their fellow christians. Then he thought of the emperor but realized he would be far to the north, swilling liquor amid the snows of Germany (inter nives et pocula), ignorant of the great deeds of his Roman predecessors. Then he considered the

14

A Boccaccian Renaissance

salian Franks, that is, the French, who presented themselves, with rash daring, as superior in ancestry and morals to people of other nations, but then he remembered that they were illiterate. He could think of no other european prince whose ignorance and vice would not make a mockery of his opusculum’s moral message; all of them filled him with nausea. That was when he decided that the best course would be to dedicate his work not to a powerful, corrupt, and heedless ruler but to a trustworthy, beloved, and generous friend, Mainardo cavalcanti, a Florentine ennobled by his service to the Angevin court of naples. Boccaccio’s contempt for the ruling elites of his time extended even to the wealthy popolano citizens of Florence. in De casibus 5.4, after contemplating the virtue of the ancient Roman heroes, he could not help drawing a contrast with the corrupt mores of modern times. in that connection, he wrote: unless honor prohibits it, i would name also my own citizens. on undertaking any expedition, their first question, the one most holy to them, is about the prospect of profit, thievery, and rapine, whether they can possess themselves of things both sacred and profane, even to the detriment of the public, while themselves remaining immune from penalty. A man who understands the persuasiveness of avarice will understand well enough what reply they are going to make. i wish, moreover, that the men who want glory first and effort last would pay attention to what Attilius said in the [Roman] senate for the public good against his own life and liberty. This man was willing to expose himself to torture for the slightest public benefit. But these men, [my fellow Florentines], detestabile genus hominum, after they have taken over all honors and advantages through their wicked ambition, are not ashamed to lie in public that they are paupers, when in fact their private resources are abundant, in order to flee common burdens. it’s hard to believe that these men would place their security and blood on the line for their country when they impudently deny it the slightest particle of their substance when necessity demands it. They have the resources to provide large dowries, hold magnificent wedding feasts, more like kings than citizens; they mount massive displays of finery but can’t contribute to the public fisc.25

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

15

spoken like a frustrated tax collector? Perhaps. But what is significant is that Boccaccio’s bitter disillusionment about the exercise of political power in his own day drove him to draw the same fundamental conclusion drawn by all the leading humanists of the next century: that the inescapable preliminary to any rebirth of Roman glory lay in the revival of Roman virtue. And the only way to revive Roman virtue was to revive the moral and educative role that classical culture, especially its philosophy and poetry, had played in the education of the Romans. This was Boccaccio’s project in his last two decades. it may have had its root in the personal crisis that led him to embrace Petrarchan humanism sometime after the Black Death. But it was Boccaccio who understood, more clearly than Petrarch, that no republic would ever be sound without morally sound men to govern it; that the reform of politics would require a new ethos of public service, a commitment to the common good and loyalty to one’s family, friends, and country; that virtue and patriotism went together. in the state of europe at that time, moral corruption was planted too widely and deeply to expect better government in the near term. But Boccaccio, like all humanists, reflecting on the reasons for the greatness of Rome and filled with nostalgia for her lost glory, understood that what counted in the end was not Rome’s laws and institutions but the quality of her human material.26 in the De casibus Boccaccio tries to make a start on reform by driving home, again and again, that the false motives actuating the corrupt leaders of his own time would not and could not succeed in winning Fortune’s lasting favor. such motives need to be replaced by patriotism, public-spiritedness, and sacrifice for the common good; for example, at 5.4 Boccaccio states that “we are born first for our country, then for ourselves.” This is an even stronger version, because inverted in its emphasis, of the famous humanist commonplace, taken from Plato via cicero, that we are born not just for ourselves but for our family, our friends, and our country.27 The whole project of the De casibus clearly anticipates the quattrocento humanist program of moral rearmament: Boccaccio claims he is writing the book for the utility of the republic, reipublicae utilitati, to promote virtue by showing the inevitable consequences of vice. But since in his own time the virtuous were few and the tone of politics as a whole was set by men unable to detach themselves from perishable and worthless things, the strongest literary measures would be necessary to shake them

16

A Boccaccian Renaissance

out of their complacent selfishness and moral insensitivity. That is why Boccaccio filled nine books with an avalanche of moral exempla, denunciations, and exhortations in the hope that, by sheer profusion, he might break through the hardened hearts of his contemporaries, just as dripping water eventually wears down stone.28 Boccaccio’s sense of the depravity of his own times explains a great deal about his attitudes toward Fortune, Virtue, Time, and Fame, those prime coordinates in the humanist moral geography.29 in antiquity, when human virtue was strong, it was able to restrict the power of Fortune: Ubi virtus sit, ibi nullas partes esse Fortune (De casibus 5.4). no wonder that in Roman times the empire’s only boundary was ocean, given the immense reservoir of virtue on which it could call. But in the case of individuals, especially in modern times, virtue was no guarantee of good fortune. A central message of the De casibus is precisely this: Fortune brings low both the wicked and the virtuous so long as men focus their desires on changeable things: excessive pleasures, wealth, power, status. There is no one whose virtue and wisdom—or guile and perfidy, for that matter—is so effective as to guarantee Fortune’s continuing favor. in fact, worldly success, however achieved, is intrinsically dangerous. it leads inevitably to your downfall, and its pursuit endangers the health of your soul. The only safe play for your soul is to remain of humble status and poor; a kind of happiness, if not success, can be found that way. Personal virtue can aid the rise of someone focused on the wrong sort of goal—for example, a Pompey or a Zenobia—but since the goal itself is unstable, virtue alone won’t save the ambitious man from disaster. The wise man in times such as Boccaccio’s must find a different goal and feed another sort of ambition: an ambition to achieve Good Fame. The matter is most fully discussed at the beginning of De casibus, book 8. There Boccaccio begins by questioning his own motives for writing his book, for seeking fame from the ashes of the past. He tells himself he is wasting his time: ambition seeking fame won’t do him any good in the here and now; he should give up his efforts and spend what is left of his days seeking pleasure pro qualitate temporis, in proportion to what the times allow. Then Petrarch appears to him in a vision, wearing a laurel crown and dressed in a royal robe. Petrarch tells him that the desire for fame is natural; it is like a good sought out by all mortals. Men seek virtue because of fame, so if you condemn fame, you condemn virtue. nature

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

17

implants in everyone a kind of goad that drives us day and night through virtue to glory. The praise of fame is the only way the merit of mortals becomes immortal. Fame extends our lives into the future, and knowledge that this is the case gives us satisfaction in the present. Petrarch goes so far as to claim that Jerome and Augustine and other holy men, although they desired eternal glory, were also drawn by an appetentia for temporal fame when they put their names on their holy works. The desire for good fame is thus a commendable motivation, transcending the present moment and therefore much more resistant to the power that Fortune wields over mere temporal goods. it is that desire that should drive the truly noble man, not wealth and status. To those who might object that a sincere christian ought to fear pride and seek humility, Petrarch and Boccaccio reply that the love of good fame, like other human loves, can be justified if it is sought for the sake of God and for the good of others. The life beyond the grave offered by the christian faith is ordered to mankind’s eternal end, but there are lasting, if not eternal, things that also require our care in this human life of ours. The desire for good fame, for “separation from the herd,” is natural and good. its achievement is the reward of virtue. When virtue has good fame as its goal, it can succeed, and fame can survive far beyond the span of our lives. seeking fame for oneself is good, because it fights against sloth (a deadly sin), because it recompenses God for the gifts he has given us, and because it serves others. Fame for Boccaccio is already part of the social technology that encourages truly noble individuals to strive for virtue and in so doing to serve the state. That is most clearly seen in his proem to his Life of Dante, where he claims that what made ancient empires great, including both Greece and Rome, was their practice of celebrating great men with statues, triumphs, laurel crowns, funerals, and even with deification. Dante had been deluded by popular favor, which was always unstable, and the belief that he could help so corrupt a city by participating in its civic life. He paid the price for this mistake. Florence’s foul treatment of Dante shows how far the moderns have fallen from the ancients’ respect for virtue. “if his deeds had been performed in a just republic,” Boccaccio writes, “there is no doubt that they would have covered him in the highest merit.” His own celebration of Dante’s life will form some kind of substitute for what the city should have done; it will help save Florence from the charge

18

A Boccaccian Renaissance

of ingratitude. He (like Dante) writes in the volgare in order to lift up a city unable to appreciate Latin literature; perhaps by so doing he would begin to give it a proper respect for the liberal arts, the true foundation of a city’s glory.30 Though Boccaccio has no great hope for the revival of ancient virtue in his own time, he recognizes, as did later humanists, that virtue is the cement of all successful government and vice its solvent. Rulers need virtue in order to keep the loyalty of their subjects. it is even the subject’s duty, if his ruler is wicked, to commit tyrannicide. Remarking on the cruel and oppressive rule of Rehoboam, a son of King solomon, Boccaccio editorializes: i ask, when i see the man to whom i have turned over all honor, liberty, majesty, duty, and preeminence, to whom i have done obeisance, for whom i have sweated, with whom i have shared my substance, for whose safety i have poured out my blood—[when i see that man] spending all his time impoverishing me, cursing me, and trying to ruin me, thirsting for blood, drinking, swindling, wasting his resources on lewd women and scoundrels, resources that should have been used to succor the needy and wretched, delighting in the worst counsel for the worst projects, and neglecting the public good—shall i call such a man a king? shall i revere him as a prince, shall i keep faith with him as a lord? Perish the thought! He is an enemy. it is the work of the great-souled man to conspire against him, take up arms, form plots, and physically oppose him—it is a most holy and entirely necessary duty. There is no more acceptable offering to God than the blood of a tyrant. . . . Therefore let those who wish to rule others learn, if they wish their reigns to be long ones and the people’s trust to be stable, that they must suppress their appetites and rein in their lusts, and—the holiest rule of all—strive to be more loved than feared, so that they may seem to be fathers as much as commanders over the subject plebs.31 Apart from the vividness that comes from Boccaccio’s exposing his own psychological state—his angry response to tyrannical vice—and the implication that a kind of informal moral contract exists between ruler and

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

19

ruled, his advice here would be unsurprising in any medieval mirror for princes. But there is more. As in the case of the later humanists, it is a constant theme with Boccaccio that the best and most successful political leaders are those who possess true—that is, natural—nobility and that this kind of nobility can be found in all social ranks, from farmers and craftsmen to the rich and well born. it cannot be passed down by birth or hereditary right but is an acquired skill in right living that is transmitted as knowledge.32 Therefore it belongs by right to the educated and not to those of high descent. indeed, he goes further than most later humanists and claims that wealthy and powerful youths who have lived a soft life surrounded by sycophantic admirers are much less likely to end up as successful leaders than those brought up in humbler circumstances and harder schools. commenting on the life of Marius, the Roman general and statesman, Boccaccio writes: True nobility does not live, as many stupid people believe, in royal households, nor does it delight in riches and splendid clothes; nor does it dwell in the lares of descendants because of the famous images of ancestors; it delights only in purity of mind in whomever and wherever it appears. Being persuaded of [this truth], Marius, a novus homo, purged the army that had been corrupted by the avarice of Metellus, a man thought noble by the foolish mob. Marius bested an enemy who had often bested slothful though noble generals; he bound a king who had very often bound the minds of noblemen with gold. When it will be obvious that they are ignoble, why then shall we not call him noble for his upright virtue? For those who wish to cultivate the virtues, to act with virtue—to completely condemn, repel and put to flight vice—must necessarily possess the most indisputable virtue, not its shadow.33 The virtues of commoners, farmers, and even the urban plebs are praised by Boccaccio repeatedly throughout the De casibus. commenting on Rehoboam’s tyranny again, he writes: “not even the least member of the plebs is to be regarded as worthless; each man, when driven by his own interest, carries a great soul beneath his breast.” 34 All men of every class are capable of virtue, but they need the right kind of education. This education cannot be found in the universities,

20

A Boccaccian Renaissance

particularly the law schools. Boccaccio is writing a quarter century before the beginnings of the humanist school, but he shares the later humanist prejudice against a legal education. Like Bartolomeo scala in his Dialogue on Laws and Courts, Boccaccio recognizes that in antiquity there was a good, uncorrupted form of legal study, but that was only because ancient scholars who were learned in the law already knew literature and philosophy before taking up jurisprudence.35 But the present age, writes Boccaccio, snatches men away from their letters—indeed from their mothers’ breasts—to “schools or rather brothels” that teach the young to dance attendance on avarice and in which holy laws are turned into wicked snares. Modern legal education doesn’t provide any philosophical framework; it doesn’t even lay out the parts of justice or say how the morals of men may be reformed. instead, law professors “with filthy mouths and obscene vocabulary” say to their students: Let all that go; it’s superfluous; it doesn’t tell you how to earn your bread. The whole study of modern lawyers is to eviscerate the simple holiness of the law and substitute litigiousness and pettifoggery. Assessors, judges, and patrons combine stony hearts with a love of luxury and gold.36 it is easy to see from Boccaccio’s denunciation of a legal education how we arrive, in the next generation, at the movement to educate social and political elites in literature, eloquence, philosophy, and history—the liberal arts—prior to any professional training. Given Boccaccio’s hostility toward scholastic legal education, it is no surprise to see that his numerous discussions of tyranny in the De casibus anticipate the humanist emphasis on tyranny as the product of flawed character. This attitude contrasts with the legalistic attitude toward tyranny exemplified by scholastic jurisprudence, most famously that of Bartolus of sassoferrato, with his fourfold analysis of the formal conditions under which tyranny may be said to exist.37 How Boccaccio’s analysis of tyranny differs from that of the jurists may be illustrated by his account (in De casibus 9.24) of the tyranny of Walter of Brienne in Florence (1342/43). The following two paragraphs paraphrase Boccaccio’s long narrative. Walter of Brienne was a French condottiere, noble of birth but morally degenerate. (Degener is a term of art in humanist discourse, denoting someone who lacks the virtue of one’s ancestors.) Having suffered a series of military disasters, the Florentine government, led by popolano elites (primores populi), was in a weakened condition. The city was deeply in debt, taxes were high, and nothing had come of the regime’s effort to capture

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

21

Lucca. Making common cause with the old magnate families who hoped for the repeal of the ordinances of Justice and recovery of their political rights, the regime called in Walter to save them from the mutinous plebs. They took care to turn over to him all the power of public arms, “basely choosing a foreigner’s tyranny, a condition of which they were ignorant, rather than bear the familiar yoke of the civil laws.” They all built support for themselves by forgiving and rescheduling debts for the numerous citizens who were burdened by results of their own improvidence. Without delay they started discussions to subject Florentines to Walter’s lordship and to betray the birthright of liberty earned by previous generations. Walter, setting aside honor and trust and aroused by a cruel desire for lordship, saw that he could take over the city gradually by deceit. He claimed the city was in imminent danger of destruction and he needed greater executive power (arbitrium) in order to save it. This was granted by the weak and credulous. He used his power immediately to execute certain citizens (who perhaps deserved it, Boccaccio concedes). And, meeting no resistance to his arbitrary deeds, he was prompted to make further demands for power (imperium). Then there was a coup, abetted by the magnates and carried out with various theatrical forms of legality. The regime agreed to turn over power to Walter for one year on the condition that he sign a document on the True Body of christ. The city was summoned to a parlamento in the piazza of the Palazzo Vecchio and the magistrates processed out onto the ringhiera, the raised platform extending alongside the Palazzo, fronting the square. Walter arrived with squadrons of horse and foot soldiers and surrounded the citizens. Magnates concealing arms under their clothes supported him. He announced that his soldiers would set upon the unarmed if anyone made any trouble. At the urging of the magnates, he then occupied the highest seat. He addressed the people, and as soon as the subject of his year-long imperium was mentioned, the dregs of the common people (vulgi fex) began to shout that it should be made permanent. Then traitors opened the doors of the palace to him and the priors were shoved aside to make room for him in the seat of power, in violation of the oaths of loyalty he had taken. Boccaccio continues: Having thus broken his trust and having crushed it underfoot, and having made a mockery of his oath, he took possession of the

22

A Boccaccian Renaissance

citadel of Florentine liberty; as though what had been given him by the dregs of the plebs had been granted by the best citizens (ab optimatibus), he accepted the lordship for life through a violent quasi-order (ordine quodam violento).38 Thus a city we had received free from our ancestors and which had never been subject to any persons other than the Roman emperors was subdued; by these devices utterly iniquitous citizens subjected it to the tyranny of an utterly wicked man.39 That was the beginning of Walter’s downfall. He soon became swollen with hubris and turned the public palace into his private dwelling. He levied onerous taxes and embezzled public resources for his private use and those of his companions. He gave neither mercy nor favor. He and his ruffians committed every kind of crime and befouled all things human and divine. The citizens were at first beaten down but before long yearned to recover their lost liberty. They were inhibited, however, by discord, desolationum urbium radix. eventually a merciful God opened their eyes, “and with His virtue (sua virtute) strengthened their fearful hearts, composed their differences and gave them the courage to destroy their ruler.” The magnates and the populares united against him and were on the point of attacking when he, coward that he was, surrendered himself tearfully to the people. Thus had it pleased God to demonstrate that Walter’s surrender had nothing to do with the merits of the Florentines and everything to do with the ruler’s iniquity, which had long grieved heaven and the divine spirits. After this it was only a matter of time before he was driven from the city and died in exile, appropriately enough, by the hand of a Florentine avenger carrying out the justice of God. There are a number of important points worth noticing in this account. First, Boccaccio clearly values Florence’s tradition of civil liberties and regretfully observes the ease with which public liberty, when entrusted to corrupt leaders, may be lost. He shows no love for the magnates as a political force, despite his numerous friends among magnate families. second, there are no heroes in Boccaccio’s story. The regime leaders representing the popolo, the magnates, and the dregs of the lower classes all behave badly. noble birth does not lead to noble conduct; virtue is nowhere to be found. Tyranny is actively chosen by cowardly leaders

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

23

to save themselves from the consequences of their own foolishness and injustice; tyranny is rejected only when the tyrant reveals the full extent of his wickedness. The only social groups not blamed for the disastrous episode are the politically passive middle ranks of society, the popolo; but if they possessed any residual virtue it did not become active, owing to social divisions and the corruption of their leaders. Florence exits from Walter’s tyranny only by the mercy and power (virtus) of God. Tyranny in Boccaccio’s account is the opposite of liberty and is caused by moral weakness. ultimately, tyranny emerges from the tyrant’s soul and the souls of those who allow themselves to be oppressed; it is superficial to regard tyranny simply as an illegitimate form of rule identifiable by legal criteria. By the lights of a Bartolus, Walter’s tyranny would not have begun until the moment of usurpation in the piazza, when violence was used to extract consent. At that point Walter could have been identified as a tyrant ex parte exercitii, owing to an abuse of power, that is, a vote of the people passed under threat of violence, propter metum.40 His oath-breaking also would have delegitimized his power. Boccaccio’s narrative, by contrast, makes it clear that Walter’s tyranny had started much earlier, at the moment when the regime had made the decision to sacrifice the city’s liberty in order to hold onto power. While the jurists were generally silent about the causes of tyranny, Boccaccio was eloquent, pointing his finger directly at human moral failure. The cure for tyranny, too, required something more than the observance and enforcement of legal criteria. For Boccaccio, law and liberty are worthless without virtuous citizens to defend them. in his account there is even the suggestion, made explicit by later humanists, that the real source of legitimacy is virtue. That is what Boccaccio seems to imply by the statement “As though what had been given him by the dregs of the plebs had been granted by the best citizens (ab optimatibus), he accepted the lordship for life.”41 This seems to leave open the possibility that power might be handed over to a single ruler legitimately if those handing it over were themselves virtuous.42 That Walter’s public acclamation as signore a vita had been the work of the “dregs of the people”—that is, by persons lacking in virtue—compromised its legitimacy, quite apart from the conditions of duress under which it was made. one of the chief causes of the corruption that led to the loss of civic liberty and tyranny was wealth. Boccaccio decries the malign influence of

24

A Boccaccian Renaissance

wealth on political virtue frequently and passionately in his late works, not only in the De casibus but also in his consolatory letter to Pino and in the Trattatello.43 Wealth was spiritually dangerous for the individual who possessed it and politically disastrous for states like Florence that valued it above virtue. indeed, this is almost the sole theme in Boccaccio’s political thought that has drawn comment in modern scholarship. Hans Baron, who first discussed these passages, initially ascribed Boccaccio’s obsession with virtuous poverty to the influence of Franciscan spirituality and regarded it as exemplifying the “medieval” character of his thought.44 Baron contrasted Boccaccio’s attitude with that of quattrocento thinkers like Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini. Those “civic humanists” of the Renaissance argued, by contrast, that wealth in the hands of private citizens, especially the rich, with their “barns full of money,” enabled the virtues of liberality and magnaminity and supplied the state with the sinews of war whereby it was able to defeat its enemies.45 Already in 1978, Quentin skinner argued persuasively that Boccaccio’s beliefs about the desirability of citizen poverty had their origins in sallust and the Roman moralists, not in Franciscan thought.46 it was no Franciscan preacher, but rather figures like the Roman plebeian hero Manius curius Dentatus, who were Boccaccio’s exemplars; Dentatus was the general who, when offered a great weight of gold by the defeated samnites, replied that he believed that it was glorious not to possess gold but to command those who possessed gold.47 Moreover, as skinner also pointed out, a “positive evaluation of citizen wealth” could be found among italian republican thinkers as far back as the thirteenth century; it was not something invented after 1402 by Leonardo Bruni. i would add to skinner’s comments only the following point. While there was certainly a positive view of citizen wealth long antedating 1402, it is also the case that strict limits on citizen wealth continued to be advocated in major humanist writings well into the sixteenth century.48 This tendency within humanism had its most famous epigone in Machiavelli.49 so Boccaccio’s views on political poverty, if not on personal poverty, place him well in the mainstream of humanist thinking. The tension in humanist thinking between those who valued wealth in cities and those who saw it as a danger to civic virtue was one that persisted in the humanist tradition into early modern times.50

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

25

To conclude: Given what has already been said, one might well ask whether there were any features of Boccaccio’s political thought at all that were backward-looking (to avoid the loaded term “medieval”) and might set him apart from the later humanist tradition of virtue politics. if forced to identify such features, two candidates present themselves. First, it is possible that Boccaccio was aware of and approved the teaching of some scholastic writers that the plenitudo potestatis of kings is derived from and limited by the consent of the people. This is a doctrine that later humanists cared about little, if at all. At De casibus 2.5 Boccaccio says the following: “Let kings resist it as much as they like, let them deny it a hundred times; nevertheless, they rule by the approval [or votes] of the people [suffragio populorum], and it is the people’s strength that makes them formidable.”51 yet once again, Boccaccio does not seem to have in mind here the sounding of popular sentiment via elections, popular acclamation, or other formal means, for he then goes on to say: if someone weakens that strength by unjust slaughter and injuries, he will immediately feel that his power is diminished, as is readily shown by the example of Rehoboam and shishak. [People are thus not to be regarded as worthless, trodden under foot, or disemboweled.]52 But why should i say “people”? not even the least member of the plebs is to be regarded as worthless; each man impelled by his own interest bears great souls [sic] within his breast; and the life of a king, however much fortified by armed guards, cannot be reckoned longer than that man wills who is disposed to pour out his own life in return for the tyrant’s death. . . . individual men have dared to perform the greatest deeds and sometimes have achieved what they dared.53 in other words, if a ruler treats the people badly, they will lash out at him, and he is not safe from even the lowest member of the plebs if that man is willing to risk his life. Boccaccio is surely not calling for constitutional limits on royal power in this passage. The second feature—and this must be taken much more seriously—is the general doubt and pessimism suffusing Boccaccio’s accounts of the exercise of political power, especially its exercise by his own contemporaries.54

26

A Boccaccian Renaissance

There are a number of passages, both in the De casibus and in the letter to Pino de’Rossi, in which Boccaccio emphasizes that the desire for political power and the yearning to participate in politics are intrinsically corrupting, at least under modern circumstances, and are dangerous to the health of our souls. A life spent in humility, poverty, and virtuous literary retirement is better for us; it is less exposed to the giddy turns of Fortune’s wheel. Boccaccio believes he lives in the dregs of time and that virtuous men are few. could there be a Marcus Attilius Regulus today? Boccaccio has doubts. He believes that Roman decline set in during the age of cicero, when there was just enough virtue left in Rome’s elites to recognize cicero’s merit. To expect virtuous governance on more than an episodic basis in modern italy is foolish; one can only hope and pray for it. you might get a Robert of naples once in a while, but most of the time, in this age, not only will the exercise of political power endanger our salvation, but the deck will be heavily stacked against the virtuous. in the present age Fortune is fickle, mortal things are unstable, happiness in this life is a false hope, glory is empty and fleeting. Working toward a true republic of the ancient type, powerful and free, happy and glorious, ruled by the best men—the agenda of later humanists—would for Boccaccio be simply unrealistic. in any case, what ultimately counts, says Boccaccio in the letter to his exiled friend Pino de’Rossi, is your personal reputation for virtue, and to keep that it is often better not to exercise power than to exercise it. When you consider the foul crimes and shameful behavior of Florence’s rulers, he tells Pino, you should be ashamed of not having exiled yourself earlier (as he, Boccaccio, had done). Boccaccio is speaking, of course, during a period of extreme bitterness in his own life, but his words also reveal an underlying pessimism. For that pessimism to change to optimism, for the humanist politics of virtue to become something like a real political agenda, italy would have to await a later generation, one more attuned to the potential of the human species to reform its collective behavior. noTes

1. Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Vittore Branca, vol. 9: De casibus virorum illustrium, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci and Vittorio Zaccaria (Milan: Mondadori, 1983). in his long review of Zaccaria’s edition, Manlio Pastore stocchi

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

27

refers to the work as “quasi dimenticata”; see his “il Boccaccio del De casibus,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 161, fasc. 515 (1984): 421–30. The situation is not much better today; see simone Marchesi, “Boccaccio on Fortune (De casibus virorum illustrium),” in Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham, Michael sherberg, and Janet Levarie smarr (chicago and London: university of chicago Press, 2013), 245–54 (with the notes on 442–46). There is an abridged translation (often, in fact, a paraphrase) by Louis Brewer Hall, Giovanni Boccaccio: The Fates of Illustrious Men (new york: Frederick ungar, 1965), which, in addition to rendering only about half of the text, is often misleadingly inaccurate. 2. Branca, Boccaccio medievale e nuovi studi sul Decameron, nuova edizione riveduta e corretta (Florence: sansoni, 1996 [1956]). it is perhaps because of Branca’s influence that the now standard work of Ronald Witt (In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni [Leiden and Boston: e. J. Brill, 2000]) places so little weight on Boccaccio’s role in the humanist movement. For the historiography, see Tobias Foster Gittes, “Boccaccio and Humanism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, ed. Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels, and stephen J. Milner (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2015), 155–70. Zaccaria, in the introduction to his edition of De casibus (xxiv), also classifies Boccaccio as a pre-humanistic thinker. 3. see my articles “The Baron Thesis after Forty years: some Recent studies on Leonardo Bruni,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 56 (1995): 309–38, and “Machiavelli, civic Humanism, and the Humanist Politics of Virtue,” Italian Culture 32, no. 2 (2014): 98–109. 4. stocchi, in “il Boccaccio del De casibus,” 429–30, remarks in passing on some themes common to Boccaccio and the humanist movement: “una certa passione civile,” exhortations to concord and good government, horror of the tyrant, and an apologia for tyrannicide. A kinship between Boccaccio’s De casibus and the values of Renaissance readers is already suggested by the book’s extraordinary fortuna in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: seventy-two manuscripts of the complete text, twenty more containing various parts of the work, and nine incunabula, including translations into english, French, and spanish. 5. see my Virtue Politics: The Political Thought of the Italian Humanists (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, forthcoming). 6. James Hankins, “Modern Republicanism and the History of Republics,” in Nuovi maestri, antichi testi: Umanesimo e Rinascimento alle origini del pensiero moderno, Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi in onore di Cesare Vasoli, Mantova, 1–3 dicembre 2010, ed. stefano caroti and Vittoria Perrone compagni (Florence: olschki, 2012), 109–26, and “Leonardo Bruni on the Legitimacy of constitutions (Oratio in funere Johannis Strozze 19–23),” in Reading and Writing History from Bruni to Windschuttle: Essays in Honour of Gary Ianziti, ed. christian Thorsten callisen (Farnham, surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 73–86.

28

A Boccaccian Renaissance

7. The idea of natural liberty and freedom as a natural right owes more to christian than to classical sources and is primarily transmitted by the scholastic tradition; see Annabel Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1997). 8. James Hankins, “exclusivist Republicanism and the non-Monarchical Republic,” Political Theory 38, no. 4 (2010): 452–82. 9. A useful overview of scholastic political thought may be found in John Kilcullen, “Medieval Political Philosophy,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (spring 2014 edition), ed. edward n. Zalta (stanford, cA: Metaphysics Research Lab, center for the study of Language and information, stanford university) http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/medieval-political/. 10. nesi, Ms Plut. 77.24, f. 113v (Florence: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana): “cum honores, dignitates ac cetera praemia insigniaque virtutum ita in civitate dividuntur, ut ad unum quemque sua debitaque portio deferatur, et qui de re publica praeclarius quodammodo meritus est, praeclarioribus etiam praemiis afficiatur, et qui ceteros virtute excellit ceteros quoque excellat auctoritate; pro singulorum enim civium meritis virtutibusque decernendi sunt honores dignitatesque conferendae.” 11. “The Lachmann Method: Merits and Limitations,” Text: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship 1 (1981): 11–20. i owe this reference to Andrea Robiglio. For humanist texts on true nobility, see Albert Rabil Jr., Knowledge, Goodness and Power: The Debate over Nobility among Quattrocento Italian Humanists (Binghamton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and studies, 1991). 12. Princely Virtues in the Middle Ages, 1200–1500, ed. istván P. Bejczy and cary J. nederman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). 13. Tutte le Opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Branca, vol. 5, part 1, containing the section “epistole e lettere” ed. Ginetta Auzzas and Augusto campana (Milan: Mondadori, 1992), letter on 542–43 (datelined Florence, 28 August 1341). 14. it was during this period ( July 1453) that Boccaccio wrote to Petrarch (epistola X, in ibid., 574–83) and criticized him for becoming a subject of the Visconti tyrants and thus becoming a passive enemy of his own patria. The sharp tone of this letter may spring from a personal failure, since Boccaccio had in 1352 led the unsuccessful embassy to Padua to invite Petrarch to teach at the Florentine studio. 15. Laura Regnicoli, “Documenti su Giovanni Boccaccio,” in Boccaccio: Autore e copista. Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 11 ottobre 2013–11 gennaio 2014, exhibition catalogue, ed. Teresa De Robertis, carla Maria Monti, Marco Petoletti, Giuliano Tanturli, and stefano Zamponi (Florence: Mandragora, 2013), 385–402. The first part of a more complete and detailed presentation of these documents may be found in Laura Regnicoli, “codice diplomatico di Giovanni Boccaccio: i. i documenti fiscali,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 54 (2013): 1–80. For stephen Milner’s discoveries, see Guyda Arrmstrong, Rhiannon

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

29

Daniels, and stephen Milner, “Boccaccio as cultural Mediator,” in The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, 3–19, at 9–12. The number of known documents has more than doubled, and further documents are likely to emerge from Regnicoli’s ongoing research. in the list below, “R” designates the document in Regnicoli’s “elenco dei documenti” on pages 394–402 of the exhibition catalogue. 16. For the details of Florentine party politics in this period, see Gene A. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343–1378 (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 1961), especially chap. 4; see also John M. najemy, A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (Malden, MA, and oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 124–51. 17. Brucker, Florentine Politics, 147. 18. Milner, “Boccaccio as cultural Mediator,” 9. see also Kristina olson, Courtesy Lost: Dante, Boccaccio, and the Literature of History (Toronto: university of Toronto 2014), which emphasizes Boccaccio’s pro-magnate sympathies. 19. Consolatoria a Pino de’ Rossi, ed. Giuseppe chiecchi, in Tutte le Opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Branca, vol. 5, part 2 (Milan: Mondadori, 1994), 615–87, at caps. 35–37: “io non biasimerò l’essere a ciò venuti chi da capalle e quale da cilicciaule e alcuni da sugame o da Viminiccio, tolti dalla cazzuola o dall’aratro e sublimati al nostro maestrato maggiore, per ciò che serano, dal seminare menato al consolato di Roma, ottimamente colle mani use a rompere le dure zolle della terra, sostenne la verga eburnea assegnata al magnifico ufficio; e caio Mario, col padre cresciuto dietro agli eserciti faccendo i piuoli a’ quali si legano le tende, soggiogata l’Africa, catenato ne menò a Roma iugurta. e acciò che io più di questi non conti (per ciò che non me ne maraviglio, pensando che non simili alle fortune piovano da Dio gli animi ne’ mortali), eziandio a quali noi vogliamo più originali cittadini divegnendo, quelli o per avere d’insaziabile invidia gli animi occupati o di superbia intollerabile enfiati o d’ira non convenevole accesi, non l’avere pubblico ma il proprio procurando, hanno in miseria tirata e tirano in servitudine la città, la quale ora diciamo nostra e della quale, se modo non si muta, ancora ci dorrà essere chiamati. e oltre a ciò vi veggiamo (acciò ch’io taccia per meno vergogna di noi i ghiottoni, i puttanieri, i tavernieri e gli altri di simili lordure) disonesti uomini assai, i quali, quale con contenenza gravissima, quale con non dire mai parola e chi con l’andare grattando i piedi alle dipinture e molti collo anfanare e mostrarsi tenerissimi padri e protettori del comune bene (i quali tutti, ricercando, non si troverà sappiano annoverare quante dita abbiano nelle mani, come che del rubare, quando fatto loro vegna e del barattare sieno maestri sovrani), essendo buoni uomini riputati dagl’ingannati, al timone di sì gran legno, in tante tempeste faticato, sono posti.” i am grateful to Dr. ornella Rossi for helping me translate this difficult passage. For Boccaccio and the politics of the conspiracy of 1360, see elsa Filosa, “La condanna di niccolò di Bartolo Del Buono, Pino de’ Rossi, e gli altri congiurati del 1360,” Studi sul Boccaccio 44 (2016): 235–50.

30

A Boccaccian Renaissance

20. Acciaiuoli came to Florence from Bologna, basking in the new prestige that had come from his successful embassy on behalf of naples. According to Bruni, Acciaiuoli had helped to keep Bologna a papal state and to limit Milanese influence there, to the relief of most Florentines. Despite this success, however, he was prevented from holding office in Florence by anti-magnate sentiment in the signoria and saddled with an enormous tax burden to encourage his quick departure (see Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 147, and Leonardo Bruni, History of the Florentine People, ed. James Hankins, 3 vols. (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 2001–2007), 2: 433 (8.39). 21. The authorization could be taken as evidence that Boccaccio had influence with the clerical party in Florence, which was generally aligned with the older clans against the more popular forces in the city; see Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 172–83. 22. “io direi per quello medesimo avere Fiorenza lasciata e dimorare a certaldo; aggiugnendovi che, dove la mia povertà il patisse, tanto lontano me n’andrei, che come la loro iniquità non veggio, cosi udirle non potessi giammai.” compare Boccaccio’s attack on the Florentines in the Trattatello in laude di Dante, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci, in Tutte le opere, vol. 6 (1974), cap. 7, where he sarcastically describes them as having “many ancestors but no virtue” and as being consumed with seeking office “by robbery, treachery and falsehood.” 23. The linkages among these three works are extensive. The De casibus leaves the strong impression that portions of the Trattatello may have originally been part of book 4 before it evolved into an independent work; see note 30. The De casibus was begun in 1355 and finished through book 7 by 1359; the first redaction in nine books was finished around 1360, and a second redaction was ready in 1373. see stocchi, “il Boccaccio del De casibus,” 421–22. 24. Giuseppe chiecchi, “La lettera a Pino de’ Rossi: Appunti cronologici, osservazioni e fonti,” Studi sul Boccaccio 11 (1979): 295–331, at 296–97. 25. De casibus (ed. Ricci-Zaccaria) 5.4, 396: “ni prohibuisset honestas, invocassem etiam cives meos. Quibus expeditionem aliquam sumpturis, prima futuri lucri questio est furari rapere, tam sacra quam profana occupare, etiam in exitium publicum, dummodo a pena immunes se viderint, persanctissimum est. satis, quid dicturi sint, qui suasiones avaritie novit intelliget. Vellem insuper qui gloriam primi, labores ultimi volunt, in senatu pro bono publico in libertatem in vitam suam sententiam dicentem Attilium audissent, ut ipsi qui cives sint, si avaritia pateretur, adverterent. Fuit constantissimo viro, et Penorum sevitiam atque catenas experto, levissimum pro salute publica seipsum morti per cruciatus sevissimos exhibere. Hi vero, detestabile hominum genus, postquam ambitione improba honores et commoda omnia occuparunt, ut communia effugiant onera, cum in privato habundent, mentiri se pauperes publice non verentur. o quam male credendum est hos pro salute patria animam aut sanguinem posituros, qui, exigente

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

31

necessitate, substantiarum suarum particulam impudentes denegant, habent unde suas virgines summe dotatas viris exhibeant, unde nuptiarum solemnia convivia et festivitates magnifice celebrent, unde non dicam civicos, sed regios thalamos ornent, unde purpuras coronas armillas ex auro et lapidibus pretiosas vestes uxoribus parent, unde stratos equos aves canesque nutriant; et unde publice rei subveniant non habent.” see also note 22. 26. De casibus (ed. Ricci-Zaccaria), 5.4, 396. 27. ibid., 5.4, 398: “non aspiciunt cives huiusmodi, imo aspicere nolunt, quod primo patrie nascimur, inde nobis.” This is a version of cicero’s famous version of the stoic formula non nobis solum in De officiis 1.22, itself based on [pseudo] Plato, Letters 9, 358a. in the Consolatory Letter for Pino de’ Rossi (cap. 117) he admonishes “every good citizen [to] lay out not only his own property, but even his blood and his life for the common good and the exaltation of his own city.” 28. De casibus (ed. Ricci-Zaccaria) 2, prohemium, 104. 29. Pastore stocchi, in “il Boccaccio del De casibus,” 430, writes of the “overlooked fact” that Poggio Bracciolini’s treatises De varietate fortunae, De miseria humanae conditionis, and De infelicitate principum are in effect rewritings of the De casibus “esplicitandone e arrichendone con più felice respiro morale e stile più agile le tematiche più suggestive.” For a different view, emphasizing the “medieval” aspects of Boccaccio’s view of Fortune, see Marchesi, “Boccaccio on Fortune,” 244–54, esp. 247–48. Marchesi equates the humanistic view of Fortune with that of Machiavelli, an identification i would resist; see my article “Machiavelli, civic Humanism, and the Humanist Politics of Virtue.” 30. Trattatello, proem, 1, 4, 7, 15. The passage should be placed next to De casibus 9.23, where Boccaccio espies Dante among a crowd of unfortunates. Boccaccio offers to tell Dante’s story, but the latter denies that he himself is among those struck down by the blows of Fortune (presumably because of his fame). instead he has entered Boccaccio’s vision in order to urge him to tell the story of another of Fortune’s victims, Walter of Brienne, “ut pateat posteris quos expellant quosque suscipiant cives tui” so as “to make it clear to posterity what sort of persons your citizens expel, and what sort they accept.” 31. De casibus 2.5: “Queso: cum videam eum cui honorem meum, libertatem, maiestatem, officium, preminentiam omnem concessi, cui obsequium iussus inpendo, cui desudo, cui substantias meas impartior, cuius in salutem sanguinem effundo meum, in extenuationem, desolationem, vituperium et perniciem invigilare meam, sanguinem sitire, haurire, emungere, inhonestis feminis et perditissimis quibuscunque hominibus prodige facultates, quibus substentare egenos et miserabiles debuerat, effundere atque disperdere, et in consilium niti pessimum, et pessimis operibus delectari, ac circa salutem publicam segnem torpentem desidemque videro, regem dicam? principem colam? tanquam domino fidem servabo? Absit: hostis est. in hunc coniurare, arma capessere, insidias tendere, vires opponere

32

A Boccaccian Renaissance

magnanimi est, sanctissimum est et omnino necessarium, cum nulla fere sit Deo acceptior hostia tyramni sanguine. . . . Discant ergo qui aliis presidere volunt, si regna cupiunt esse longeva, et populorum stabilem fidem, cupiditates suas opprimere et frenare libidines, et—quod sanctissimum est—magis diligi quam timeri, ut patres non minus quam imperatores plebis subdite videantur.” 32. De casibus 6.3: “My view, indeed, is that nobility is nothing other than a kind of splendid distinction, resplendent for its apt behavior and affability in the eyes of those who regard it correctly, arising from a well-trained will in a given soul and committed, to the best of its ability, to executing its work of spurning vice and imitating virtue; it is something which can be left to posterity, not by hereditary right or by right of a legatee, but only as knowledge and intelligence may be left.” (“Arbitror quippe nil aliud nobilitatem esse quam quoddam splendidum decus in recte prospicientium oculos morum facetia et affabilitate refulgens, surgens ex alicuius habituata animi voluntate et opere pro viribus executioni mandata spernendi vitia imitandeque virtutis, quod non aliter posteris hereditario vel legatario, seu quo mavis iure alio, linqui potest, quam scientia aut ingenium relinquatur.”) This view may be contrasted with that of Dante, who regards true nobility as simple human goodness, which, in the end, is a gift of God; see Dante, Convivio 4.1, 4.16, 4.20. on Dante’s larger context, see Andrea Robiglio, “The Thinker as a noble Man (Bene Natus) and Preliminary Remarks on the Medieval concepts of nobility,” Vivarium 44, nos. 2 and 3 (2006): 205–47. 33. De casibus 6.3 (emphasis added to translation): “Hec non, ut rentur stolide plurimi, regias habitat domos seu divitiis et splendore vestium delectatur nec ob preteritorum famosas ymagines lates successorum incolit; sola quidem mentis puritate letatur in quocunque vel ubicunque sit; et ab hac suasus Marius, novus homo, purgavit exercitum quem labefactaverat Metelli, stolida vulgi opinione nobilis, avaritia. superavit hostem qui segnes nobiles sepe superaverat duces, ligavit regem qui nobilium mentes auro persepe ligaverat. Quid ergo, cum illos ignobiles fuisse liquido constet, non istum nobilem stante virtute dicemus? Virtutes quidem colere, virtuose agere, vitia omnino damnare repellere fugere necesse est volentibus nobilitatem certissimam, non umbratilem possidere.” 34. De casibus 2.5: “nec ex plebe minimus vilipendendus est: sibi quisque inpulsus magnos sub pectore fert animos.” 35. see De casibus 3.10. scala’s Dialogue is in his Essays and Dialogues, ed. Renée neu Watkin (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 2008), 158–231. on the rivalry between legal and literary education in medieval italy, see Ronald G. Witt, The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundations of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2011). 36. in the Trattatello Boccaccio uses Dante as a moral example of a great man who embraced the liberal rather than the lucrative studies and sought eternal fame, not transitory wealth.

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

33

37. see Hankins, Virtue Politics, chap. 4, parts 1–3. 38. The sense is not clear, but Boccaccio seems to be suggesting that Walter employed a form of order that resembled just order but was backed by the threat of violence. 39. De casibus 9.24: “Fracta fide ac calcata, et iuris iurandi fabula risa, occupata florentine libertatis arce, quasi ab optimatibus daretur quod a fece plebeia clamabatur, ordine quodam violento susceptum est, durante vita, dominium. eam igitur urbem, quam non solum a progenitoribus liberam orbem intrantes suscepimus, sed nec ullius unquam memoria cuiquam, exceptis imperatoribus Romanorum, subditam, his artibus iniquissimi cives exteri ac scelestissimi hominis tyramnidi subiecere.” 40. Bartolus, De tyranno, ed. Diego Quaglione, in idem, Politica e diritto nel Trecento italiano: il De tyranno di Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314–1357) (Florence: olschki, 1983), 185–87 (cap. 6); see also ibid., 184 (cap. 5): “The tyrant of a city is he who does not rule the city by right” (“Tyrannus civitatis est qui in civitate non iure principatur”). 41. The phrase is mistranslated in Zaccaria’s italian version: He translates ab optimatibus as dai magnati, but Boccaccio is clearly using optimates in the ciceronian sense of the morally best citizens in the state, the defenders of what is best in the state. 42. Here Boccaccio might be thinking of legitimate transfers of power, such as that made by the Florentine regime to charles of calabria, son of King Robert of naples, in 1326, for a period of ten years. najemy, in A History of Florence, 122–23, believes that charles might have suffered the same fate as Walter had he not died in 1328. 43. These passages have been discussed in rich detail by Hans Baron in In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, 2 vols. (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 1988), vol. 1, 197–98 and 205–10. 44. ibid. 45. Regnicoli, in “codice diplomatico,” 40, on the basis of her documentary discoveries (which she takes as showing that Boccaccio distanced himself from the selfish attitudes of both nuovi ricchi and vecchi nobili, who invested in the public debt for personal profit), concludes that Boccaccio is, as it were, semimedieval: “in questo Boccaccio si dimostrò molto meno ‘medievale’ della sua Repubblica, legata a modelli fiscali ereditati dal passato e incapace di applicare una politica che anteponesse gli interessi della comunità a quelli dei gruppi finanziatori; non però tanto ‘moderno’ quanto quei cancellieri e letterati, tra i quali il Bruni e Poggio, che ‘stimolarono la corsa ad arrichirsi perché, in definitiva, l’arrichimento dei singoli sarebbe tornato vantaggioso per lo stato’ [quoting Marvin Becker].” one may doubt that a tendency toward financial corruption is characteristically “medieval”; however, numerous modern examples spring to mind.

34

A Boccaccian Renaissance

46. skinner, Foundations, 1: 43. skinner was criticizing the original formulation of Baron’s views in “Franciscan Poverty and civic Wealth as Factors in the Rise of Humanistic Thought,” Speculum 13 (1938): 1–37. Baron later, in the expanded form of his “Franciscan Poverty” article (In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism 1: 191–257) silently revised his treatment to take account of skinner’s criticisms, though without mentioning skinner. He continued to defend the point, however, that Boccaccio’s attitude toward wealth was “medieval.” Perhaps, but if so, what shall we call the attitude of modern socialists such as Pope Francis i (who, following saint Basil of caesarea, has called the unfettered pursuit of money “the devil’s dung”)? 47. cicero, De senectute 16.55. 48. For example, Francesco Filelfo (Orazione della avaritia, preserved in many manuscripts, for example, Ms Magl. 1440, 99v–101v (Florence: Biblioteca nazionale centrale); Francesco Patrizi of siena (the most important humanist authority on political thought), De institutione reipublicae libri IX (Paris, 1534), xiv (1.8); Giovanni nesi (De moribus i, cited in note 10), who sees the spartans as the model for frugal republics); Aurelio Lippi Brandolini, Republics and Kingdoms Compared, ed. James Hankins (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 2009), 110–36 (2.19–44); Petrus crinitus, Commentaria de honesta disciplina (Florence: 1504), 1.17, 25.9 (who goes so far as to advocate income redistribution, citing Plato and euripides). 49. see, for example, Discorsi 1.55, 3.28. The classic work on the humanist distrust of commerce and private wealth is J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 1975). Among the more trenchant critiques of Pocock, who discusses a range of humanist opinion on the subject, is Mark Jurdjevic, “Virtue, commerce and the enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001): 721–43. 50. see eric nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2004). 51. “Recalcitrent quantumlibet reges: si centies negent, regnant tamen suffragio populorum eorumque vires illos formidabiles faciunt.” 52. The bracketed phrase is preserved in one of the oldest Mss. and is clearly needed to complete the sense. Zaccaria, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 931, states incorrectly that the phrase should be inserted after paragraph 1 rather than paragraph 11; this may be a typographical error. 53. Zaccaria, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, citing Boccaccio, De casibus 2.5: “Quas si quis minus iuste cedibus aut iniuriis extenuet, suum sentiet confestim diminutum imperium: quod a sisoth Roboam facile demonstratum est. [non igitur vilipendendi sunt populi, non calcandi, non exenterandi.] sed quid populum dixerim? nec ex plebe minimus vilipendendus est: sibi quisque inpulsus

Boccaccio and the Political Thought of Renaissance Humanism

35

magnos sub pectore fert animos; et regum vita, quantumcunque satellitum presidio vallata sit, longior extimari non potest quam is velit qui pro morte eius suam vitam effundere dispositus est. . . . Maxima singulares homines ausi sunt, et ausa perfecere quandoque.” Boccaccio, like Bruni, distinguishes between the popolo, the broad middle ranks of society, and the plebs, the poor. 54. i would align this pessimism with what Zaccaria, in his introduction to the De casibus, calls Boccaccio’s “moralismo tragico.”

cHAPTeR 2

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata Reading the Decameron in the Quattrocento

t imo t hy kir c her

in his biography of Boccaccio, the Florentine humanist Giannozzo Manetti declared him a worthy follower of Dante and Petrarch: He was part of the “praestantium poetarum successione” [succession of distinguished poets] whose “acerrima . . . ingenia” [most subtle genius] had revived the art of poetry that had lain “in tenebris” [in darkness].1 This biography, written in 1440, engaged in the ongoing humanist assessment of Boccaccio’s works. composed in Latin, Manetti’s vita aimed to demonstrate that Boccaccio, like Dante and Petrarch, deserved a Latin humanist’s attention. His contemporaries, Manetti suggests, looked askance at the Three crowns’ Latin literacy: “ita evenit ut plurumque ab ignari et indoctis hominibus laudentur, eruditorum vero nullus vel poemata vel fabulas aliave eorum scripta, nisi forte vel ridendi vel iocandi gratia, aliquando in manus sumit” [so it happens that their vernacular writings are praised to the skies by unlearned and illiterate people, whereas learned men rarely pick up their poems or stories, unless to amuse themselves].2 Manetti’s biography is therefore at pains to showcase Boccaccio’s Latin writings and no less his role as the primus praeceptor of Greek studies 36

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

37

in italy through his sponsorship of Leonzio Pilato. As for his vernacular writings, Manetti stresses their popularity among the common people: Haec omnia, ab eo adulescente scripta fuisse constat, tanto tamen lepore tantaque verborum elegantia condita conspicimus ut latinarum litterarum expertes homines, modo mediocri ingenio praediti, magna quadam sermonis sui lepiditate plurimum capiantur. [All these works, although written in his youth, are composed with such wit and elegance of language that they fascinate readers ignorant of Latin letters, provided these readers are endowed with an average degree of intelligence.] This is faint praise. By contrast, the Genealogia, Manetti asserts, is considered the most significant of Boccaccio’s works by “consensu omnium” [general consent].3 The consensus omnium should be, according to Manetti’s own context, qualified by eruditorum, the “learned.” And this qualification had weight: not only humanists from the late trecento onward, but also modern scholars, appear to have supported Manetti’s emphasis on Latinity in the Quattrocento. Vittorio Formentin has seconded the judgment of carlo Dionisotti and Marco santagata by speaking of “la svalutazione del volgare nel primo quattrocento” [the denigration of the vernacular in the early quattrocento].4 in the years following Boccaccio’s death, memorialists placed his Latin writings on center stage. Filippo Villani’s De origine civitatis florentinae et eiusdem famosis civibus, edited by the Florentine chancellor coluccio salutati, mentions Boccaccio’s vernacular works only in last position, among which are “pleraque continuatione prosaica, in quibus lasciventis iuventitis ingenio paula libera evagatur” [many in prose, in which he strays a bit too freely according to the inclination of lustful youth].5 salutati’s own epitaph for Boccaccio, written in hexameter, extols his Latin efforts.6 in this chapter i inquire further into the ways that later humanists appreciated vernacular writings, in particular the Decameron. While humanists seemed to look askance at the linguistic idiom and eroticism of these works, they also recognized, and adapted, their playful sensibility in at least two ways: First, their writings masked narrative and authorial

38

A Boccaccian Renaissance

points of view; and second, they employed a sense of narratological time in their inquiry into the truth of things. These two features promoted among the humanists a feeling for intersubjective exchange and discourse. Thus Boccaccio’s Tuscan works did not only elicit humanist criticism; they also shaped humanist philosophical and cultural investigations, most prominently through the use of dialogue and narrative personae.7 salutati’s epitaph frames the tension later humanists felt with Boccaccio’s literary legacy based on his different idioms. The opening lines, “inclite cur vates, humili sermone locutus / De te, pertransis?” [Distinguished poet, why do you pass before us, having spoken / of yourself in such a lowly way?], address Boccaccio’s modest and also his vernacular speech. The sermo humilis alludes to Boccaccio’s linguistic register, contrasting that with the altum dictamen of line eight: “Tu celebras claras alto dictamine matres” [you celebrate famous mothers in solemn style], in praise of the De mulieribus claris. salutati recalls that Boccaccio apologetically claimed to use in his vernacular works un istilo umile—the “istilo umilissimo e rimesso” [the most humble and unassuming style] of Decameron 4.intro.8 even more directly, in the Trattatello he stated with regard to his own limited abilities, “e scriverò in istilo assai umile e leggiero, però che più alto nol mi presta lo ‘ngegno” [And i shall write in a very humble and superficial style, since my talent does not raise me higher].9 Thus salutati’s epitaph may be read as acknowledging Boccaccio’s apologetic strategy of self-deprecation in his Tuscan works.10 This humble guise is one of the certaldese’s authorial masks, adopted at crucial times in his work, and often with irony.11 About the Decameron itself, salutati’s letters say nothing directly. But they are sprinkled with references to the themes of Boccaccio’s friendship and compassion, themes central to the Centonovelle. As early as 1367, salutati writes to Boccaccio as “karissimo amico et optimo” [a dearest and best friend]. When his wife dies in 1372, salutati pours out his grief to Boccaccio and sends him his first eclogue. in December 1375, shortly after Boccaccio’s death, he writes to Petrarch’s son-in-law, Francesco de Brossano, expressing how Boccaccio and he “nichil aliud quam de Francesco conferebamus” [spoke of nothing else than Petrarch].12 And there is one more suggestive note of the chancellor’s appreciation for Boccaccio’s vernacular work. He wrote a letter of introduction to a Paduan acquaintance on behalf of Francesco Manelli, “qui michi singularis delectionis vinculo vinctus est” [who is bound to

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

39

me with singular affection].13 salutati likely wrote the letter in the early 1390s; and Manelli transcribed in 1384 one of the most complete and important manuscripts of the Decameron, now Laurenziana Pluteo 42.1. Besides a careful copy—a peer of the Hamiltonian autograph—Manelli also interspersed erudite marginalia throughout the text in both Latin and the vernacular.14 scholars have designated Manelli’s manuscript a “copia per passione,” a copy commissioned for personal use; equally important for the dissemination of Boccaccio’s vernacular works were the “copie a prezzo,” which were supplied to botteghe [shops] for sale. Marco cursi has compiled a census of the diffusion of both sorts. His research on the distribution of Decameron codices indicates a heightened interest in the work after 1420.15 one “copista a prezzo,” whom cursi identifies as Giovanni di ser Piero compiobbesi, recorded in the 1427 Florentine catasto that he provided a manuscript of the Centonovelle to the cartolaio [bookseller] Michele di Giovanni Guarducci. Michele’s shop near the Badia Fiorentina listed among its clients cosimo de’ Medici, niccolò niccoli, Francesco Filelfo, and Leonardo Bruni.16 cursi, following Armando Petrucci, argues that this evidence shows how Florentine booksellers accommodated divergent reading publics, one humanist, the other Latin illiterate. in contrast to this view, i would claim that this episode reveals a point of contact between these two clienteles and their linguistic registers. Petrucci, Manlio Pastore stocchi, and more recently Rhiannon Daniels have asserted that Boccaccio designed his late autograph of the Decameron with a scholarly readership in mind.17 it appears that quattrocento humanists, following this lead, increasingly recognized the value of his vernacular composition. By the 1430s, Bruni had translated classical moral ideas into Tuscan verse and composed parallel lives of Dante and Petrarch in the vernacular for the Florentine signoria. of Boccaccio he offers this reserved praise: Apparò grammatica da grande, e per questa cagione non ebbe mai la lingua latina in sua balía: ma per quel che scrisse in vulgare, si vede che naturalmente egli era eloquentissimo, e aveva ingegno oratorio. [He learned Latin letters when he was older, and for this reason he never had command of the language; but in looking at what

40

A Boccaccian Renaissance

he wrote in the vernacular, one sees that he was naturally most eloquent, and possessed rhetorical talent.]18 As the leading humanist of his day, Bruni attended to Latinity and eloquence. These concerns may have motivated him to translate into Latin the story of Ghismonda and Tancredi, Decameron 4.1. This effort at Latin translation of the Decameron follows the examples of Petrarch and Antonio Loschi, who had translated the tales of Griselda (10.10) and cepparello (1.1). Bruni’s version, notably titled Fabula Tancredi, emphasizes the prince’s paternal outrage over the moral dereliction of his daughter “de pudicitia tua alieno viro prostituenda” [for prostituting your modesty for the sake of a strange (or another) man].19 As a Tuscan complement and contrast to the Ghismonda story, Bruni composed a novella of the story of seleucus of syria and his son Antiochus. in the tale, Antiochus falls in love with his stepmother, stratonice. He falls ill and nearly dies from concealing his desire, but his father, recognizing the cause of his distress, allows him to marry stratonice. unlike his Latin Ghismonda novella, Bruni’s vernacular tale is placed in a frame. The narrator tells us he was one of the brigata “in una villa non molto di lunghi da Firenze, nella quale si faceva convito e festa” [in a villa not far from Florence, at a place of conviviality]. At the gathering, the lord of the villa brings forth the Decameron “dallo excellente poeta Giovanni Boccacci” [by the excellent poet Giovanni Boccaccio] and the narrator recounts how one of the young women reads the tale of Ghismonda. This tragic novella upsets the brigata, and at this moment a Florentine citizen—“huomo di grande studio in greco e in latino e molto curioso de l’antiche storie” [a man of great learning in both Greek and Latin and highly studious about ancient history]—tells the tale of seleucus.20 Bruni’s homage to the Decameron promotes the values of classical humanism. The speaker tells the brigata, “Ad me è sempre paruto, gentilissime donne, che gli antichi Greci d’umanità e di gentilezza di cuore abbino avanzato di gran lunga in nostri Taliani” [it has always appeared to me, most gentle ladies, that the ancient Greeks far outclassed our italians in matters of humanity and heartfelt courtesy].21 so seleucus, umano e savio [kind and wise], contrasts with Tancredi, who indulges his severity. About ten years later, Manetti used both tales in his Latin Dialogus in symposio. This work also set the two stories within a frame. it purports to

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

41

record a conversation among Florentines seeking refuge from a plague in the Veneto in 1448. The interlocutors here are all learned men, and they debate the relative merits of Tancredi’s cruelty and seleucus’s leniency. in the end, the judge rules in favor of Tancredi’s example of justice over seleucus’s act of mercy, since the salernitan upholds the standards of civil society against adultery and incest. Ghismonda, in Manetti’s version, “neque puellaris verecundie interesse arbitraretur” [took no interest in maidenly shame]; the arbiter asserts that she deserved a more severe punishment than her lover Guiscardo, since she was “et nephandorum amorum et omnes etiam flagitii sola causa et origo” [sole cause and source of vile loves and all wickedness].22 Thus, while Bruni and Manetti recognized the merit of Boccaccio’s storytelling, they also provided, one might say, a prophylactic morality against the force of the Decameron’s eroticism. Bruni, in his life of Dante, criticizes the Trattatello for its focus on Dante’s love affairs, “come se l’uomo nascesse in questo mondo solamente per ritrovarsi in quelle dieci giornate amorose, le quali da donne innamorate e da giovani leggiadri raccontate furono nello cento novelle” [as if one were born into this world only to consort in those ten amorous days of events that were recounted by enraptured ladies and gracious youths in the Decameron].23 other humanists at the time adapted the Decameron for the ends of moral virtue. Matteo Palmieri staged his vernacular dialogue Vita civile (ca. 1435) among Florentines who fled their city during the plague of 1430. But his brigata is composed of young men who have, the narrator writes, “ogni nostra opera insieme ponavamo negli studi delle onoratissime lettere” [devoted all our efforts to the study of the most honorable literature]. While recording his debt to Boccaccio’s work, Palmieri adds: “Volesse Dio che i suoi libri volgari non fussino ripieno di tanta lascivia e dissoluti exempli d’amore, ché certo credo che, avendo così attamento scripto cose morali e precepti di ben vivere, non meriterebbe essere chiamato Boccaccio ma più tosto crisostomo” [Would God that his vernacular books were not filled with such lascivious and dissolute examples of love, i certainly believe that should he have written just as aptly of moral matters and precepts of living well, he would deserve to be called chrysostom rather than Boccaccio].24 Perhaps Francesco Filelfo, teaching in Tuscany in the 1430s, read Palmieri and heeded his call, turning, as Manetti would do, the Decameron

42

A Boccaccian Renaissance

frame to the purposes of dialogue. Writing his Latin Commentationes florentinarum de exilio around 1440, he set his philosophical conversations among those sentenced to exile from Florence by cosimo de’ Medici in 1434, a fate he suffered himself; the interlocutors include Palla strozzi, his son onofrio, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, and Leonardo Bruni. in his preface, Filelfo calls cosimo a publica pestis, an “open plague,” and offers to “que decem deinceps continuis diebus ab illis dicta eleganter, erudite, divinitus audieram, in decem itidem libros contuli” [set down in ten books what was said eloquently, learnedly, and with inspiration by these men over ten successive days].25 These high-minded readings of the Decameron adopt its diegetic structure while censoring both its erotic and its hermeneutic openness. But humanists would also embark on neo-Latin forays into sexual literature and carry forward the work’s interpretative play, especially its sophisticated disguises of meaning. These ventures naturally looked back to Boccaccio’s precedent. in his De duobus amantibus historia, written in 1444, Aeneas sylvius Piccolomini found inspiration in Decameron tales for its narrative inventions, its tragic denouement, and not least its amorous sway.26 As Pope Pius ii, he records in his Commentaries how he used his knowledge of the Decameron’s erotic games to foil a wealthy woman’s attempt to seduce a priest through the office of confession.27 Poggio Bracciolini relied more obliquely on the Decameron’s apologetic and narrative strategies in his Facetiae. These were a series of often ribald anecdotes he compiled beginning in the late 1430s while at the papal curia. The Facetiae echo Boccaccio’s work not only by recounting sexual adventures or misadventures but also by targeting the hypocrisy of the clergy, especially their avarice and predation on naïve female penitents, along the lines of the tale of Fra Alberto in Decameron 4.2.28 Poggio opens the collection with a Latin variant on Boccaccio’s claim of un istilo umile [a lowly style] that should be beneath his critics’ reproach. “ne aemuli carpant Facetiarum opus, propter eloquentiam tenuitatem” [Let not the envious criticize this collection of jokes on account of its lack of eloquence], Poggio writes. if some readers, he claims, “nostras confabulationes ut res leves et viro gravi indignans reprehendant” [condemn these stories as frivolous matters unsuited to a man of stature], others will find their cares relieved iocis et fabulis [jests and stories], a genre that does not require a highly formal

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

43

language.29 The Decameron offers a pattern for the work’s linguistic idiom, as the papal jokesters recount—and translate—episodes of vernacular discourse, such as a cook’s rejoinder to the Duke of Milan a la chichibio (Dec. 6.4) or Bergamino (Dec. 1.7) or the mordant wit of the gambler Minaccio.30 Poggio’s idiom demands that humanist Latin respond to lived experience even at the cost of ciceronian elegance. The anecdotes themselves have their setting in an historical frame, or cornice, like the Decameron tales. Poggio writes in the conclusion that they were recounted “tanquam in scena” at “Bugiale nostrum, hoc est, mendaciorum veluti officina quaedam, olim a secretariis instituta, iocandi gratia” [in an almost theatrical fashion (at) our Liars’ club, that is, the special laboratory for lies, so to speak, established at that time by the papal secretaries for the sake of trading jokes].31 These tales told by “liars” raise questions about their truth value, like those of a gathering of Dioneos. Adding to these conditions of time, place, and speaker, Poggio edited the collection so that readers sequentially encounter a number of stories involving the same protagonist, as if one story has spurred the next one on intersubjectively, similarly to the brigata’s exchanges over calendrino, for example, on Days eight and nine.32 The theme of hypocrisy, the contrast between being and seeming, could be discerned not only in the content of the Decameron; this theme and contrast also fundamentally mark its narratological sophistication and the hermeneutical complexities imbedded in the layers of author, brigata, and story. Far from simply revising the Decameron according to a moral matrix, quattrocento humanist works show an appreciation for the inherent heuristic dissonance among and within the frames of the Decameron. This appreciation exerted an influence on humanist discourse alongside their emulation of classical dialogue. To use the distinction advanced by Virginia cox, the Decameron could model how dialogues could be “open” and allow a wide breadth of interpretative engagement in contrast to the more “closed,” didactic examples pursued by Palmieri and Filelfo.33 This movement toward opening the hermeneutic playground manifests itself in the humanists’ preoccupation with the problem of dissimulation and masking as it conditioned their awareness of truth. Poggio’s dialogue Contra hypocritas, written about 1448, presents a conversation among two humanists, Poggio and carlo Marsuppini, and the Aretine abbot Girolamo Aliotti. While the humanists focus their criticism on

44

A Boccaccian Renaissance

clerical deception—again sounding a Decameronian refrain—Aliotti’s comments raise a deeper concern, one that goes to heart of the construction of Boccaccio’s work: nam in quolibet artificio atque exercitio reperies viros ad simulandum promptos ac dissimulandum, hos quidem laudis, hos lucri cupidos. . . . idem de prestantibus ingenio viris, idem de bonis affirmo, quorum nullus est quin cupiat paulo amplius quam sit videri. itaque omnes ferme homines tum bonos tum malos hec complectitur definitio. [you will find in every craft or trade men ready to simulate and dissimulate, either desirous of praise or of gain. . . . i claim this is true for men of outstanding intelligence, and for good men: none of them does not seek to appear a bit better than he actually is. Thus, all people, both the good and the wicked, can be defined as hypocrites.] We are all, Aliotti claims, to some degree hypocrites, engaged in selfdeception or the deception of others. Furthermore, he adds, we can rarely discern someone’s inner intention or character from his or her outward comportment: “Multiplex igitur est hypocritarum ac varia ratio, quorum perspicua cognitio videtur difficilis, ita inest illis quedam infixa similitudo virtutis: sed tamen tempore deteguntur” [Hypocrites have therefore diverse and various methods, and it appears difficult to get an insightful understanding of their nature, since their pretense of virtue is so deeply rooted. nonetheless, time will unmask them].34 The concern raised by Aliotti’s remarks addresses the ability to espy true meaning in obvious or apparent expression. it is a variation on the theme broached by the Decameron’s opening tale of cepparello and his fraudulent but persuasive confession.35 More basically, these comments, in the context of Poggio’s work, speak to the discursive design of humanist writing, which often paraded a panoply of masks both for its personae and as its theme. For what, the reader asks, is the author’s own understanding of hypocrisy? Does the interlocutor Poggio, together with Marsuppini, hold sway, excoriating clerical corruption? or do the exchanges among different personae make finding meaning more problematic?

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

45

Fifteenth-century humanists could discover these hermeneutical questions in the Decameron. employing multiple frames of narration, the Centonovelle are preoccupied with hypocrisy and deception, exploring various dimensions of the relation between being and seeming. They express their ethical truths and their sense of reality through a dynamic unfolding of meaning over time, within and among the frames of author, speakers, and audience. The later humanists adapted and enhanced this Decameronian sensibility in their works, especially in their dialogues. The frame structure of variant personalities creates a formal mask of authorial meaning: it requires readers to perceive shifting messages and hidden reversals within the flow of conversation. in the wake of the Decameron, humanist dialogue confronted the possibilities of disguised meaning and irony on this metadiegetic level, on the level of the sincerity or authenticity of the narrator’s or interlocutor’s personality. The Decameron reminded later humanists to attend to the presence of dissimulation and hypocrisy—and not merely among the clergy but also within their own scholarly brigata. Bruni placed criticisms of the tre corone in the mouth of niccolò niccoli in the first part of his Dialogi ad Petrum Istrum (ca. 1408) and then allowed his niccoli to recant these criticisms afterward as an act of dissimulatio.36 Readers are challenged to define niccoli’s—or Bruni’s—authentic point of view. narrative personalities, in the hands of the humanists, therefore both screen and validate what is being said. Their names and their histories, whether fictive or real, qualify the reader’s interpretation, creating what Maurice Merleau-Ponty has termed a “perceptual field”: readers make sense of what they perceive by assembling their perceptions of a speaker’s personality, environment, and history during the time a speaker is presented in the course of the dialogue. Thus humanists might choose interlocutors for their dialogues not simply out of deference or homage, but also to conjure a perceptual field for their readers, and filter statements through a matrix of historical and historicized authority. They mold the meaning of their works not only through the names of fictive interlocutors but also through the biographies of contemporary ones, including themselves. Bruni appears in his Dialogi ad Petrum Istrum; Poggio and Leon Battista Alberti place themselves in several of their dialogues. Bruni and Poggio also make use of their irascible friend niccoli to advance arguments about cultural and moral ideals. And, as readers assemble their perceptions, they are summoned to bring

46

A Boccaccian Renaissance

to bear their personal histories, their recollections and expectations: in short, their own characters.37 it might be countered that quattrocento humanists were following not trecento but classical models of dialogue, for example, those of cicero, Plato, or Lucian. certainly these classical models were influential: Bruni’s Dialogi, for example, has been seen by Francesco Tateo and others as a variant of cicero’s De oratore, in which speakers debate alternative points of view (in utramque partem).38 And, as Virginia cox has argued, both ciceronian and humanist dialogues often pretend to document an actual historical conversation.39 But humanists could notice that the ongoing conversation among the Decameron’s brigata has a self-consciously intersubjective quality. one speaker’s expression shapes another’s in the narrative shifts of the text.40 The personalities present themselves in a mutually contingent and responsive way, along the lines of what Robert Hollander has termed a “struggle for control,” be it among Dioneo, Panfilo, and Fiammetta, or, as i have seen it, between emilia and Pampinea.41 For Bruni and Poggio, an interlocutor like niccoli provokes irritation among his colleagues. in the Contra hypocritas, the characters Poggio, Marsuppini, and Aliotti react to each other’s assessments.42 Thus Marsuppini, in agreement with Poggio, first focuses on obvious clerical dissimulation in the dialogue but then assents to Aliotti’s remarks: inseruimus nostro sermoni quosdam, de quibus nulla dubitatio est quin manifesti criminis rei extiterunt. Verum habiti sunt quidam ita occulti et in hoc exercitio callidi, ut inicerent ambiguitatem vera ne virtute vitam duxerint an simulata. [We have discussed those whose hypocrisy is beyond the shadow of a doubt; there is evident proof of their wickedness. yet there are others possessing such secret and skillful ways in this practice that they foster uncertainty over whether they led a life of authentic or false virtue.]43 not merely the personae separately and individually, but also their dramatic interplay, condition the reader’s view of the story told or the lesson imparted, affecting how the reader understands the work’s message. The

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

47

message is itself masked, undergoing phases of concealment and revelation, as it waits upon the reader’s own mutable appraisals. As in the Decameron, the interlocutors’ dynamic personalities in humanist dialogues authorize the meanings of their conversations. shifting their ground, the personalities often appear fallible and subject to doubt. in the hands of Leon Battista Alberti, these foibles of personality are subtler, entertaining the Decameronian tensions between story and frame. His Tuscan dialogues and Latin Intercenales, or dinner pieces, have an eye for the open-ended irony allowed by tales told by various dramatis personae.44 The dinner piece, Maritus, for example, describes how a husband punishes his wife for her infidelity by denying her all physical and emotional contact, to the point that she dies from remorse. This story is told by an elderly citizen-humanist who upholds the husband’s behavior as a praiseworthy example of the best way to manage married life: en facinus dignum memoria: unum hunc fuisse, qui uxorem impudicam et corruptam ita perpeti, ita occidere didicerit, ut sibi illius ex morte nulla impietatis nota, ex vita vero nulla adscribi potuerit ignominia, ex utriusque rebus nulla animi penitudo! [Here was a memorable case! This one man knew how to tolerate a shameless and adulterous wife, and managed to kill her without her death causing a scandal, her life a disgrace, or either causing him any regret.]45 But the husband’s unyielding treatment of his wife resonates with the cruel vengeance enacted by the scholar Rinieri against the widow elena in Pampinea’s story of Decameron 8.7. Readers of Alberti’s tale may find themselves more disturbed than edified by this example, similar to the brigata’s reaction to Pampinea’s novella; she designs her story as a warning to women who would deceive men, but the women listening find Rinieri’s stratagem worthy of reproach.46 Pampinea would present her novella as a simple moral tale, and yet her listeners, with their intersubjective response, complicate this moral rendering. in fact, emilia’s tale the next day of Giosefo and Melisso (Dec. 9.9), about two men who seek solomon’s advice on how to love and live with women, can be read as a subversive gloss on Pampinea’s story. solomon

48

A Boccaccian Renaissance

tells Giosefo to go to a certain bridge, where he sees a mule driver whipping his reluctant mule across it. Giosefo then returns home and beats his wife into submission. Melisso, by contrast, seeks more basically how to find love, and, with additional counsel, discovers that the best means of acquiring it is to show love to others. Giosefo thus learns only to master a woman with violence, much like Rinieri, with a heartlessness far removed from the lesson of Melisso and the compassione at the center of the work. This heuristic discord between story and frame that emilia’s story would emphasize illustrates what we might call the irony of the fallible author, through which an author’s own apparent misunderstanding and self-deception are unmasked through the course of the storytelling. other writings by Alberti display this irony in a profound way. His vernacular dialogue Theogenius, composed around 1440, recounts how the title character Teogenio consoles a friend, Microtiro, by recalling the conversation of another friend, the aged Genipatro. He says that Genipatro had tried to counsel Tichipedo, a young, arrogant nobleman, by warning him of the vicissitudes of fortune and the need for self-reliance. Alberti therefore creates a dialogue within a dialogue, similar to the construction of Decameron 1.7, and the second half of the composition is devoted to Teogenio’s commentary on Genipatro’s advice. Alberti exploits the ironic possibilities of this design by having Teogenio revise at times the statements of his older friend, whom Teogenio, as the narrator, declares as sage and worthy of emulation. Genipatro, for example, tells Tichipedo about the value of long experience: A questo l’uso delle cose, l’essere stato spesso da lei [fortuna] ingannato, l’avere in ogni cosa notato la sua volubilità e inconstanzia, fu a me ottimo precettore, quale non può essere appresso se non de’ vecchi e vivuti con lunga industria. [The best teacher in learning to resist fortune was the experience of things, being often deceived by her, noticing in all things her volubility and inconstancy; this could only have helped those who are old, who have experienced life with great zest.]47 yet Teogenio, in the second part of the work, stresses to Microtiro the ineluctable instability and decline of one’s mortal existence; rather than

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

49

focusing on the wisdom of many years, he mourns the misery of senectitude, even translating into Tuscan these lines from Lucretius: Già poi che’l tempo con sue forze in noi straccò e’nervi e allasò le membra, claudice el piede e l’ingegno e la lingua, persin che manca ogni cosa in un tempo. [Later, when time’s dominion shakes the body, When limbs react in dull ungainliness, Then the mind limps, tongue is a babbler, mind is palsied, all is failure, all is loss.]48 These ironies, like those of the Decameron, occur in the passing of narratological time, over phases of the work. The younger narrator Teogenio, at the close, claims more insight into the aging process than that of his wizened philosophical forebear, whose image or persona is all of his own crafting. Quattrocento humanists, therefore, recognized the Decameron’s legacy in diverse ways according to the manner in which they conceived the humanist tradition to support their projects. cristoforo Landino, in his 1481 Comento sopra la Comedia, declares that Boccaccio “imitated the traces” of Dante and Petrarch, who “ritrovorono” [rediscovered] the way of the Parnassian muses. if Boccaccio was “molto inferiore” [greatly inferior] to Petrarch, Landino writes, he was also “di poetico ingegno da natura instructo, et d’inventioni molto ornato” [naturally instructed by poetic talent and highly graced with creativity].49 A number of Landino’s poems echo Decameronian themes, even as he claims that Boccaccio “maggiore sarebbe stato se . . . non si fussi tanto nel dono della natura confidato che nell’arte fussi alquanto negligente” [would have been greater if he had relied less on his natural gifts and heeded more closely the rules of art].50 other Quattrocento readers of Boccaccio’s works professed discomfort with his linguistic idiom and his interest in eros: precisely the two qualities, we might note, of which the Decameron author boasts in the “conclusione dell’autore.” And, as the author proclaims in the introduction to Day 4, his muses are the eternal feminine in their earthbound rather than their Parnassian form.

50

A Boccaccian Renaissance

nonetheless, these humanist readers were more impressed by Boccaccio’s narrative ingegno and inventio in at least three dimensions. First, the Decameron’s frame created an apparently historical setting, which staged the circumstances for conversations and exchanges of ideas; in addition, these conversations moved over time, so that speakers responded to one another and revised their viewpoints; and finally, readers evaluated the weight of a statement through these speakers, the dramatis personae who filtered authorial meaning. Personality mediates the truth of things in both the Decameron and humanist dialogue. Verities come to light intersubjectively, through the play of personae as readers encounter them in the course of conversation. each personality in these humanists’ works is essentially historical: it conveys a past that colors both what it says and how it is understood. And this history underscores that each interlocutor—and reader—is also temporal and finite. His or her views advance and shift with time, reminding readers that theirs do as well. Mortal lives are rounded with a sleep, for which, in this domain, the only rescue is fragile memory. salutati may be marking this quality in Boccaccio’s work by asking, in his epitaph, how his humble friend “passes before us,” pertransis. The Decameron was ostensibly written to console the lovelorn and to come to terms with the horror of the Plague; later humanists wrote about the moral good, nobility, friendship, and other cultural values. But these quattrocento writers appear to have learned from the trecento poet, despite his perceived deficiencies, that truth is found primarily not in a statement but in a person and that discerning this truth requires readers who are sensitive to the face of meaning and its changes over time. noTes

1. Giannozzo Manetti, “Vita Boccacci,” in Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vitae, collected in Biographical Writings, ed. s. Baldassarri and R. Bagemihl (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 2003), 86–87, translation slightly revised. 2. ibid., 4–5, translation slightly revised. 3. ibid., 96–99, translation slightly revised. 4. Vittorio Formentin, Il Quattrocento in Storia della letteratura italiana, ed. e. Malato (Rome: salerno, 1995), 3: 159–61.

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

51

5. Filippo Villani, De origine civitatis florentinae et eiusdem famosis civibus, in Le vite di Dante, Petrarca, e Boccaccio scritte fino al secolo decesimosesto, ed. Angelo solerti (Milan: Vallardi, [1904]), 675: Manetti would pick up this association of the vernacular and eros, stating that Boccaccio “in amores usque ad maturam fere aetatem vel paulo proclivior” (98). 6. cited by Manetti, 100, with translation revised: “inclite cur vates, humili sermone locutus / De te, pertransis? Tu pascua carmine claro / in sublime vehis, tu montium nomina tuque / silvas et fontes, fluvios ac stagna lacusque / cum maribus multo digesta labore relinquis / illustresque viros, infastis casibus actos, / in nostrum aevum a primo colligis Adam. / Tu celebras claras alto dictamine matres, / Tu divos omnes ignota ab origine ducens / Per ter quina refers divina volumina, nulli / cessurus veterum. Te vulgo mille labores / Percelebrem faciunt; aetas te nulla silebit.” [Distinguished poet, why do you pass before us, having spoken / of yourself in such a lowly way? With bright song you / Raise up the pastoral life; you leave behind the names of mountains, / Woods and fountains, rivers, marshes, lakes / And seas, most carefully arranged. / illustrious men, struck by great misfortunes, / you collect, from Adam to the present age. / you celebrate famous mothers in solemn style, / you depict all the gods, from their obscure origins / in fifteen divine volumes, yielding to none / of the ancients. A thousand labors have made you / Famous throughout the world; no age shall overlook you]. cited also in Villani, De origine civitatis florentinae, 676. in a similar way, salutati’s letter to Petrarch’s son-in-law Francescuolo da Brossano, written in December 1375, singles out his Latin writings, as it mourns Boccaccio’s recent death as that of a close friend. see coluccio salutati, Epistolario, ed. F. novati, 4 vols. (Rome, 1891–1911), 1: 225. 7. This thesis implicitly revises Vittore Branca’s well-known assessment of the Decameron as a medieval “mercantile epic.” see also igor candido, Boccaccio umanista: Studi su Boccaccio e Apuleio (Ravenna: Longo, 2014). 8. cf. also Boccaccio, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, ed. G. Padoan (Milan: Mondadori, 1985), Acc. 9: “Lo stilo comico è umile e rimesso.” 9. Boccaccio, Trattatello in laude di Dante, ed. L. sasso (Milan: Garzanti, 1995), 1.Red. 9. 10. Boccaccio’s own simple four-line epitaph, cited by Manetti (100–101), reads, “Hac sub mole iacent cineres atque ossa ioannis. / Mens sedet ante Deum, meritis ornato laborum / mortalis vitae. Genitor Boccacius illi, / patria certaldum, studium fuit alma poesis.” [Beneath this stone lie the ashes and the bones of Giovanni. / His mind rests before God, embellished by the merits and / labors of his mortal life. Boccaccio was his father, / certaldo his homeland, poetry his nurse and his passion]. 11. For example, the author’s apologia in Decameron 4.intro. 12. salutati, Epistolario, 1: 48–49, 1: 156–57, 1: 225. 13. ibid., 2: 286–87.

52

A Boccaccian Renaissance

14. Kenneth P. clarke, “Leggere il Decameron a margine del codice Mannelli,” in Boccaccio e i suoi lettori: Una lunga ricezione, ed. G. M. Anselmi, G. Baffetti, c. Delcorno, and s. nobili (Bologna: il Mulino, 2013), 195–207. 15. Marco cursi, Il Decameron: Scritture, scriventi, lettori: Storia di un testo (Rome: Viella, 2007), 128. 16. Marco cursi, “Ritrovare l’identità perduta: Giovanni di ser Piero compiobbesi copista del Decameron,” Studi sul Boccaccio 36 (2008): 23–24. 17. see Rhiannon Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy, 1340–1520 (London: Legenda, 2009), 17 and 79. see also Manlio Pastore stocchi, “su alcuni autografi del Boccaccio,” Studi sul Boccaccio 10 (1977): 123–43. 18. Leonardo Bruni, “Vita di Dante e del Petrarca,” in Opere letterarie e politiche, ed. P. Viti (Turin: unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 1996), 558. 19. For a list of Latin translations of the Decameron, see Gilbert Tournoy, “Le versione latine del Decameron,” in Ecumenesimo della cultura, vol. 1: Teoria e prassi della poetica dell’umanesimo onoranze a Giovanni Boccaccio: Atti del XII convegno internazionale del Centro di Studi Umanistici Montepulciano, Palazzo Tarugi, 1975, ed. G. Tarugi (Florence: olschki, 1981), 125–26. Bruni’s translation of Decameron 4.1 is found in Ms Florence, Biblioteca nazionale Magl. iX.2 (sec. xv), fols. 64–85. on Loschi’s translation, see these articles by Giovanna Albanese: “La Fabula Zapelleti di Antonio Loschi,” in Filologia umanistica per Gianvito Resta, ed. V. Fera and G. Farraú (Padua: Antenore, 1997), 1: 3–59, which includes a transcription of his translation, and “Fortuna umanistica della Griselda,” Quaderni petrarcheschi 10 (1993): 571–627, esp. 601–5. on the versions of Bruni and Manetti (discussed below), see my Living Well in Renaissance Italy: The Virtues of Humanism and the Irony of Leon Battista Alberti (Tempe: Arizona center for Medieval and Renaissance studies, 2012), 91–94, and David Marsh, “Boccaccio in the Quattrocento: Manetti’s Dialogus in symposio,” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980): 337–50. 20. Leonardo Bruni, “novella di seleuco e Antiocho,” ed. nicoletta Marcelli, in Marcelli, Eros, politica e religione nel quattrocento fiorentino: Cinque studi tra poesia e novellistica (Rome: Vecchiarelli, 2010), 114–37, 115–16 (§§1–2 and 6). 21. Bruni, “novella,” 117 (§7). 22. i have consulted the dialogue in Ms Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana Plut. 90, sup. 29 (sec. xv), fols. 1r–43v, citations 5v and 35v. Manetti’s work refers explicitly to Boccaccio’s artistry, as noted recently by nicoletta Marcelli in “Boccaccio e il canone prima delle Prose della volgar lingua di Pietro Bembo,” Atti e Memorie dell’ Accademia Petrarchescha di Arezzo 75 (2013): 121–40. i am grateful to Dr. Marcelli for the reference to the recent scholarly edition of Manetti’s Dialogus in Gabriella Albanese and Bruno Figliuolo, Giannozzo Manetti a Venezia, 1448–1450: Con l’edizione della corrispondenza e del “Dialogus in symposio” (Venice: istituto Veneto di scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2014). 23. Bruni, “Vita di Dante e del Petrarca,” 538. James Hankins has called Bruni’s vernacular novella of seleucus “an attack on the folly of romantic

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

53

love.” see his “Humanism in the Vernacular: The case of Leonardo Bruni,” in Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. c. s. celenza and K. Gouwens (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 16. see also nicoletta Marcelli, “Appunti per l’edizione di un dittico umanistico: La latinizzazione del Tancredi boccaciano e la Novella di Seleuco di Leonardo Bruni,” Interpres 19 (2000): 18–41. 24. Matteo Palmieri, Vita Civile, ed. G. Belloni (Florence: sansoni, 1982), 6. These youths quickly seek edification from the elder statesman Agnolo Pandolfini. 25. Francesco Filelfo, On Exile, ed. J. De Keyser and trans. W. s. Blanchard (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 2013), 6. 26. see emily o’Brien’s comments in Aeneas sylvius Piccolomini (Pius ii), The Two Lovers: The Goodly History of Lady Lucrece and her Lover Euralius, ed. e. o’Brien and K. R. Bartlett (ottawa: Dovehouse, 1999), 27–31. 27. Pius ii, Commentaries, vol. 2, ed. and trans. M. Meserve and M. simonetta (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 2007), 320–25 (4.32). Pius cites to the woman Dec. 3.3. i am indebted to emily o’Brien for this reference. 28. Poggio Bracciolini, Facezie (Latin-italian), ed. and trans. M. ciccuto (Milan: Rizzoli, 2002), 167 (xlvi), 249 (cxxiii), 271–73 (cxlii), 283–85 (clv), 343 (ccx), 361–65 (ccxxxii). 29. ibid., 108. Here Poggio also echoes Loschi’s defense of his stilus attenuatus in the translation of the cepparello story, as noted by Albanese in “Fabula Zapelleti,” 1: 24. 30. Poggio, Facezie, 130–33 (xiii–xv), 158–61 (xxxix–xl). 31. ibid., 406–9. 32. on Poggio’s editing, see Marta Barbaro, “Le Confabulationes de Poggio e il ‘palcoscenico’ della curia,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 88 (2014): 101–25. The tales of the Milanese cook or the gambler Minaccio, mentioned above, are examples of this sequential ordering. 33. Virginia cox, Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in Its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Galileo (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1992), 3. see also the analogous distinctions made by Peter Burke in “The Renaissance Dialogue,” Renaissance Studies 3 (1989): 1–12. 34. Poggio Bracciolini, Contra hypocritas, ed. D. canfora (Rome: edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2008), §§19 and 36. 35. Decameron 1.1.5: “non potendo l’acume dell’occhio mortale nel segreto della divina mente trapassare in alcun modo, avvien forse tal volta che, da oppinione ingannati, tale dinanzi alla sua maestà facciamo procuratore che da quella con eterno essilio è iscacciato.” 36. The Dialogi are found in Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, ed. eugenio Garin (Milan: Ricciardi, 1952), 41–99. For recent assessments of Bruni’s intentions, see Ronald G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden: Brill 2000), 438–39, and my Living Well, 60–61.

54

A Boccaccian Renaissance

salutati charged the young Poggio with dissimulation when he heard his veiled critique of the tre corone. 37. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. c. smith (London: Routledge, 1962), 406–7, 416. see also Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Philosophie, ed. o. saame and i. saame-speidel (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996), 84–96. 38. see Francesco Tateo, Tradizione e realtà nell’Umanesimo italiano (Bari: Dedalo, 1967), 237–39, and his “il dialogo da Petrarca agli umanisti,” Quaderni petrarcheschi 10 (1993): 547. 39. cox, Renaissance Dialogue, 13. see also Ann Vasaly, Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1993), 26–33. 40. cf. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 392–96. 41. Robert Hollander, “The struggle for control among the Novellatori of the Decameron and the Reason for Their Return to Florence,” Studi sul Boccaccio 39 (2011): 243–309; Timothy Kircher, The Poet’s Wisdom: The Humanists, the Church, and the Formation of Philosophy in the Early Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 246–56. 42. niccoli’s persona exerts a contentious influence in Bruni’s Dialogi ad Petrum Istrum and in Poggio’s De nobilitate and De infelictate principum. 43. Poggio, Contra hypocritas, §69. 44. Alberti’s avuncular counselor Lionardo Alberti, in the Della famiglia, assumes the mantle of learned authority when speaking to the young Battista in Book 2, only later to confess his own confusion and ignorance before the elder Adovardo Alberti in Book 4. 45. Leon Battista Alberti, Dinner Pieces, trans. D. Marsh (Binghamton, new york: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and studies, 1987), 132; Intercenales (Latin-italian), ed. and trans. F. Bacchelli and L. D’Ascia (Bologna: Pedragon, 2003), 464. 46. Dec. 8.7.149, 8.8.2: “e per ciò guardatevi, donne, dal beffare, e gli scolari spezialmente.” “Gravi e noiosi erano stati i casi d’elena a ascolatare alle donne, ma per ciò che in parte giustamente avvenutigli gli estimavano, con piú moderata compassione gli avean trapassati, quantunque rigido e constante fieramente, anzi crudele, reputassero lo scolare.” on this relation, see my Living Well, 94–99, and Poet’s Wisdom, 246–56. 47. Leon Battista Alberti, Theogenius in Opere volgari, ed. c. Grayson, 3 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1960–73), 2: 67.30–34. if the first part of his statement appears to capture a basic message of the Decameron, the final phrase suggests that the work is wasted on the young. Genipatro ironically tries to teach the youthful Tichipedo a lesson he is not prepared to learn. on this dialogue, see my Living Well, 134–47. 48. Alberti, Theogenius, 2: 101.24–27. The Latin is Lucr. 3.451–454: “Post ubi iam validis quassatum est viribus aevi / corpus et obstusis ceciderunt viribus

Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata

55

artus, / claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, [labat] mens, / omnia deficiunt atque uno tempore desunt.” The english translation is by Rolfe Humphries of Lucretius, The Way Things Are (Bloomington: indiana university Press, 1969), 99. 49. cristoforo Landino, Comento sopra la Comedia, ed. P. Procaccioli (Rome: salerno, 2001), iV.41–42: “La già molti anni smarrita strada, la quale gl’amanti delle muse guida in Parnaso e al Pegaseo fonte, ritrovorono [Dante, Petrarca], et tra pruni e sterpi ricoperta, et per questo incognita, in maniera purgorono, che di dipoi da molti e’ stata pesta. Le vestigie di questi imito’ ioanni Boccaccio” (iX.236–37). 50. cristoforo Landino, “Prolusione petrarchesca,” in Scritti critici e teorici, ed. R. cardini (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974), 1: 35, cited by Martin McLaughlin in Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (oxford: oxford university Press, 1996), 179; see also 168.

PART 2 Framing the Renaissance Boccaccio

cHAPTeR 3

Poets Prefer company Boccaccio’s Portraits and the Three Crowns of Florence

v ict or ia kir kham

Privileged among mortals for their inspired wisdom and diction, classic poets have transcended death by rising in fabulous afterlives, revered as secular saints in the territories that birthed and buried them.1 Mythic imagery may picture them as monumental isolated beings who flee the crowd and favor solitary haunts—whether sylvan glades, as painted by simone Martini for the frontispiece of Petrarch’s Virgil; the hermit’s cave, as invoked for Dante’s legendary visit to the Grotto of Tolmino (fig. 3.1); or a scholar’s book-stocked studiolo, set far in the countryside, where Boccaccio reigns as Renaissance humanist (fig. 3.2).2 Alternatively, they may assert themselves in memory with a preference for company—sometimes of their own choosing, sometimes assigned by admiring posterity. so Dante, walking the greensward of Limbo, joins Homer, Horace, ovid, Lucan, and Virgil as “sixth among so much wisdom” (Inferno 4.102). And Boccaccio, following in his footsteps when he bids the Filocolo farewell (5.97.5–6), attaches himself to his own ideal elite—Virgil, Lucan, statius, ovid, and Dante.3 Dante, who perfects the “fair school” on the privileged turf of Limbo, not surprisingly has frequent epiphanies in group scenes from wall paintings of the late Middle Ages. some are folkloristic, as may be true of a 59

F i G u R e 3.1. Dante alla Grotta di Tolmino, drawing by G. Derif and engraving by [Giacomo] Aliprandi, from Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia (udine, 1823), vol. 1: Inferno, facing p. 1 (851.15D192DVG vol. 1). Photo from David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke university.

F i G u R e 3.2. Boccaccio in His Study, full-page, full-color illumination by an unknown artist, Rouen, early sixteenth c., in De casibus virorum illustrium, trans. Laurent de Premierfait, book 1, proem. (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale), Ms. Fr. 128, fol. 1r. Photo from Bibliothèque nationale, Paris.

62

A Boccaccian Renaissance

“Dante” only recently uncovered at Verona.4 such was certainly the “Dante” singled out as early as the quattrocento in a late fourteenth-century procession of the Three Magi frescoed at the church complex of san Domenico in Pistoia. over time, imaginative viewers conjured for him the company of suitable peers. First, it pleased the locals to pair him with Petrarch. Then a restoration of 1930 tucked “cino da Pistoia” between them, making san Domenico’s “Dante” multiply from one celebrity to three. Finally, in a scholarly “correction” of 1980, Pistoia’s favorite son vanished to accommodate “Boccaccio”—all in accordance with an old fallacious rule, which i formulate as follows: “Where there’s a Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio can’t be far behind.”5 cino, pride of the city, had toppled to a powerful paradigm, the Three crowns of Florence. When did just those three come to be “singled out for special reverence,” winning their fame as the classic italian canon?6 Florence itself should hold clues. At s. M. novella, nardo di cione is said to have imparadised Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in his Last Judgment of the 1350s in images that are often cited as the oldest portraits of the Three crowns.7 never mind that the only laurels in evidence wreathe a man who looks more like a Roman emperor than a poet. The so-called Dante stands above him, face tilted upward toward the saints in the top row. if the men just at his back are Boccaccio and Petrarch, it would be a unique case of two figures levitating in glory while, contemporaneously, their mortal feet still trod the earth. Very much alive when nardo frescoed this wall, Petrarch and Boccaccio did not die until two decades later, nor would their fame have yet reached planes sufficiently elevated to qualify them for pre-mortem posts in heaven. Finally, this wishful reading, not just by Renaissance past-watchers but also by nineteenth- and twentiethcentury art historians, presumes a canon of the Three crowns that did not exist so early. in collective imagination, that concept could not take hold until a generation or so after all three men were truly dead. First slipping quietly into literature of the later trecento, the Three crowns would come forth publicly mid-quattrocento: Giannozzo Manetti joined them in a triple biography; visual art assembled them as representatives of the planet Jupiter’s family in astrological engravings; and Domenico castagno gave them monumental form in his fresco of nine Famous Men (fig. 3.3).8 unlike nardo’s serried souls, which may be portraits (but not of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio), sometimes the faces crowded into scenes

Poets Prefer company

63

F i G u R e 3 . 3 . Detail: Boccaccio, from Domenico castagno, Uomini famosi, 1449–51, detached fresco (Florence: Galleria degli uffizi). Photo from soprintendenza dei Beni Artistici, Florence, on Wikimedia commons.

of medieval and Renaissance mural art really do belong with the names tradition has given them. An image thought to be Petrarch beside Lombardo della seta in the Paduan oratory of san Giorgio by Altichiero da Zevio (1380–84) lays good claim to authenticity.9 More often, though, star spottings are the stuff of fantasy, such as Pistoia’s “Dante” or the “Boccaccio” and “Fiammetta” who wend their way upward on the Via Veritatis in the Dominican chapter house decorated by Andrea di Buonaiuto da Firenze at s. M. novella in the 1360s. Deemed worthy to adorn the frontispiece of edward Hutton’s 1910 Giovanni Boccaccio, authoritative in its

64

A Boccaccian Renaissance

F i G u R e 3.4. Traditional Portraits of Boccaccio and Fiammetta in edward Hutton, Giovanni Boccaccio (London, 1910), frontispiece. Details from Andrea di Buonaiuto, Via Veritatis, 1360s, fresco, s. M. novella, Florence. inset: Francis MacManus, Boccaccio (London, 1947), jacket cover by c. L. Barringer.

time and for decades after (fig. 3.4), their identities as the certaldan and his flame lady are pure invention, traceable to romantic enthusiasms of nineteenth-century British tourists. The fact that they are apocryphal has not impeded popular imagination from running ever so freely and in our own time adding to their company Dante, Petrarch, Beatrice, and Laura. Here “Boccaccio” was the starting point, from which sprang all of the “Three crowns,” each happily escorting his lady to heaven. yet are these present-day wishful thinkers so different from italy’s founding poets?

Poets Prefer company

65

From the earliest times, their ladies have been partners in their lyrics. so Dante would have it in “Guido i’ vorrei,” a sonnet recalled by Petrarch in his Triumph of Love, where among cupid’s followers Dante processes with Beatrice and cino with selvaggia. Boccaccio, in turn, bows to the tradition, picturing the late sennuccio del Bene among sky-dwelling lovers: Hor sei salito, caro signor mio, ................. Hor sè colà, dove spesso il desio ti tirò già per veder Laüretta; or sei dove la mia bella Fiammetta. siede con lei nel conspecto di Dio. Hor con sennuccio et con cino et con Dante. vivi, sicuro d’etherno riposo.10 [now you have risen, dear my lord, .................. now you are up there where often desire drew you to see Lauretta; now you are where my fair Fiammetta sits with her in the face of God. now with sennuccio and with cino and with Dante you are living, certain of eternal rest.] Before the Three crowns surfaced at the summit of Tuscan letters, an older canon defined by Filippo Villani ruled the cultural landscape. When in 1396 Florence planned a tomb for the Duomo to honor its poets, those chosen were Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Zanobi da strada, a quartet joined by the jurist Accursius.11 The initiative for the Duomo tomb project—never carried out because Ravenna, where Dante died in exile, balked at parting with his ashes—seems likely to have come from coluccio salutati, chancellor of Florence. Friendship linked salutati to Filippo Villani, whose history of Florence, written in 1381–82 and revised fifteen years later, surely prompted the chancellor’s impulse to celebrate five famous Florentines with a commemorative monument. Villani, in fact, rounded off his chronicle with a parade of uomini famosi. Leading the way is the late antique poet claudian, who Florentines believed had been born

66

A Boccaccian Renaissance

in their city.12 next in Villani’s procession come Dante and Petrarch, at the forefront of modern literary renewal. Behind them, as a sort of second generation, follow Boccaccio and Zanobi.13 Villani’s quintet became an archetype not just for salutati, who replaced a dimly remembered claudian with the twelfth-century jurist Francesco Accursio, born just outside Florence at impruneta. Villani’s pairs surely also subtend a cassone end panel attributed to Giovanni dal Ponte and painted during the 1420s in a late Gothic style. Dante and Petrarch stand together, as if in colloquy, on a meadow against a background of gold, perhaps to suggest that they are in Paradise. A thick laurel wreath tops Petrarch’s cowled head, while from an upper corner the Muse reaches down in a gesture of consecration toward Dante, uncrowned.14 The lost companion to this piece would presumably have paired Boccaccio and Zanobi. other traces of the trecento Villani canon persist in the beautiful wood intarsio double doors carved for the sala dei Gigli in Palazzo Vecchio, where Dante and Petrarch face each other in full-length profile with their books.15 A doorway of Dante and Petrarch, keeping a solemn watch at the passage between two chambers of government in the town hall of Florence, exemplifies a trend that began in the trecento of proudly displaying images of a city’s poets in a central place of symbolic importance. Within about a decade of his death (1374), an immortalized Petrarch in his Study could preside over the De viris illustribus inspired by his homonymous text and frescoed during the 1380s in the sala dei Giganti at Padua for the Lord of carrara under the supervision of the poet’s literary executor, Lombardo della seta.16 Prompted by that Paduan program, shortly before the turn of the quattrocento coluccio salutati conceived a universal cycle of twenty-two Uomini famosi for an Aula minor in Palazzo Vecchio. Destroyed around 1470 but known from salutati’s surviving tituli, it included the poets claudian, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Zanobi— lifted from the canon but lately compiled by Filippo Villani. one visual remnant of salutati’s civic portraits seems to survive in a pen-and-ink image of Boccaccio, translated from monumental to manuscript proportions, that decorates a copy of his Filostrato dated to 1397.17 sometime after Boccaccio’s death (1375) and seemingly after the first version of Villani’s chronicle of Florence (1381–82) but before salutati died (1406), the Guild of Judges and notaries commissioned a fresco cycle

Poets Prefer company

67

F i G u R e 3 .5 . Detail, Boccaccio, from Dante, Petrarch, Zanobi, Boccaccio, attrib. to niccolò Gerini, 1381/82–1406, fresco in a lunette, Palazzo del Proconsolo (Guild of the Judges and notaries), Florence. Photo courtesy of Massimo Gennari.

of their own for their hall on the Via del Proconsolo (fig. 3.5). in a heavily damaged lunette, men holding books and laurel branches step forth from Villani’s roster of illustrious poets. Maria Monica Donato identified them as Dante, Petrarch, Zanobi da strada, and Boccaccio.18 only two dim profiles are still visible, Dante’s and Boccaccio’s. Their features find confirmation in each poet’s early iconography: for Dante, a youthful portrait in

68

A Boccaccian Renaissance

F i G u R e 3 . 6 . Boccaccio, pen-and-ink drawing by Giovanni dal Ponte, 1450, in Boccaccio’s fiction work Corbaccio (Venice: Biblioteca Marciana), Ms. 10.127, fol. 47r. Photo from Biblioteca Marciana, Venice.

the Bargello that Vasari attributed to Giotto,19 for Boccaccio, an enduring family of defining images (fig. 3.6 and in the appendix to this chapter, 1440s, after 1450, ca. 1511, and ca. 1600). This recently restored fresco is of capital importance as a visual archetype, inspired by its literary counterpart in the chronicle of Filippo Villani. Quattrocento humanism brought classical variation to patterns of poetic company. Leonardo Bruni, inspired by Plutarch’s Parallel Lives for his Le vite di Dante e del Petrarca (1436), mounted his diptych in framing material that made a place for Boccaccio at the margins. The coda to Petrarch’s Vita sets a marching order for the Tuscan Muses: “When Petrarch died, the Florentine Muses, as if by hereditary succession, were left to Boccaccio . . . and it was a succession in time, too, because when Dante died, Petrarch was seventeen years of age, and when Petrarch died, Boccaccio was younger than he by nine years.”20 Taking his cue from Bruni, Giannozzo Manetti composed parallel lives of socrates and seneca, then went on to embrace Boccaccio fully as tertius inter pares in his Vitae Dantis et Petrarchae ac Boccaccii (1440), the first biographical writing to conjoin the three men.21 Alongside such newer currents, Villani’s traditional canon continued, returning expanded in charming miniatures that decorate a Florentine manuscript of 1447–48, the account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land by a Florentine goldsmith, Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici. His itinerary begins

Poets Prefer company

69

in the Arno city, illustrated with watercolors of its landmarks and human subjects of equal pride: nine writers whose portraits adorned the nine city gates.22 This seemingly idiosyncratic arrangement may reflect a paradigm that had passed into italy from French romance, “les neuf preux,” or the nine Worthies—three pagan heroes, three ancient Hebrews, and three christians. Jacques de Longuyon created them for his Voeux du paon [Vows on the peacock] of 1312, a romance in the medieval Alexander cycle so popular that it generated several French sequels and catapulted the triple trios to european fame in many variant incarnations. one of them was Domenico castagno’s nine Uomini famosi: three warriors, three women, and three poets (see fig. 3.3). Jacques de Longuyon’s model encouraged the process of crystallization by which, in competition with the older Villani canon, that of the Three crowns was to coalesce and cohere.23 Before that became a fait accompli, though, Angelo Poliziano was to intervene with a magisterial display of erudition that marries antiquity to the moderns. For his patron, Lorenzo de’ Medici, he created the largest company of poets ever to honor a single person. it is his Latin poem Nutricia, a memory chain of some eight hundred named individuals from the mythic origins of mankind to Florence in 1486. Poliziano’s list isn’t just an inventory; it is a canon. Maximal in size, it nonetheless represents a choice of those names he has selected as the best to define poetic tradition, biblical, classic, and modern. notably absent are denizens of the “Dark Ages.” Here are no carolingians like Rhabanus Maurus, no chartrians like Alain of Lille, no italians like Giacomo da Lentini, Guittone, cino, or Giovanni del Virgilio. Poliziano’s list jumps from practitioners in minor genres of antiquity straight to Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Guido cavalcanti. surely not by coincidence, the latter are the same four poets codified by Boccaccio in a manuscript anthology now preserved at the Vatican (see appendix 1359–1363/66). Lorenzo de’ Medici comes last among Poliziano’s moderns, in a category by himself—marking a triumphal endpoint in universal poetic history, heir to the dynasty established by cosimo i de’ Medici, and, implicitly, fifth in a sequence to counterbalance Villani’s five poets, staged as Florence’s originary uomini famosi.24 Like Villani’s gallery and the portals of Florence, Nutricia illustrates a tendency to expand the singular subject into collectivities, giving an isolated genius worthy companions—great contemporaries, his beloved lady, his peers in pre-eminence across the ages. Thus Dante, who counted

70

A Boccaccian Renaissance

among his historical friends cino da Pistoia and Guido cavalcanti, finds a legendary soulmate in Giotto, although no evidence exists that they ever met. Giorgo Vasari nourished that notion in his Vita of the painter (1568), who was said to have frescoed Dante among the Blessed in the Florentine Bargello Last Judgment, together with his teacher Brunetto Latini and his kinsman corso Donati.25 Poliziano’s canon of four moderns casts light on one of Vasari’s own paintings, the Portrait of Six Tuscan Poets, a panel from 1544 (fig. 3.7). Dominant is Dante, posed as if enthroned. slightly behind him, in smaller proportions, stands Petrarch, identified by the portrait medallion of Laura on his Petrarchino. Farther behind those two, with the least coverage and literally lowest in the hierarchy, is Giovanni Boccaccio. Forming a triangle, these central laureated figures are clearly positioned to be read as the Three crowns. spatial disposition declares their ranking, which correlates with the trio’s marching order in Lionardo Bruni’s biographies. yet there is a fourth laureate, at the right rear: Guido cavalcanti. counting the two Dantisti at the left rear who lack laurels, cristoforo Landino and Marsilio Ficino, Vasari’s company is no longer five, as in Villani, or four (plus Lorenzo), as in Poliziano. now they are a group numerically identical to the sextet in Dante’s Limbo. With the ancient Roman ghost present in the “Virgilius” book Dante holds aloft to Guido, who had failed to write an epic, the poets are seven, the same number as the objects on the table, which allude to the seven liberal arts, symbolizing universal knowledge.26 in this numerology, Vasari echoes Raphael’s Parnassus (ca. 1511), where, inspired by Apollo and the Muses, seventeen poets from antiquity to the present confabulate under the shade of seven laurels. Among them are Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, but not as the Three crowns, because they stand scattered among the elect in different poetic genres. Dante keeps company with Homer and Virgil at the peak reserved for the epic; Petrarch, at the lower left near sappho, represents lyric poetry; and Boccaccio, in the distance at the upper right, not far from sannazaro, perhaps incarnates pastoral.27 Vasari, who borrows Petrarch’s and Boccaccio’s features from Raphael for his Six Tuscan Poets, will keep the certaldan in that rear position. Describing Raphael’s fresco in his Lives of the Painters, Vasari plucks the Three crowns from their scattered Parnassian context, linking their names and asserting their unity.28

Poets Prefer company

71

F i G u R e 3.7. Six Tuscan Poets, oil on panel, by Giorgio Vasari, 1544 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis institute of Art), William Hood Dunwoody Fund 71.24. Photo from the Minneapolis institute of Art.

Half a century before, the Three crowns with a Dante presiding were, in fact, already so well established as to be ripe for satire, captured in an amusing Leonardesque caricature.29 By 1600 new moderns join the ranks of uomini famosi, but the trecento trinity is now fixed as the classic canon of italy’s greatest poets. When Baccio Valori commissions sculptural portraits in three vertical tiers of herms on the façade of his palazzo in Borgo degli Albizzi, he elevates the Three crowns to the most privileged position, Dante supreme at top center, flanked by Petrarch and Boccaccio.30 surprisingly, the term “Tre corone” does not occur in the Vocabolario della Crusca, the great dictionary of italian begun in 1612 by the

72

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Accademia della Crusca. The phrase “Three crowns,” though, is not just another philo-italian invention of Anglo-saxon enthusiasts. Giovanni Gherardo da Prato plants it in the proem to his Paradiso degli Alberti (1426), begging the reader’s forgiveness for his passionate love of the vernacular: scusimi . . . l’ardentissima voglia che continuamente mi sprona il mio edioma materno con ogni possa sapere essaltare e quello nobilitare, come che da tre corone fiorentine principalmente già nobilitato ed essaltato si sia. [May i be excused for the most ardent wish that continually spurs me to exalt and ennoble with all my power my maternal tongue since it has already been ennobled and exalted principally by three Florentine crowns.]31 even at the turn of the quattrocento, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio were conjoined in some people’s minds as writers of the italian classics. The year 1403 saw coluccio salutati sharpen his plume to compose a salty diatribe against Antonio Loschi, chancellor of the enemy Visconti prince. His Invective against Antonio Loschi rises to its rhetorical climax with a paean to his city, demonstrably the most beautiful in all italy. she boasts a long list of civic riches, from material to human resources, in her belting walls, palaces, churches, edifices, porticoes, piazzas, broad streets, large population, salubrious climate, fair setting, rich wells, sweet water, surrounding villages and towns, farmers, trade, and clever business practices. To top the peroration, he asks in ringing tones where more illustrious men can be found: “Where Dante? Where Petrarch? Where Boccaccio?”32 coluccio singles out three great poets, and he puts them in the same ranked order as Bruni and Vasari. salutati, however, was not the first to articulate this ranking. Rather he reinforces and transmits a received idea. That idea came to him from Petrarch, whom he knew personally. in an epistle of old age to Boccaccio, dated to about 1364 (Seniles 5.2),33 Petrarch reminds his friend that not everyone at a dinner gathering can sit at the head of the banquet table. so it is in all other things, such as poetry. “There are degrees of glory as well as merit.” Dante, Petrarch allows, holds the first

Poets Prefer company

73

place. The delicate difficulty, as Petrarch juggles his prose, comes in assigning second and third. By the logic of philosophy, by the example of the ancients, and by the rules of friendship, he stakes his claim to the second place and leaves for Boccaccio the third. After all, shouldn’t he be grateful for such a high ranking, the honor of being the third crown of Florence? A P P e n D i X : e A R Ly i TA L i A n c A n o n s o F P oe T s A n D T H e T H R e e c RoW n s o F F L o R e n c e : A L i T e R A R y A n D V i s uA L c H R o n o L o G y F R o M T H e D u e c e n T o T o 16 0 0

ca. 1283/84–1287/88. Dante’s famous sonnet “Guido, i’ vorrei” imagines a magical boating party in which Guido cavalcanti and Lapo Gianni De’ Ricevuti (a Florentine notary and poet) join him, together with their respective ladies, Vanna, Lagia, and the one “who’s number thirty.”34 1303–4. De vulgari eloquentia 2.2.8. Dante traces a genealogy of vernacular poets and their defining subjects, beginning with the Provençal troubadours: Bertran de Born for arms, Arnaut Daniel for love, Giraut de Bornelh for rectitude, cino da Pistoia for love, and “his friend” (Dante) for rectitude.35 Before 1309. Inferno 4.88–102. on the greensward of the Limbus, Virgil points out Homer, Horace, ovid, and Lucan to Dante, who walks “sesto tra cotanto senno.” ca. 1336–38. Bidding his Filocolo farewell (5.97), Boccaccio extends the canon in Inferno 4: Virgil, Lucan, statius, ovid, Dante [and Boccaccio]. ca. 1342–43. in Boccaccio’s Amorosa visione 5, the dreaming narrator beholds a company of poets, all painted in the seductive castle beside Lady Wisdom/Philosophy. The first group descends from Inferno 4: Virgil, Homer, Horace, Lucan, and ovid. More “savi antichi” [wise ancients] follow: Juvenal, Terence, Pamphilus, Pindar, statius, Apuleius, Varro, caecilius, euripides, Antiphontis, simonides, Archita, sallust, Vegetius, claudian, Persius, cato, Livy, Valerius [Maximus], and orosius. crowning the list is “un gran poeta” who receives laurels from the presiding lady, “Dante Alighier fiorentino.”36

74

A Boccaccian Renaissance

ca. 1348–53 (or 1348–60). in the introduction to Day 4 of the Decameron, Boccaccio defends himself for writing about love because Guido cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri “già vecchi” [already old], and cino da Pistoia “vecchissimo” [very old] did so honorably.37 november 1349. Petrarch’s sonnet “sennuccio mio” (287) asks the friend whose death he mourns, sennuccio del Bene, to greet other poets he joins in the third heaven: Guittone d’Arezzo, cino da Pistoia, Dante, and Franceschino degli Albizzi.38 cf. after 1349, 1374. After 1349. Petrarch, in Triumph of Love 4.31–57, recalling Dante’s sonnet “Guido, i’ vorrei,” sees in procession Dante and Beatrice, selvaggia, cino da Pistoia, Guittone d’Arezzo, “the two Guidos” (Guido Guinizelli and Guido cavalcanti), onesto Bolognese, the sicilians, then sennuccio and Franceschino, followed by fourteen troubadours, beginning with Arnaut Daniel. cf. ca. 1283/84–1287/88, november 1349. ca. 1350. Petrarch, in his canzone “Lasso me, ch’i’ non so in qual parte pieghi” (70), embeds as the final verse in each of its five stanzas the first verses of poems by four others (Arnaut Daniel, Guido cavalcanti, Dante, and cino da Pistoia) and himself.39 ca. 1350–65. The section “on Rivers” in Boccaccio’s geographical encyclopedia (De montibus 5.3) begins with “Arnus,” an acknowledged violation of alphabetical order (the first should be “Abano,” a river on the plain of Damascus). The author explains why he privileges the Arno: “Patrie flumen sit et michi ante alios omnes ab ipsa infantia cognitus” [it is the river of my fatherland and known to me before all others, from my very infancy].40 This autobiographical note, recalling Inferno 23.94–96, alludes affectionately to the Comedy by reversing Dante’s anger in Purgatorio 14.6–21. The Arno, as Boccaccio adds, flows by Petrarch’s ancestral town, incisa: “Francisci Petrarche poete conspicui vetustissimam sedem” [ancient seat of the outstanding poet Francis Petrarch]. “Boccaccio effectively canonizes the ‘Three crowns’ of Tuscan literature through an act of literary geographical territorialization.”41 1359–1363/66. Boccaccio compiles an anthology (today Mss. chigi L.V.176 and chigi L.Vi.213, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican city) with his Trattatello in laude di Dante, Dante’s Vita Nuova, cavalcanti’s Donna me prega, Boccaccio’s Ytalie iam certus honos, fifteen canzoni by Dante, and an early version of Petrarch’s Canzoniere.

Poets Prefer company

75

in a selection that will influence Quattrocento humanists (see below, 1476–77, 1486, before 1492), as well as Vasari (1544), he codifies four poets: Dante, cavalcanti, Petrarch, and himself.42 Before 1357. nardo di cione, paints Last Judgment, a fresco, in strozzi chapel, s. M. novella, Florence. suppositious Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. 1364. Petrarch, in Seniles 5.2, written to Giovanni Boccaccio, says that Dante deserves first place among modern vernacular poets, but Petrarch claims second for himself and says Boccaccio should count himself lucky as third. 1374. Giovanni Boccaccio, in a sonnet on the death of Petrarch, writes: “Hor sei salito, caro signor mio, / . . . / Hor con sennuccio e con cino e con Dante / vivi . . . ” [now you have risen, dear my lord. / . . . / now with sennuccio and with cino and with Dante / you are living]. cf. november 1349. 1375. Franco sacchetti, in a canzone on the death of Boccaccio, presents a gallery of famous men, all dead, that groups a trio of poets but not the Three crowns: “or è mancata ogni poesia / e vote son le case di Parnaso /. . . / tre poeti di nome . . . / Zanobi e ‘l Petrarca in quel tesauro / ch’ebbon col verde lauro; / l’ultimo e il terzo, è quel che sopra scrivo [Boccaccio]. / e ciaschedun fu vivo / insieme, e tutti gli vidi a un tempo, / or non si vede alcun tardi o per tempo! / . . . / come debbo sperar che surga Dante, / che già chi ‘l sappia legger non si trova / . . . ?” [now all poetry is departed, / and empty are the houses of Parnassus / . . . / three poets by name . . . / Zanobi and Petrarch in that treasure they had with the green laurel; / last and third is the man i write above (Boccaccio). / And all were alive / together, and i saw them all at the same time, / now none is to be seen, tardy or betimes! / . . . / How am i to hope that Dante might resurge, / for already none is found who knows how to read him / . . . ?].43 1381–82. Filippo Villani, in De origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus in its first version closes the city history with lives of its famous citizens, starting with the poets: claudian, Dante, Petrarch, Zanobi da strada, and Boccaccio, plus two still living: coluccio salutati and Domenico silvestri. cf. 1395–96. Villani is the source for successive writers. see, e.g., De viris claris in Domenico Bandini of Arezzo’s encyclopedia Fons memorabilium universi (before 1415).44

76

A Boccaccian Renaissance

1381–82 and before 1406 (the date of salutati’s death). Domenico silvestri writes titles in tetrastichs of Latin hexameters for a fresco of famous men (Dante, Petrarch, Zanobi da strada, and Boccaccio) in the Florentine Palace of the Judges and notaries. 1381–82 and before 1406. niccolò Gerini (attrib.) creates profile portraits of Dante, Petrarch, Zanobi, and Boccaccio in a heavily damaged lunette fresco, Palace of the Judges and notaries, Via del Proconsolo, Florence. Tituli survive by Domenico silvestri, notary and friend of salutati, who must have designed the project. ca. 1390. Tituli for a cycle of twenty-two uomini famosi are conceived by coluccio salutati for an Aula minor in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. The famous men honored are Brutus Major, M. Furius camillus, scipio Africanus, M. curius Dentatus, Dante, Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Petrarch, Q. Fabius Maximus, Marcus Marcellus, ninus, Alexander the Great, claudian, Zanobi da strada, Boccaccio, Julius caesar, octavian, constantine, charlemagne, cicero, Fabricius Luscinius, and cato of utica. ca. 1390. An unknown artist creates a Fresco cycle of twenty-two uomini famosi, destroyed after 1470 but known from coluccio salutati’s surviving tituli, above. 1395–96. Filippo Villani, in De origine civitatis Florentiae, its second version, writes on the lives of claudian, Dante, Petrarch, Zanobi da strada, Boccaccio, and coluccio. cf. 1381–82. December 22, 1396. The commune of Florence, at salutati’s initiative, considers gathering the ashes for a tomb monument in the Duomo, never realized, dedicated to Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Zanobi da strada, and the jurist Accursius.45 ca. 1397. Jacopo da Montepulciano writes Fimerodia, an allegorical poem with a triumph of Florence and illustrious Florentines: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio; Guido cavalcanti, Dino del Mugello (jurist), Zanobi da strada, Giotto, Manno Donati (soldier), and niccolò Acciaiuoli.46 Late trecento (after 1375, the year of Boccaccio’s death) or early Quattrocento, an unknown author produces a cycle of sonetti caudati in which Florence personified, three poets, two “scientists,” and two men of arms “speak,” as if from images, namely Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Tommaso del Garbo, Paolo dell’Abaco, niccolò Acciaiuoli, and Manno Donati. strangely, the sonnet for Boccaccio begins, “Di foglie d’auro m’adornò la fronte / il cinto sesto carlo imperadore” .

Poets Prefer company

77

[With leaves of gold / the girded/laureled (?) sixth charles emperor adorned my brow].47 Late trecento or early quattrocento. An unknown artist paints a lost fresco cycle of portraits (if it was ever executed) to illustrate the sonnets in the entry just above.48 ca. 1400 and before 1406. cino Rinuccini writes Invettiva contro a cierti calunniatori di Dante e messer Francesco Petrarca e messer Giovanni Boccaccio.49 1403. coluccio salutati, in Invectiva in Antonium Luschum Vicentinum, asks where, except in Florence, one can find such famous poets as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. 1405–6. Leonardo Bruni, in Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum (Pier Paolo Vergerio), visits salutati with the humanist niccolò niccoli, who argues in a disputatio on successive days for and against coluccio’s “triumvirate”: “can you consider not outstanding at least three men whom our city has borne in these times, Dante, Francesco Petrarca, and Giovanni Boccaccio?”50 ca. 1406–14. cino Rinuccini, in Risponsiva alla Invettiva di messer Antonio Lusco, writes a defense of Florence and its superiority to Milan that includes biographies of uomini illustri: men of religion, poets, rhetors, jurists, doctors, mathematicians, musicians, courtiers, soldiers, merchants, and painters, inter alias Dante, Petrarch, claudian, Zanobi, coluccio, Boccaccio, Arrighetto da settimello, Brunetto Latini, Fazio degli uberti, Guido cavalcanti, and Francesco da Barberino.51 After 1406. Giovanni Gherardi da Prato (?) pens Philomena, a literary allegory in which Lady constance guides the poet to the seven Virtues, the seven Liberal Arts, and Parnassus, where Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio dwell, together with salutati, Phidias, Apelles, and Giotto.52 1418. sicco Polenton of Padua, author of Scriptorum illustrium latinae linguae libri XVIII, writes to his friend Andrea Biglia in Florence asking for information on Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio, and coluccio.”53 1420s (or 1430–35?). Giovanni dal Ponte creates Dante and Petrarch, cassone end panel, tempera, Fogg Museum, cambridge, Mass. its lost pendant would presumably have depicted Zanobi and Boccaccio. After 1424 and before 1432. The notary Domenico da Prato, in the letter dedicating his collected poetry, attacks the new intellectuals and defends those who write in the vernacular: “Dante, messer Francesco

78

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Petrarca, messer iohanni Boccacci, messer coluccio ed altri.” Among the poems is a ternario, “nel paese d’Alfea un colle giace,” which ends by evoking Paradise, where Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio rejoin their ladies in the heaven of Venus.54 1426. Giovanni Gherardi da Prato writes Il paradiso degli Alberti, a collection of tales set in 1389. This marks the first lexical occurrence of the term “Tre corone,” referring to Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in words of praise for the vernacular. 1436. Leonardo Bruni pens Le vite di Dante e Petrarca with a “notizia del Boccaccio.” 1438–39. Matteo Palmieri, in Della vita civile, writes that Dante is most worthy of the vernacular writers; Petrarch comes second, and Boccaccio third: “Had he aptly written moral things . . . , he would deserve not to be called Boccaccio [bad mouth] but rather chrysostom [golden mouth].”55 1440. Giannozzo Manetti composes De vita et moribus trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum, the first biographical writing to conjoin the Three crowns on equal footing in a triptych. ca. 1440. Paolo di stefano, detto schiavo, creates The Realms of Love, cassone, tempera, now in the yale university Art Gallery, new Haven, cT. This is a Locus amoenus with three poets thought to be Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio.56 1440s. Apollonio di Giovanni and his workshop produce a lacunous series of Uomini famosi, with images and sonnets, in a manuscript of Petrarch’s Triumphi, Ms. strozzi 174, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. The famous men are Achilles, Polixena, solomon, Alexander the Great, Hector, Penthesilea, sophonisba, Massinissa, scipio, salutati, Dante, Boniface Viii, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.57 1447–48. Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici creates Dimostrazione dell’andata del Santo Sepolcro, Ms. Rustici, seminario Arcivescovile Maggiore del cestello, Florence an illustrated diary of a journey to the Holy Land, including nine poets the traveler had seen on the nine gates of Florence: Galdio (claudian), Dante, Francisco (Petrarch), Giovanni Boccaccio (at Porta san Frediano), Franciescho da stratta (Zanobi da strada), Arrighetto (da settimello), coluccio (salutati), Glionardo (Bruni), and charlo (Marsuppini).58 cf. ca. 1500–1510.

Poets Prefer company

79

1449–51. Andrea del castagno creates a program of nine Uomini famosi: three soldiers, three women, and three poets (Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio), painted for the Villa carducci at Legnaia, southwest of Florence, which was transferred to the refectory of the former convent of saint Apollonia, Florence, in 1847; since the flood of 1966 in the uffizi. After 1450. The workshop of Giovanni dal Ponte produces Petrarch’s Trionfi, Ms. urb. lat. 683, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican city, containing portrait busts in profile of Dante and Boccaccio. The folio that would have depicted Petrarch is missing.59 ca. 1460. An unknown artist makes an astrological engraving of “The Family of Jupiter,” who travels the skies in his chariot above those he protects: poets, courtiers, and hunters. An inset scene at the lower right depicts Dante and Petrarch in the foreground; between them at rear, Boccaccio is posed frontally. The poets are all seated around a book-laden lectern in their studiolo.60 cf. 1552. ca. 1465. An unknown artist engraves a reversed copy of 1460, with a framed inset of poets at the lower left.61 1473–76. Justus of Ghent paints panels for the studiolo in the Ducal Palace, urbino, twenty-nine portraits of uomini famosi: Dante and Petrarch appear on the west wall with the physicians Hippocrates and Pietro d’Abano; on the east wall Homer and Virgil are paired with six others.62 1476–77. Poliziano (writing under the name of Lorenzo de’ Medici) authors Raccolta aragonese, a collection of early italian lyrics dedicated to Federico d’Aragona. Dante and Petrarch are the two principal italian poets.63 1480–81. Benedetto and Giuliano da Maiano and il Francione produce Dante and Petrarch, wood intarsio doors, sala del Giglio, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. After 1481. ugolino Verino writes De illustratione urbis Florentiae (Paris: Patisson, 1583), a eulogy of the poet Filelfo, imagined with a triumphal escort of laureates in heaven: claudian, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. 1486. Poliziano writes Nutricia [Things for his wet nurse], a universal catalogue of poets from orpheus and Moses down to the moderns: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Guido cavalcanti plus Lorenzo de’ Medici.

80

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Before 1492. Lorenzo de’ Medici writes Commento de’ miei sonetti, incomplete. in his proem, he defends the vernacular: “Dante, il Petrarca e il Boccaccio, nostri poeti fiorentini, hanno nelli gravi e dolcissimi versi e orazioni loro monstrato assai chiaramente con molta facilità potersi in quest lingua esprimere ogni senso” [Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, our Florentine poets, have in their solemn and most sweet verses and speeches shown very clearly that all meaning can be expressed in this language with great facility]. Praise follows for Guido cavalcanti. cf. 1486.64 ca. 1500. Leonardo or his school draws a caricature of The Three Crowns and an Ideal Lady. ca. 1500–1510. During the soderini Republic, statues of famous Florentines decorated the city gates. now lost, they included statues of Petrarch at Porta san niccolò, Dante at Porta san Gallo, Boccaccio at Porta san Frediano, Zanobi at Porta alla croce, Arrighetto at Porta Faenza, salutati at Porta al Borgatti, Lionardo Bruni at Porta alla Giustizia, and carlo Marsuppini at san Giorgio.65 cf. 1447–48. ca. 1511. Raphael paints Parnassus, a lunette fresco, stanza della segnatura, Vatican. it depicts a universal gathering of seventeen poets with Apollo, the Muses, and seven laurel trees, Dante at the epic peak with Homer, Virgil, and statius; Petrarch near sappho with lyric poets; and Boccaccio at the rear, perhaps with pastoral poets. it was often copied. cf. before 1586. August 28, 1521. Paolo Giovio writes Mario equicola that he is collecting portraits of dead men to inspire the living: “first among them Pontano, Mirandola, Poliziano, Ficino, ermolao, sabellico, Achillini and many others, such as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bruni, Alberti, Poggio, Argyropoulos, savonarola, Marullo, and others like them.”66 1521. Girolamo claricio, the Milanese editor of the first edition of Boccaccio’s Amorosa visione, writes in his preface that Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are the great poets of his time: “sono di tanta ammiratione, gratia, et candore nel loro stilo” [They are so admirable, graceful, and candid in their styles] (for Dante “copioso,” for Petrarch “sottile,” and for Boccaccio “mezzano”). Reprinted 1531. 1525. Pietro Bembo writes Prose della volgar lingua. Giuliano de’ Medici argues in the dialogue that young and less famous languages achieve dignity and authority thanks to writers with the foresight to grasp

Poets Prefer company

81

their potential, as, for our vernacular, “messer cino e Dante e il Petrarca e il Boccaccio” did.67 1526. niccolò Liburnio produces Le tre fontane di messer Nicolò Liburnio in tre libri divise, sopra la grammatica, et eloquenza di Dante, Petrarcha et Boccaccio (Venice: Gregorius de’ Gregoriis). The first monolingual dictionary of italian. ca. 1532–36. Agnolo Bronzino creates frescoed lunettes of Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio, for a chamber in the house of Bartolomeo Bettini, lost except for a preliminary drawing and copies of the Dante. They were conceived to accompany a centerpiece of Venus and Cupid executed by Pontormo on a design by Michelangelo.68 1540. Libro Capitoli Compositioni et Leggi della Accademia degli Humydi, Ms. Magl. 2.4.1, Biblioteca nazionale, Florence, contains a drawing with Dante in colloquy with Petrarch and Zanobi with Boccaccio, each laureated with a book in hand.69 cf. Gerini, 1381–82 and before 1406. 1544. Giorgio Vasari in The Poets of Tuscany, at the Minneapolis institute of Art, Minneapolis, depicts Dante dominant, close behind him Petrarch, between them at the rear, Boccaccio; left rear, Landino and Ficino; and right rear, Guido cavalcanti. copied in engravings, e.g., by Hieronymous coq.70 cf. 1364, 1486, and before 1492. After 1544. A copy of the same appears in the senior common Room, oriel college, oxford.71 1546. Paolo Giovio pens Elogia doctorum virorum, written praise to accompany the portraits in his lost gallery on Lake como, organized in four groups: dead philosophers and poets; living ones; artists; and popes, sovereigns, and soldiers. The first group includes Albertus Magnus, saint Thomas, John scott, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bartolo, Baldo, Leonardo Aretino, and Poggio.72 Before 1547. Portraits of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are known to have been in the collection of Pietro Bembo at his home in Padua.73 1547. Anton Francesco Doni publishes at his press in Florence Prose antiche di Dante, Petrarcha, et Boccaccio, et di molti altri nobili et virtuosi ingegni, nuovamente raccolte. 1548. Giorgio Vasari paints a second version of Six Poets of 1543, now lost, with Guittone d’Arezzo and cino da Pistoia instead of Landino and Ficino, which reaches Paolo Giovio, who had commissioned it for the gallery of famous men at his Lake como villa.74 cf. 1544.

82

A Boccaccian Renaissance

1548. An unknown artist, in an ephemeral stage setting, now lost, for il Bibbiena’s Calandria, created six “statues” of soldiers and six poets (claudian, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ficino, and Accursio) on the occasion of the triumphal entry of Henry ii and catherine de’ Medici into Lyon, where there was a large community of Florentine expatriates.75 1549. An unknown artist portrayed members of a Medici dynasty (Giovanni dalle Bande nere, his son cosimo de’ Medici, and cosimo’s son Francesco) and many other figures, including Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, who appear beside Giotto and Michelangelo, on an ephemeral monument to Florence, now lost, constructed for Philip ii’s triumphal entry into Antwerp.76 ca. 1550s–early 1560s. Angelo Decembrio writes De politia litteraria [on literary polish]. This dialogue, set at the court of Leonello d’este (r. 1441–50), names first among the books “we comment on with our wives and children on winter nights” those of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.77 1552. Anton Francesco Doni’s I marmi (Venice: Francesco Marcolini), has a woodcut that displays Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.78 cf. ca. 1460. 1564. Giovanni Andrea Gilio writes Due dialogi . . . Nel primo de’ quali si ragiona de le parti Morali, e Ciuili appertenenti a Letterati Cortigiani . . . Nel secondo si ragiona de gli errori de Pittori circa l’historie, con molte annotationi fatte sopra il Giuditio di Michelangelo . . . Et in che modo vogliono esser dipinte le sacre Imagini (camerino: Antonio Gioioso). Among exemplary ancient and modern writers, Gilio names Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio first among the latter, a list that continues with Villani, Dino [compagni], cino, cavalcanti, crescentio [Pier crescenzio], sannazaro, Bembo, castiglione, and Ariosto. 1565. An ephemeral triumphal arch at Porta al Prato, now lost, created for Giovanna d’Austria’s entry into Florence to marry Francesco de’ Medici, depicted men famous in war, theology, philosophy, law, medicine, mathematics, navigation, poetry, and history—all identified by name. The message was that no other city could rival Florence, “e quando [that other city] arà un Dante, un Petrarca ed un Boccaccio da proporre, potrà per avventura venire in disputa” [and when it

Poets Prefer company

83

has a Dante, a Petrarch, and a Boccaccio to propose, mayhap it can claim debating status].79 1565. Giovanni Maria Butteri produces a modello (sketch) for The Tuscan Poets, at the Palazzo Rosso, Genoa, from a design by Alessandro Allori. Among many writers at the forefront of a Parnassian scene stands Dante between Petrarch and Boccaccio. From lost ephemera designed by Vincenzo Borghini for the Medici wedding of 1565. Boccaccio has moved from Raphael and Vasari’s rear (cf. ca. 1511 and 1543–44) to the forefront, doubtless reflecting Borghini’s interest in the Decameron. cf. before 1580. 1568. Giorgio Vasari, in Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, “Vita di Michelangelo,” reports that Michelangelo stayed a year in Bologna with Giovanfrancesco Aldovrandi, who loved to hear him read aloud with his Tuscan accent: “Volentieri udiva le cose di Dante, del Petrarca e del Boccaccio et altri poeti toscani” [He gladly listened to things by Dante, by Petrarch, and by Boccaccio and other Tuscan poets].80 Before 1580. Vincenzo Borghini writes: “nella nostra città [Firenze] si è usato sempre il Boccaccio, Petrarca e Dante, ove non è casa dove e’ non sieno, e sono i primi libri che a me ricorda avere veduti, benché in molte e quasi in tutte le case il Boccaccio, ove erano fanciulle ecc., si tenne con qualche riguardo” [in our city we have always read Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante; not a house does not have them, and they are the first books that i can recall having seen, even though in many and almost all houses where there were children, etc., Boccaccio was kept discreetly].81 Before 1586. Antonio Gigante da Fossombrone, secretary to Ludovico Beccadelli, compiles an inventory of objects in his extensive collection of artificalia and naturalia, which include “il dissegno stampato del Parnasso di Raffaele colorito a olio” [a printed drawing of Raphael’s Parnassus colored in oil].82 1591. Francesco Bocchi, in Le bellezze della città di Fiorenza, writes “De tribus viris clarissimis”: Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch. He imagines that cicero, Virgil, and Horace would say of them, “Di Dante chi non ammira l’invenzione; di Boccaccio chi non conosce la facondia; del Petrarca chi non pregia la dolcezza?” [Who does not admire

84

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Dante’s invention; who does not know Boccaccio’s eloquence; who does not prize Petrarch’s sweetness?].83 ca. 1600. At the Palazzo de’ Visacci, Borgo degli Albizzi, Florence, is a program of twenty writers in the entryway and on the façade, sculpted on herms. They are, ground floor, left to right: Accursius, Torrigiano, Ficino, Donato Acciaiuoli, and Pier Vettori; on the piano nobile: Vespucci, Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco Guicciardini, Marcello Virgilio Adriani, and Borghini; and on the third floor: Della casa, Boccaccio, Dante, Petrarca, and Alamanni.

noTes

1. This chapter is a shortened and updated adaptation in english of Victoria Kirkham’s “Le Tre corone e l’iconografia di Boccaccio,” in Boccaccio letterato: Atti del convegno internazionale, Firenze—Certaldo 10–12 ottobre, 2013, ed. Michaelangiola Marchiaro and stefano Zamponi (Florence: Accademia della crusca and ente nazionale Giovanni Boccaccio, 2015), 453–84. i thank claudio Marazzini, president of the Accademia della crusca, and stefano Zamponi, president of the ente nazionale Giovanni Boccaccio, for graciously granting permission to reproduce parts of that essay. For fuller information, readers should refer to the italian version and its visual documentation. unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own. 2. For Petrarch’s Virgil (Ms. s.P. 10/27, formerly A. 49 inf., Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan), see, e.g., the Web Gallery of Art, s.v. simone Martini. on Dante’s legendary visit to Friuli and the Grotto of Tolmino, see Giuseppe Bianchi, Del preteso soggiorno di Dante in Udine od in Tolmino durante il patriarcato di Pagano della Torre e documenti per la storia del Friuli dal 1317 al 1332 (udine: Dalla nuova Tipografia di onofrio Turchetto, 1844). The engraving is by Giacomo Aliprandi, in Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, ed. Quirico Viviani, 3 vols. (udine: Fratelli Mattiuzzi, 1823–28), vol. 1, frontispiece. in Boccaccio’s Trattattello in laude di Dante, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, ed. Vittore Branca, vol. 3 (Milan: Mondadori, 1974), 1: 120, he asserts that the poet “dilettossi similmente d’essere solitario e rimoto dalle genti” [likewise delighted in being solitary and remote from people]. on Boccaccio, depicted as author at the beginning of Laurent de Premierfait’s French translation of De casibus virorum illustrium in an early sixteenth-century codex from Rouen, see the manuscript description by Marie Hélène Tesnière in Vittore Branca, Boccaccio visualizzato: Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, 3 vols. (Turin: einaudi, 1999), 3: 198–201. cf. the entry on this brilliantly colored

Poets Prefer company

85

folio in the appendix (a catalogue of idealized Boccaccio portraits) to Victoria Kirkham, “L’immagine del Boccaccio nella memoria tardo-gotica e rinascimentale,” 1: 85–144, in Branca, Boccaccio visualizzato, 1: 138: “magnifica illustrazione a piena pagina con l’autore alla scrivania, di proporzioni eroiche, in un ricco spazio archittetonico rinascimentale” [magnificent full-page illustration with the author at his desk, in heroic proportions and a Renaissance architectonic space]. 3. By placing himself last, Dante may be showing himself less humble than proud, since Pythagorean numerology defines 6 as the first “perfect” number, being the sum of its aliquot parts or divisors 1, 2, and 3. see Victoria Kirkham, “Contrapasso: The Long Wait to Inferno 28,” in Tra Amici: Essays in Honor of Giuseppe Mazzotta, ed. Walter stephens, Theodore cachey Jr., Zygmunt Barański, and Theresa Kennedy, 1–12, supplement to Modern Language Notes 127, no. 1 ( January 2012): 1–12. Jonathan usher has written of other “companies” of poets in “‘sesto tra cotanto senno’ and appetentia primi loci: Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante’s Poetic Hierarchy,” Studi sul Boccaccio 35 (2007): 157–98. 4. camilla Madinelli, “una scoperta sulle tracce di Dante Alighieri,” L’Arena di Verona, April 8, 2012, available at http://www.larena.it/stories/Home/351267 _una_scoperta_sulle_tracce_di_dante_alighieri/?refresh_ce#scroll=2346. 5. Mario salmi, in “Per la storia della pittura a Pistoia ed a Pisa,” Rivista d’Arte 13 (1931): 461–62, noting that the inscriptions with Dante and Petrarch’s names were probably added in the fifteenth century, leaves the middle figure in doubt—perhaps cino? Marita Horster, in Andrea del Castagno (ithaca, ny: cornell university Press, 1980), 29, cites the san Domenico fresco as the only example of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio’s being depicted together before 1400. The Pistoia image can be found in color by Googling Pistoia + san Domenico + Dante. 6. The phrase in quotes describes how canons are formed. see Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham, eds., Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy (Ann Arbor: university of Michigan Press, 2005), intro., 3. 7. The trio stands at the far left of the Last Judgment in santa Maria novella’s strozzi chapel in the first row of souls beneath haloed saints. For a reproduction, see the website of The Florence of Dante, http://www.aboutflorence.com /itineraries-in-Florence/dante.html. Their identification as the Three crowns is so tenuous that art historians have not been able to agree which is Petrarch and which Boccaccio. Maria Monica Donato rightly scotches these conflicting speculations in “Per la fortuna monumentale di Giovanni Boccaccio fra i grandi fiorentini: notizie e problemi,” Studi sul Boccaccio 17 (1988): 293–94, where she writes that even this “Dante” is highly dubious; the other two are apocryphal. 8. see appendix 1440 for Manetti, the first to compose Vite of the Three crowns. For illustrations of the astrological engravings, see Kirkham, “L’immagine del Boccaccio,” in Branca, Boccaccio visualizzato, 1: 91, fig. 95, cat. nos. 63 and 64.

86

A Boccaccian Renaissance

9. Petrarch’s portraits have been magisterially discussed by J. B. Trapp in “The iconography of Petrarch in the Age of Humanism,” Quaderni Petrarcheschi 9–10 (1992–93): 11–73. on Petrarch and Lombardo, the secretary who completed his De viris illustribus, see Ronald G. Witt, “The Rebirth of the Romans as Models of character: De viris illustribus,” in Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi (chicago: chicago university Press, 2009), 108; Theodor e. Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration of the Sala Virorum Illustrium,” Art Bulletin 34, no. 2 (1952): 95–116; and Maria Monica Donato, “Gli eroi romani tra storia ed ‘exemplum’: i primi cicli umanistici di uomini Famosi,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, ed. salvatore settis (Turin: einaudi, 1985), 2: 104–5. 10. edward Hutton, Giovanni Boccaccio: A Biographical Study: With Photogravure Frontispiece & Numerous Other Illustrations (London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1910). Paul F. Watson, in “The spanish chapel: Portraits of Poets or a Portrait of christian order?,” in Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 11 (1980): 471–87, identifies the so-called Boccaccio on the Via Veritatis as a personage who is more likely a notary; the blond lady kneeling in profile below him to the viewer’s right has nothing to do with Fiammetta. To the contrary, Anna Vaglio’s Invito alla lettura di Boccaccio (Milan: Mursia, 1988) has on its cover the spanish chapel “Boccaccio,” perhaps via Hutton’s frontispiece. The Via Veritatis scene currently on Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tpholland/8731917117/) comes with this breezy caption: “According to our guidebooks, and to the official instructions in the chapel, the guy in the white hood is Petrarch, with Dante in profile beside him. Below, holding the book, is Boccaccio. Down at the bottom right, that’s their women: Fiammetta, Laura and Beatrice (with a little nun popping up behind them for good measure).” For the text of the sonnet on Petrarch’s death with commentary, see Giovanni Boccaccio, Rime, ed. Roberto Leporatti (Florence: edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013), 244–45. Leporatti, on 171–76, names as its pendent Boccaccio’s sonnet 62: “Dante, se˙ttu nell’amorosa spera, / com’io credo, dimori, . . . // io so che, infr’all’altre anime liete / del terzo ciel, la mia Fiammetta vede / l’affanno mio dopo la sua partita” [Dante, if you dwell in the amorous sphere, as i believe, . . . i know that among the other blissful souls of the third heaven, my Fiammetta sees my suffering since she departed]. 11. Maria Monica Donato, “Famosi cives: Testi, frammenti e cicli perduti a Firenze fra Tre e Quattrocento,” Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte 27 (1986): 33. Zanobi, from the hamlet of strada, just south of Florence, was a courtier at naples who was crowned poet laureate at Pisa in 1355. He corresponded with Petrarch and Boccaccio. 12. Boccaccio refers to the egyptian claudian as “concittadino” in his Trattatello in laude di Dante (1.99). He seems to have taken an idea for the format of his first work from this suppositious Florentine’s panegyric De consulatu Stilichonis. see Giovanni Boccaccio, Diana’s Hunt: Caccia di Diana, Boccaccio’s First

Poets Prefer company

87

Fiction, trans. Anthony K. cassell and Victoria Kirkham (Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 72 n 18. 13. Their lives are chronicled in Filippo Villani, De origine civitatis Florentie et de eiusdem famosis civibus [On the Origin of the City of Florence and Its Famous Citizens], ed. Giuliano Tanturli (Padua: Antenore, 1997), chaps. 21–25 (pp. 96–99). For an italian translation with commentary, see Le vite d’uomini Fiorentini illustri, scritte da Filippo Villani, colle annotazioni del conte Giammaria Mazzucchelli (Venice: Giambattista Pasquali, 1747), available online at Google Books. cf. Johannes Bartuschat’s well-laid-out and thoughtful discussion of Villani’s and others’ early lives of the Three crowns in Les “Vies” de Dante, Pétrarque et Boccace en Italie (XIV e–XV e siècles): Contribution à l’histoire du genre biographique (Ravenna: Longo, 2007). still useful is the classic anthology Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio scritte fino al secolo decimosesto, ed. and trans. Angelo solerti (Milan: Vallardi, 1904–5). 14. The panel, at Harvard’s Fogg Museum, is handsomely reproduced on the cover of Zygmunt G. Barański and Theodore J. cachey Jr., eds., Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition (notre Dame, in: university of notre Dame Press, 2009). For art criticism, see F. Mason Perkins, “A Florentine Double Portrait at the Fogg Museum,” Art in America 11 (1921): 136–48; edward Kennard Rand, “Dante and Petrarch in a Painting by Giovanni dal Ponte,” Notes (Fogg Art Museum) 1, no. 3 (1923): 25–33. 15. nicolai Rubenstein, “classical Themes in the Decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987): 29–43. 16. Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration of the Sala Virorum Illustrium.” 17. For a transcription of the captions, see Teresa Hankey, “salutati’s epigrams for the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 22 (1959): 363–65. Bernard Degenhart and Annegrit schmitt derive the Filostrato pen-and-ink author portrait (Ms. Magl. 2.2.38, fol. 3v, Biblioteca nazionale, Florence) from salutati’s cycle: Corpus der italienischen Zeichnungen 1300–1450 (Berlin: Mann, 1968), part 1, 1: 195–97. cf. Kirkham, L’immagine del Boccaccio, 1: 88, fig. 79, cat. no. 20. 18. Donato, in “Per la fortuna monumentale,” 305–19, 339–40, publishes photographs and the surviving tituli in tetrastichs of Latin hexameters by Domenico silvestri (d. after 1411). see further her more recent lecture of December 18, 2006, at the Palazzo dell’Arte dei Giudici e notai in Florence, marking the 631st anniversary of Boccaccio’s death, “‘ut vita manebat’? il primo ritratto monumentale documentato di Giovanni Boccaccio,” published in a limited printing as a bifolium by the ente nazionale Giovanni Boccaccio. she dates the cycle to the late trecento, presumably after the first version of Villani’s history (1381–82). Twenty-seven images of the fresco remains on the walls and ceiling of the entire room are available at Wikimedia commons, https://commons

88

A Boccaccian Renaissance

.wikimedia .org /wiki /category: Palazzo _dell %27Arte _dei _Giudici _e _notai _-_sala_dell%27udienzaimages. i thank Massimo Gennari, then president of the ente nazionale Giovanni Boccaccio, both for giving me a copy of the bifolium with Donato’s lecture, unlisted in any online library catalog that i can find, and for providing a high-resolution copy of Boccaccio’s portrait. it appears here as figure 5 and among the beautiful full-color reproductions in Gennari’s book In viaggio con Boccaccio: I luoghi di Firenze e della Toscana nell’opera del grande narratore (certaldo: Federighi editore, 2013), 245. 19. see below, n. 25. 20. Leonardo Bruni, Le vite di Dante e del Petrarca, ed. Antonio Lanza (Rome: Archivio Guido izzi, 1987), 60: “Morto il Petrarca, le Muse fiorentine, quasi per ereditaria successione rimasero al Boccaccio, ed in lui risedette la fama de’ predetti studi, e fu successione ancor nel tempo, perocché quando Dante morí, il Petrarca era d’età d’anni diciasette e, quando morí il Petrarca, era il Boccaccio di minore età di lui anni nove, e cosí per successione andarono le Muse.” 21. Giannozzo Manetti, The Biographical Writings, ed. and trans. stefano u. Baldassari (cambridge: Harvard university Press, 2003). see the essay in this volume by Timothy Kircher, “Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata: Reading the Decameron in the Quattrocento,” which opens up a discussion of Manetti’s triple biographies. 22. see appendix, 1447–48, for their names. Donato, in “Per la fortuna monumentale,” reproduces the folios that display these poets’ portraits. Kathleen olive capably recreates the social and cultural context in “The codex Rustici and the Fifteenth-century Florentine Artisan,” Renaissance Studies 23, no. 5 (2009): 593–608. 23. The nine Worthies are Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius caesar; Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus; and King Arthur, charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. Donato, in “Famosi cives,” has noted their influence on early cycles of uomini famosi in italy. 24. Nutricia could be translated as “homage to” or “things for his wet nurse,” who is Lady Poetry. see the Nutricia, in Angelo Poliziano, Silvae, ed. and trans. into italian by Francesco Bausi (Florence: olschki, 1996), 163–254, 299–318, and, for the canon of modern poets, vv. 720–35. 25. Giorgio Vasari, “Vita di Giotto,” in Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, ed. Licia and carlo L. Ragghianti, 4 vols. (Milan: Rizzoli, 1971–78), 1: 359, refers to Dante as Giotto’s “coetaneo et amico suo grandissimo” [contemporary and greatest friend]. Alessandro Parronchi idiosyncratically believed the painter portrayed the poet in the scrovegni chapel Last Judgment (ca. 1305) in “il più vero ritratto di Dante,” Bollettino del Museo Civico di Padova, 52 (1963): 5–12. it is plausible, however, that Dante visited the Veneto in 1304–6, according to Giorgio Petrocchi in Vita di Dante (Bari: Laterza, 1997), electronic edition at Liber Liber, 1999, p. 69. others have proposed an encounter between the two men in naples, where Giotto worked from 1328 through 1333 for King Robert,

Poets Prefer company

89

among them Paul F. Watson, in “The cement of Fiction: Giovanni Boccaccio and the Painters of Florence,” Modern Language Notes 99 (1984): 43–64. ernst Gombrich, in “Giotto’s Portrait of Dante?,” Burlington Magazine 121 (1979): 471–83, denies Giotto’s authorship of the Bargello portrait (1336–38), attributing it to the artist’s workshop. He takes it for granted that the two never met. 26. Kirkham, “L’immagine del Boccaccio,” 1: 85–91; Roberto Leporatti, “Venere, cupido e i poeti d’amore,” in Venere e Amore: Michelangelo e la nuova bellezza ideale, ed. Franca Falletti and Jonathan Katz nelson (Florence: Giunti, 2002), 65–89. 27. For a reading of the fresco as ordered by literary genres, see Paul F. Watson, “on a Window in Parnassus,” Artibus et Historiae 16 (1987): 127–48. The Ninfale fiesolano, Ameto, and Eclogues certainly justify placing Boccaccio among bucolic authors, but so, too, does the Decameron. see Joseph Gibaldi, “The Decameron cornice and the Responses to the Disintegration of civilization,” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 24 (1977): 349–57. 28. Vasari, “Vita di Raffaello,” in Le vite, 2: 770: “Èvvi [on Parnassus] la dotta saffo et il divinissimo Dante, il leggiadro Petrarca e lo amoroso Boccaccio, che vivi vivi sono “ [on it are the learned sapho, the most divine Dante, the pleasing Petrarch, and the amorous Boccaccio, as true to life as can be]. Boccaccio stands in the remote distance at upper right, with only his head visible, just to the left of a laurel tree. For a good color reproduction, see Kirkham, “Le Tre corone,” pl. 2. 29. Reproduced in Kirkham, “L’immagine del Boccaccio,” fig. 96 and cat. no. 59; Giuliano Tanturli, “Giovanni Boccaccio nella letteratura italiana,” in Boccaccio autore e copista, Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 11 ottobre, 2013— 13 gennaio, 2014, ed. Teresa De Robertis, carla Maria Monti, Marco Petoletti, Giuliano Tanturli, and stefano Zamponi (Florence: Mandragora, 2013), 17–23. 30. Robert Williams, “The Façade of the ‘Palazzo dei Visacci,’” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 5 (1993): 209–44. see appendix, ca. 1600. 31. Giovanni Gherardi da Prato, Il Paradiso degli Alberti, ed. Antonio Lanza (Rome: salerno, 1975), 3–4. 32. coluccio salutati, Invectiva in Antonium Luschum Vicentinum, in Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, ed. eugenio Garin (Milan: Ricciardi, 1952), 34: “ubi Dantes? ubi Petrarca? ubi Boccaccius?” 33. Francesco Petrarca, Senile V 2, ed. Monica Berté (Florence: Le Lettere, 1998). 34. notes to the appendix, which begin here, integrate bibliographical sources not cited in the text. Martin eisner, in Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature: Dante, Petrarch, Cavalcanti, and the Authority of the Vernacular (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2013), 123 n 31, recognizes in this sonnet a “pre-commedia” poetic community. For the dating, see Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Lyric Poetry, ed. and trans. Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde, 2 vols. (oxford:

90

A Boccaccian Renaissance

clarendon Press, 1967), 2: 33. For an updated commentary and a pleasing new verse translation, see Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the Vita nuova, ed. Teodolinda Barolini, trans. Richard Lansing (Toronto: Toronto university Press, 2014), 113–21. 35. Teodolinda Barolini, in Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Commedia (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 1984), 91–100, discusses this passage in the context of other families of poets in Dante’s oeuvre. on dating, see the “cronologia” by Maria chiavacci Leonardi, ed., in Dante Alighieri, Commedia, 3 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1991–1997), 1: xxxix–xlv. 36. Giovanni Boccaccio, Amorosa visione, ed. Vittore Branca, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1974), 3, canto 5. For the identity of the poets and their medieval reputations, see Branca’s commentary in 3: 585–90. 37. eisner, in Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature, 5–6, cites this as “a community of modern vernacular poets,” claiming it as the first without any ancients or troubadours. More than half a century before Boccaccio, however, Dante had already envisaged an all-italian club in his sonnet “Guido, i’ vorrei.” My thanks to Marco cursi for suggesting the dating of Decameron 4, intro. in a personal communication. 38. commenting on this sonnet, Marco santagata, ed., in Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere (Milan: Mondadori, 1996), 1145–47, connects it to Petrarch’s Triumph of Chastity 4.31–37. 39. santagata, ed., in Canzoniere, notes that Petrarch both pays homage to his masters and distances himself from them in a poetic palinode that precedes the three canzoni on Laura’s eyes and marks a turning point in his own literary direction. see further Victoria Kirkham, “Petrarca, Rvf 71–73: La ‘sorellanza’ lirica nella traditione dei testi e commenti da Bembo a Tasso,” in Il poeta e il suo pubblico: Lettura e commento dei testi lirici nel Cinquecento, ed. Massimo Danzi and Roberto Leporatti (Geneva: Droz, 2012), 101–31. eisner, in Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature, 7, calls Petrarch’s “Lasso me” a “five-stage literary history” that contrasts with Boccaccio’s all-italian canon in the introduction to Decameron, Day 4. 40. Giovanni Boccaccio, De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris, ed. Manlio Pastore stocchi, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, ed. Vittore Branca, 10 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), 7–8: 1908). 41. Theodore J. cachey Jr., “Between Text and Territory: De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris,” in Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham, Michael sherberg, and Janet Levarie smarr (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2013), 279. David Lummus, in “Placing Petrarch’s Legacy: The Politics of Petrarch’s Tomb and Boccaccio’s Last Letter,” Renaissance Quarterly 70 (2017): 435–73,

Poets Prefer company

91

reaches a similar conclusion, arguing that Boccaccio wanted to “save and propagate” a cultural heritage that united works by Petrarch, Dante, and himself (468). 42. Vatican Ms. chigi L.V.176 and its sibling, Ms. chigi L.Vi.213, provide the material platform on which eisner, in Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature, 1–28, develops his argument that Boccaccio wasn’t just the third of the Three crowns; he was a cardinal mediator in early italian literary history between Dante and Petrarch. Boccaccio had originally, in Ms. chigi L.Vi.213, compiled an all-Dante anthology. Later, in Ms. chigi L.V.176, he substituted for the slot occupied by Dante’s Commedia cavalcanti’s famous canzone, “Donna me prega.” For codicological descriptions, see Marco cursi, “Boccaccio Between Dante and Petrarch: Manuscripts, Marginalia, Drawings,” in Heliotropia 14 (2017): 11–46. For other discussions, see Jason Houston, “‘Maraviglierannosi molti’ Boccaccio’s Editio of the Vita Nova,” Dante Studies 126 (2008): 89–107; Anna Bettarini Bruni, Giancarlo Breschi, and Giuliano Tanturli, “Giovanni Boccaccio e la tradizione dei testi volgari,” in Boccaccio letterato, ed. Marchiaro and Zamponi, 17. 43. Franco sacchetti, Il libro delle rime, ed. Franca Brambilla Ageno (Florence: olschki, 1990), 255–60. 44. Aldo Francesco Massèra, “Le piú antiche biografie di Boccaccio,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 27 (1903): 323; Bartuschat, Les “Vies,” 201–5. 45. Donato, “Famosi cives,” 33. 46. Paul F. Watson, The Garden of Love in Tuscan Art of the Early Renaissance (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1979), 118–20; Donato, “Famosi cives,” 30–32, and “Per la fortuna monumentale,” 302–5. 47. These sonnets have been variously attributed to Aldobrandini, Giovanni da Prato (also known as Acquattino), and Giovanni Fiorentino, according to Donato, in “Per la fortuna monumentale,” 304–5, who sees the authorship as still uncertain. she reproduces in its entirety the sonnet for Boccaccio, which contains bizarre errors: An emperor charles Vi (no such person ever existed) supposedly crowned Boccaccio with laurel (he was never laureated). strangely, too, Boccaccio here claims he was born in Florence’s Via Toscanelli. it is the stuff of legend, entertainingly explored by Gennaro in In viaggio con Boccaccio, 216–21. 48. Donato, “Per la fortuna monumentale,” 302–3; Kirkham, “L’immagine del Boccaccio,” 1: 125–26, cat. no. 39. 49. stefano u. Baldassari, “Polemiche all’ombra di salutati: cino Rinuccini difende la cultura volgare e risponde ad Antonio Loschi,” in Coluccio Salutati e l’invenzione dell’Umanesimo, Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 2 novembre 2008—30 gennaio 2009, ed. Teresa De Robertis, Giuliano Tanturli, and stefano Zamponi (Florence: Mandragora, 2008), 108–10, cat. no. 27. 50. cited from David Thompson and Alan F. nagel, eds., The Three Crowns of Florence: Humanist Assessments of Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio (new york: Harper and Row, 1972), 34. on dating the Dialogues, see James Hankins, Plato in the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 1: 371–72.

92

A Boccaccian Renaissance

51. Ronald Witt, “cino Rinuccini’s Risponsiva alla Invettiva di Messer Antonio Lusco,” Renaissance Quarterly 23, no. 2 (1970): 133–49; Baldassari, “Polemiche,” 108–10. 52. Francesco Bausi, “Gherardi, Giovanni,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 53 (2000), available online at www.treccani.it. 53. sicco Polenton, La Catinia, le orazioni e le epistole di Sicco Polenton, umanista trentino del secolo XV, ed. Arnaldo segarizzi (Bergamo: istituto italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1899), 92. 54. Watson, The Garden of Love, 108–9; Alessio Decaria, “salutati con Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio difeso da Domenico da Prato contro l’estremismo umanistico,” in Coluccio Salutati, ed. Teresa De Robertis et al., 111–12, cat. no. 28. For the text of the Preface, see Lirici toscani del Quattrocento, ed. Antonio Lanza (Rome: Bulzoni, 1973), 511–14, and, for the poem, 560–64. 55. cited from Thompson and nagel, eds., The Three Crowns of Florence, 85–86. 56. Watson, The Garden of Love, 103–21 and plate 3. 57. Donato, “Famosi cives,” 29. see the color reproduction in Tanturli, “Giovanni Boccaccio nella letteratura italiana,” 19. 58. see now the magnificent facsimile of the original manuscript held at the Biblioteca del seminario Arcivescovile Maggiore di Firenze: Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici, Codice Rustici: Dimostrazione dell’andata o viaggio al Santo Sepolcro e al Monte Sinai di Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici, essays (vol. 1), ed. elena Gurrieri, and critical edition (vol. 2), ed. Kathleen olive and nerida newbigin (Florence: olschki, 2015). 59. Kirkham, “L’immagine del Boccaccio,” 1: 102–3, cat. no. 55. 60. ibid., 1: 97, fig. 95; cat. no. 63. 61. ibid., cat. no. 64. 62. Luciano cheles, The Studiolo of Urbino: An Iconographic Investigation (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1986). 63. Lucille Wood Ferguson, “The Date of the ‘Raccolta Aragonese,’” Modern Philology 23, no. 1 (1925): 43–45. 64. Text cited from Biblioteca italiana online, s.v. Medici, Lorenzo de’. 65. Mariano Borgatti, Le mura e le torri di Firenze (Rome: enrico Voghera, 1900), 38. 66. Rosanna Pavoni, “Paolo Giovio e son musée de portraits: À propos d’une exposition,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 105 (1985): 109–16. 67. Prose della volgar lingua, ed. carlo Dionisotti, in Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua, Gli Asolani, Rime (Turin: uTeT, 1966), 82–83. 68. Vasari, Le vite, 4: 643: “[Bronzino fece] a Bartolomeo Bettini, per empiere alcune lunette d’una sua camera, il ritratto di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, figure dal mezzo in su bellissime.” see the full discussion in Richard Aste, “Bartolomeo Bettini e la decorazione della sua ‘camera’ fiorentina,” in Falletti and nelson, Venere e Amore, 3–25.

Poets Prefer company

93

69. illustrated in Jonathan nelson, “Dante Portraits in sixteenth century Florence,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (september 1992): 59–77. 70. Kirkham, “L’immagine del Boccaccio,” 1: 131, cat. nos. 69, 70, 71. 71. Julian Kliemann, “sei poeti toscani,” in Giorgio Vasari: Principi letterati e artisti nelle carte di Giorgio Vasari: Casa Vasari, Pittura vasariana dal 1532 al 1554, Sottochiesa di S. Francesco, Arezzo, 26 settembre–29 novembre 1981 (Florence: edam, 1981), 123. 72. T. c. Price Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 1995), 206–8. 73. [Marcantonio Michiel], The Anonimo: Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy Made by an Anonymous Writer in the Sixteenth Century (1903; reprint new york: B. Blom, 1969), 23. The notes do not identify the artist(s). 74. Kliemann, “sei poeti toscani,” in Giorgio Vasari, 123 and fig. 307. 75. Bonner Mitchell, “Les intermèdes au service de l’État,” in Les Fêtes de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris: centre national de la Recherche scientifique, 1975), 3: 117–31. 76. Jean Jacquot, “Panorama des fêtes et cérémonies du règne: Évolution des thèmes et des styles,” in Les Fêtes, ed. Jacquot, 2: 413–91. 77. The Latin classics, beginning with cicero (and, for the poets, Virgil) receive far greater admiration. see christopher celenza, “creating canons in Fifteenth-century Ferrara: Angelo Decembrio’s De politia litteraria 1.10,” Renaissance Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2004): 43–98 (60–61). 78. Kirkham, “L’immagine del Boccaccio,” 1: 130, cat. no. 63. 79. Giorgio Vasari, “Descrizione dell’apparato fatto in Firenze per le nozze dell’illustrissimo ed eccellentissimo don Francesco de’ Medici Principe di Firenze e di siena e della serenissima regina Giovanna d’Austria,” ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: sansoni, 1906), 8: 523–25. 80. Vasari, Le vite, 4: 320. 81. cited from Francesco Bruni, Boccaccio: L’invenzione della letteratura mezzana (Bologna: il Mulino, 1990), 261. 82. Gigliola Fragnito, “Compositio memoriae: il museo di Antonio Giganti,” 185, in Fragnito, In museo e in villa: Saggi sul Rinascimento perduto (Venice: Arsenale, 1988). 83. Francesco Bocchi, Le bellezze della città di Firenze, . . . revised and expanded by Giovanni cinelli (Florence: Giovanni Gugliantini, 1677).

cHAPTeR 4

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book Boccaccio’s Pastoral Project

jon at han c om bs - sc h i l l i ng

The bond between Boccaccio and pastoral is self-evident to some scholars, forgotten by others, and generally lacking a comprehensive definition or explanation. A useful point of departure for reconsidering its place in his career and his place in its history is a poetic genealogy found in the epistolary preface to edmund spenser’s The Shepheardes Calender (1579): “As young birdes that be newly crept out of the nest, by little first to prove theyr tender wyngs, before they make a greater flyght. so flew Theocritus . . . Virgile . . . Mantuane . . . so Petrarque. so Boccacce; so Marot, sanazarus, and also divers other excellent both italian and French Poetes, whose foting this Author every where followeth.”1 For my purposes, this passage is equally interesting for what it gets right and what it gets wrong. As to the former, it provides a welcome corrective to Boccaccio’s absence from more recent surveys of pastoral, for although the principal twentieth-century studies of the genre mention him rarely, if at all, and then often in a negative light, from within the Renaissance, Boccaccio is squarely positioned as a key link in the transmission of classical pastoral to its Renaissance practitioners.2 As to the latter, although the metaphor of pastoral as trial “flight” may invoke the pervasive conceit that such 94

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book

95

poetry solely befits the beginning of a literary career, Boccaccio’s wings were anything but fledgling when he moved “past” the genre. From Caccia di Diana (1333–34) to the final eclogue of Buccolicum carmen (c. 1367), pastoral embraces the entire corpus of his fictions, a testament to a careerlong fascination with, and dedication to, the genre’s potential.3 Boccaccio scholars are well aware that the green spaces of the world had a particular hold over his imagination, yet previous accounts of his many forays into and around the genre view the aggregated results as discontinuous.4 My contentions in this chapter are that (1) they are the fruits of an abiding pastoral project characterized by a concerted inquiry into, and mapping of, what pastoral can encompass, and (2) such a reappraisal of Boccaccio’s prolonged pastoral labors can reframe his relation to his Renaissance inheritors and return him to a central position within pastoral studies. His project would prove decisive not only for his literary career but for the history of the genre and marks its second foundational moment, first because he and the other two corone reestablished the currency of the eclogue, which, after centuries of sparse production, enjoyed uninterrupted popularity for centuries, and, moreover, only Boccaccio did so in both Latin and the vernacular.5 yet the second and more radical aspect of his project was that, to a greater degree than any author before or (i would argue) since, he made manifest the plasticity of pastoral and the far-flung ends to which it could be deployed. Through his treatment of pastoral as a metageneric space in which genres could be assayed, combined, and newly minted, he generated an iterable method for the production of literary hybridity and novelty. Therefore, after briefly enumerating some of the most conspicuous ways in which his versions of pastoral had Renaissance afterlives, i will adumbrate the cardinal attributes of his pastoral approach to show that it is less the (albeit numerous) individual changes that Boccaccio wrought, but rather the project itself, that showed where the genre was heading. As is so often the case with this author, when it comes to Boccaccio’s engagement with pastoral, we must consider not only his position within literary history but also his strategic attempts to shape it.6 He put Dante’s eclogues into circulation, championed (and helped circulate) Petrarch’s, amassed a significant library of pastoral texts, and compiled the first modern eclogue anthology.7 in Genealogia deorum gentilium, pastoral is integral to the articulation of his defense of poetry, and his letter to Fra

96

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Martino da signa includes an important early microhistory of the genre.8 Through these complementary efforts as compiler, theorist, and historian, he helped inform how (and in some cases which) eclogues were read in the Renaissance. yet the larger freight of Boccaccio’s pastoral legacy is carried by his efforts as poet. Most clamorously, he was the first to write eclogues in the italian vernacular, but his influences and innovations extend far beyond that.9 Linguistically, by confronting pastoral in both Latin and the vernacular, he provided a precedent for the similarly doubled muses of Boiardo and sannazaro.10 Formally, his choice of terza rima for the italian eclogue became the Renaissance standard, and with Ameto he manifested the suitability of the prosimetrum to pastoral discourse. narratologically, that prosimetrum and other works (especially Ninfale fiesolano and Buccolicum carmen) invested pastoral with a newfound narrative sweep that, in the wake of sannazaro’s Arcadia, Renaissance storytellers would significantly develop.11 Thematically, he enlarged the ranks of pastoral speakers, giving a groundbreaking emphasis to the female voice, and changed what they spoke about.12 Many of these topics—both those that were hardly new but were consolidated by Boccaccio, such as christian theology, and those that were unprecedented, such as the lament for a dead female family member—would have great currency in the coming centuries.13 in short, there are few Renaissance pastorals that do not go down at least one of the paths that Boccaccio first trod or helped pave. yet to focus solely on these myriad “local” influences runs the risk of sequestering his pastorals from one another. The fact that Buccolicum carmen would travel to Mantuan; Ninfale fiesolano to the Florence of Luca Pulci, Lorenzo de’Medici, and Poliziano; and Ameto to sannazaro is no small feat, yet such an emphasis does little to identify the precise site where Boccaccian pastoral as a whole resides both in his career and in the Renaissance.14 Why did he keep revisiting and refashioning pastoral for more than thirty years? Why was Arcadia such a privileged forum for his experimentalism, and what can that experimentalism tell us about the directions in which the genre would head in the Renaissance? considering the sweep of Boccaccio’s literary imagination, it is hardly surprising that he would have turned to pastoral at least once in his career. He voraciously consumed and transformed nearly all available literary models (e.g., romance, the epic, the elegy, and the novella), and

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book

97

the eclogue was a notable classical form that had not yet been assayed by a poet in italian. Ameto’s two eclogues are a testament to Boccaccio’s desire to augment the repertoire of the still-young italian vernacular, a desire expressed boldly in Teseida, the “primo a . . . cantare / di Marte . . . / nel volgar lazio” [the first to sing of Mars in italian ] (12.84.5–6).15 Written soon afterward, these eclogues are an Arcadian complement to Teseida’s martial song and an extension of its vernacularizing mandate. From this perspective, Boccaccio’s pastoral turn is understandable within his broader efforts to systematically renew literary genres.16 However, the protean strategies that he hazarded sub pastorali cortice should still be a source of wonder, as if he were trying to approach the pastoral enclosure from all possible points of ingress.17 in terms of form, his “green” corpus18 embraces the vernacular and Latin, poetry and prose (or both), terza rima, ottava rima, Latin hexameters, the frame-tale, the epistle (again in both verse and prose), and a polyauthored epistolary exchange with checco di Meletto Rossi. in terms of narratives, it embraces the allegorical ascent of Ameto’s titular hero, the etiological mini-epic of Ninfale fiesolano, the “pastoral heterocosm” of the Decameron brigata, and the evocative but elusive progression of Buccolicum carmen.19 in terms of theme, a partial list would include love, virtue, politics, war, economics, faith, the afterlife, family, autobiography, and poetry. even for Boccaccio, this is an imposing range, evidence that, as Janet smarr has demonstrated, in pastoral “l’autore era sempre pronto ad esperimenti nuovi.”20 Put differently, Boccaccian fiction-making so frequently has a pastoral complexion but never quite the same complexion. A key to understanding the procedures and stakes that subtend the heterogeneous results of Boccaccio’s pastoral experimentalism is his approach to dialogue. i will focus on three sets of interlocutors—Acaten and Alcesto in Ameto (early 1340s), Palemon and Pamphylus in Faunus (Bucc. carm. 3, late 1340s), and silvius and his daughter in Olympia (Bucc. carm. 14; late 1360s)—which show that there is greater continuity to his pastoral praxis than is usually accepted and indicate how he produced novelty from within the genre.21 The pastoral coordinates of Ameto are well known, yet its extensive length, insertion of christian allegories and female interlocutors, and generation of a sustained narrative to suture the blank spaces of the conventional eclogue macrotext also make it a drastic overhaul of pastoral expectations. it is striking that, amid such systematic

98

A Boccaccian Renaissance

innovation, Boccaccio embeds two eclogues. They are the fourth and fifth of the text’s nineteen poetic compositions, the first a song describing the afterlife, and the second a song contest concerning the relative merits of shepherding in valleys and on hilltops.22 The fact that they inaugurate the italian eclogue tradition has perhaps distracted attention from their incongruity here in a text that clearly owes a debt to the classical eclogue yet just as clearly methodically departs from it. if Boccaccio’s principal goal had been to modernize the eclogue, he could have written a ten-poem, vernacular Bucolica, as Boiardo later would. instead, he initiates a categorically new kind of pastoral storytelling but plants a trace of the source, which causes a structural and a temporal disruption, the former because the second eclogue is Ameto’s only dialogic poem and the latter because classical and modern pastoral converge on the same plane. Like Arnaut Daniel’s occitan terzine in Purgatorio 26.140–47, the voice of the source briefly hijacks the narrative at the moment of its own appropriation. The inclusion of these eclogues, in particular the contest between Acaten and Alcesto, in a novel, hybridic work suggests two things about Boccaccian pastoral. First, by conjoining the Vergilian eclogue to his new approach Boccaccio enacts a miniature history of the genre and positions himself as Vergil’s heir, at once acknowledging his debt to and transformation of his model, a move that would become characteristic of his Latin eclogues.23 second, it suggests that his innovations derive from the dialogical imagination of the eclogue form and that pastoral may have been not just a privileged site for but a source of his experimentalism. it is revealing that numerous critics consider these shepherds to be representatives of differing poetics. For many, Acaten represents literal (i.e., Theocritean) pastoral and Alcesto its more allegorical (i.e., Vergilian) counterpart, while Janet smarr views it as a match between classical and christian pastoral “dove la vittoria va alla seconda.”24 Although both sides have their merits, more remarkable than the identity of the winner is the contest itself, for it suggests that even at this early stage of his career, Boccaccio conceived of pastoral as a space that can embrace multiple, and openly divergent, genre horizons. in terms of the plot and allegories, Alcesto appears to win, but in terms of genre, the juxtaposition of rival poetic strategies and interpretative codes generates what Mikhail Bakhtin

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book

99

calls a “double-accented, double-styled hybrid construction.”25 Here in Ameto this hybrid construction places the genre in a state of flux. only then does Boccaccio introduce his most novel addition: the stories told by the nymphs that instigate Ameto’s conversion. The song contest does not simply precede Boccaccio’s transformation of the genre; like Vergil’s tomb in Filocolo, book 3, which prepares Florio for his entry to Fiammetta’s garden and the quistioni d’amore, it is the threshold to that transformation and helps produce it.26 in short, from the start Boccaccio seems to have understood pastoral to be what i classify as a metagenre, in which different voices convey not only different subjectivities but also different pathways for the construction and interpretation of fiction. From its inception, pastoral attends to genre at every representational level, from the hedges that mark the putative borderline between what is and is not pastoral to the interventions of the narrator that explicitly refer to its position in genre hierarchies. indeed, though pastoral has long been recognized as metapoetic insofar as its foundational subjects are songs and the shepherds who sing them, it is just as essentially metageneric, for it figures its own status as genre, but it also moves across genre, trespassing its borders to interact with, internalize, and/or colonize other genres. What Ameto’s eclogues suggest is that Boccaccian pastoral approaches the qualities Bakhtin ascribes to the novel, “critical and self-critical, [a genre that revises] the fundamental concepts of literariness and poeticalness dominant at the time,” and that one of its greatest utilities is the degree to which it is in a polemical and creative dialogue with other genres.27 This metageneric dialogue would again prove essential to Buccolicum carmen, one of the most intriguing characteristics of which is the frequency with which its shepherds, like Acaten and Alcesto, appear to emerge from divergent genre horizons.28 in over two-thirds of the collection, eclogues begin with a pair of protagonists disconnected by an incompatibility of perspective regarding their landscape. This phenomenon is evident in the “neapolitan” sequence (Bucc. carm. 3–6), so named because it reckons with the political fallout caused by Robert of Anjou’s death.29 in each, this initial lack of concordance produces a topographical fissure, as is evident in the incipit of Faunus (Bucc. carm. 3), which neatly delineates two rival worlds:

100

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Pamphyle, tu patrio recubas hic lentus in antro, dum fremit omne nemus pulsum clamoribus egre Testilis, et parvi vacuus nunc omnia pendis. (1–3) [Pamphylus, are you lying drowsy here in your paternal cave, while the whole forest trembles at the shouts of anxious Testilis, and do you in your idleness consider it unworthy of concern?]30 The first verse locates an idle Pamphylus in familiar Arcadian shade, made all the more identifiable by echoes of Vergil’s first eclogue.31 The second and third verses then take the poem into new territory as he becomes encircled by wails.32 At the start of the eclogue that marks Boccaccio’s turn to a new pastoral praxis, he restages the conventional scene at the same time that he introduces a figure that veers from it. The fissure between these two orientations is coincident with the production of hybridity, as seen in Palemon’s description of his own former ease. “Tempus erat placidum” [The day was clear] (12), he begins, then proceeds to construct a narrative that, with a calibrated imbrication of Bucolica 1 and the prelude to the fall of Troy in Aeneid 2, is pastoral and epic in equal measure.33 only after this hybridic prehistory does he relay the news that led him to chastise Palemon: Testilis laments that her lover Faunus has abandoned her to hunt in the forest. With this scene, allegory finally enters the poem. Testilis represents the city of Forlì, while Faunus is Francesco degli ordelaffi, Forlì’s ruler, who was indeed fond of hunting, but whose departure here represents his decision to join the cause of King Ludwig of Hungary, figured as Tityrus, who is traveling to naples to claim its throne. on the heels of two eclogues relatively devoid of allegory, its sudden eruption here has been duly noted by critics.34 However, what occasions the allegory and how it encounters the literal has not been, for Faunus’s allegories are engendered by dialogue and act diegetically. The poem’s titular character and the allegory that orbits him are introduced to the poem only after Boccaccio has constructed two distinct yet simultaneous levels of pastoral, each with its own signifying process, and then has classical-literal pastoral “read” its medieval-allegorical heir. on the one hand, these maneuvers rehearse but also sharpen the distinction between Vergilian and trecento

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book

101

pastoral evident in Ameto. on the other, Boccaccio transforms this distinction from a relatively safe metageneric dialogue into a dramatic event as the pastoral past interacts with, and adapts to, its unorthodox present. As Palemon’s brief narrative suggests, the weft of convention and experimentation in Faunus is produced under the sign of generic hybridity, which the rest of the eclogue proceeds to accentuate. This is particularly clear after another shepherd, Moeris, arrives bringing news, the markers of which are not pastoral but epic, such as his graphic description of the murder of Alexis (Andrew of Hungary) by a wolf (82–88) and his announcement of the conscription of shepherds into Tityrus’s army (97–101). These figures should not be considered mere pastoral veils for contemporary politics because Boccaccio is assiduous in his representation of allegory as a change that occurs within the fiction and not just how that fiction is read. First it affects the shepherds’ speech, as is evident in Palemon’s polygeneric story. Moreover, it affects how they act, the most clamorous example of which is his decision to enlist in Tityrus’s army. For the first time in the history of the eclogue, a shepherd goes to war. The novelty of this moment can hardly be overstated; Palemon exits the orbit of one genre, whose portrait he himself had offered earlier, for another. Before he decamps, he articulates an ethos without pastoral precedent: “naritius nullas potuit preponere laudes / quesitis peregre” [The highest praises, said naritius, / are praises won abroad ] (123–24). Though desire for fame is familiar to the genre, whose singers frequently vie for poetic supremacy, the audience for that fame is restricted to the Arcadian community. Palemon aspires to a very different design: seeking widespread renown. Moreover, naritius is a pastoralized figure for ulysses.35 The unexpected appearance of the epic hero here is particularly significant because, unlike weeping Testilis or martial Tityrus, it is unnecessary for the poem’s political allegories. Rather, it is a symptom of Faunus’s generic negotiations and ambitions; the wandering ulysses becomes a figure for the poem’s representation of movement across the boundaries of pastoral. similar trespasses are foregrounded elsewhere. Moeris asks his companions if they recall how they recently saw Tityrus as “hac olim transire via silvamque per omnem” [he crossed this way through the entire forest] (107). in his company, an army traverses Arcadia on its way from and to the epic. This dramatic embodiment of the poem’s metageneric operations then shifts to the present tense a few verses later when Moeris points to

102

A Boccaccian Renaissance

the troops passing on the horizon: “Pulvis patet: aspice colles” [Look: you see the dust is rising on the hills] (115). From within the space of pastoral, the shepherds peer into another genre. if this genre-traversing gaze is evidence of how Faunus radicalizes pastoral, the eclogue’s conclusion twelve verses later orchestrates convention and experimentation into perfect equipoise, for it does not follow war-bound Palemon but rather stays with Pamphylus, whom Palemon instructs to uphold the pastoral way of life in his absence. And it is with Pamphylus, the eclogue’s Vergilian representative, that the poem ends as he bids his companion farewell: “i felix, factumque putes rediturus, amice” [Go with my blessing; and consider it done; / for surely you’ll return to us, my friend] (128). The motion charted by this departure and projected return has a metageneric significance that glosses the poem’s intermingling of pastoral and epic discourses, for it turns the initial juxtaposition of shepherds into a spatial narrative that locates the former within the sheepfold while it sends the other to the battlefield. in this regard, it is revelatory that both of these shepherds are poet-figures. in an earlier version of the poem sent to checco di Meletto Rossi, Boccaccio figured himself as Menalcas, whom Faunus splits into Palemon and Pamphylus.36 Through the circuit these twin shepherds trace, Boccaccio simultaneously represents himself free of and rooted to the conventional purview of pastoral. As i have noted, each of the next three eclogues also begins with two shepherds out of sync. Were the disconnect to occur only once, at the beginning, it would be compelling to interpret it as the marker of his transition from predominantly nonallegorical love eclogues to the thickly allegorical poems that follow. instead, Boccaccio repeatedly returns to the scene of doubled Arcadias; if Faunus stages the arrival of allegory as an aperture in pastoral discourse, it is an aperture that these poems continuously reopen.37 There is no doubt that they veer from his earlier efforts, yet each begins with a momentary evocation of a pastoral before that shift. essential to this evocation is his use of Vergil. of course, Vergilian echoes pervade the pastoral tradition and are to be found throughout Buccolicum carmen.38 yet the particular manner in which Boccaccio deploys them suggests that he is adopting a specific citational strategy. Twelve of the collection’s sixteen eclogues have at least one strong citation of Vergil in their first ten verses.39 Bucolica 1 is the privileged intertext,

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book

103

especially in the neapolitan eclogues, each of which bears its trace. in a sequence that tests the genre’s limits and articulates a new understanding of what a pastoral book can encompass, Boccaccio steadfastly revisits Vergil’s foundational poem. He shapes the space of Bucolica 1 into an elastic, accordion-like structure that can expand to embrace his innovations. Like Faunus’s twin author-figures, his boldest alterations of the genre— the amplification of its allegorical potential; the marked increase in storytelling, diegetic movement and narrative continuity; the appropriation of other genres, especially epic—are figured within the poems themselves as veering from but also returning to Vergil’s model. consequently, one of the effects of Boccaccio’s citational strategy is that, like Ameto’s song contest, it allows him to enact literary history as he initially positions his shepherds (and readers) within a Vergilian landscape before his pastoral hallmarks transport them to the trecento. consequently, the neapolitan eclogues’ development of Ameto’s metageneric dialogue offers a key insight into the nature and procedures of Boccaccio’s pastoral project, for once again, though with greater complexity and theoretical sophistication, the dialogue between different pastorals functions as a threshold to and helps produce novel, hybridic formulations of the genre. Boccaccio’s inquiry into what can be made to reside within the pastoral enclosure is further sharpened two decades and nine eclogues later when, in Olympia (Bucc. carm. 14), these thresholds become literal. His longest eclogue, it stages the nocturnal encounter between silvius (Boccaccio) and olympia (his deceased daughter, Violante), who descends from Paradise to tell her father of its glories. in addition to the poignancy of a scenario in which the poet allusively represents painful events from his life, it introduces entirely novel themes and situations to pastoral—it takes place at night (and initially indoors), offers the portrait of a family, and gives new space to the female voice.40 olympia seems to recognize this originality, for she prefaces her song by proclaiming that “ignotos silvis modulos cantabimus istis” [we will sing tunes that these woods have never heard] (88). critics have suggested that in this dialogue between pagan father and christian daughter Boccaccio stages the cultural encounter of classical and christian pastoral.41 However, what has not been adequately noted is that, in so doing, Boccaccio extends the implications of his earlier experiments, for Olympia is articulated along the axis established by the neapolitan eclogues: literal fictionality “converses” with

104

A Boccaccian Renaissance

allegorical hermeneutics. That Olympia replays these earlier scenes, albeit with greater theatricality and experimental audacity, is further evidence of the consistency of key aspects of Boccaccio’s pastoral project. Moreover, as Ameto’s eclogues indicated a quarter-century prior, it suggests that the metageneric potential of pastoral dialogue was integral to Boccaccio’s understanding of the genre. central to the poem’s novelty and theoretical sophistication is the unorthodox addition of a house to Arcadia, from which silvius emerges to join olympia in the woods. The moment of his exit is unclear, yet he is outside when she describes the heavenly home to which she must return, for he then points back to his own and says, “nos omnes teget illa domus” [That home will shelter all of us] (133), my emphases; that is, there is no need for Paradise since the home we used to share, and the shepherd’s life that it symbolizes, will provide us with all we require. Beyond the scene’s evident pathos, it echoes Saphos (Bucc. carm. 14), in which the titular character, a figure for Poetry, binds together all of creation in her book: “visaque sublimi complectitur omnia plectro / et viridis complexa libri sub tegmine ponit” [and all things seen she then encompasses / with her sublimest lyre, placing them / under the cover of a green-hued book] (14.117–18). Saphos’s volume is an effective synecdoche not only for Buccolicum carmen as a whole but also for the many green-hued texts in Boccaccio’s pastoral project, and it hints that pastoral, at least theoretically, could contain all things. silvius-Boccaccio’s domus then presents a dynamic image of that project at work. As he examines the foundations of pastoral from the outside, his backward glance renders the metageneric trajectory of pastoral in perspectival terms. By inserting walls into the Arcadian landscape, Boccaccio provides a paradigmatic specimen of the pastoral enclosure at the same time that he structures his eclogue as a literal, theoretical, and dramatic exploration of the space beyond it. For the history of the genre, it is essential to recognize that this drama is both theatrical and metageneric. in terms of the former, its mise-en-scène and spatial dynamism anticipate pastoral drama by over a century.42 in terms of the latter, Boccaccio draws a map for his myriad pastoral forays into other poetic “territory” and focalizes his earlier experimental inquiries. if the shepherds of Faunus espied the dust kicked up by another genre on the horizon, Olympia brings pastoral’s well-trafficked borders to silvius’s door.

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book

105

This liminal, co-penetrated space, which at once draws attention to the boundary and effaces it, is the symbolic site where Boccaccian pastoral is made. Throughout his career, Boccaccio resided here, at the radical edge of the genre, poised between its classical models and a replenishable range of pastoral configurations yet to be conceived. This site visualizes his pastoral project: to transform the latent plasticity of the Vergilian eclogue into a practical, iterable structure for the production and examination of new forms of literature. However much some of his individual pastorals influenced Renaissance poets, his impact on the history of the genre is deeper and more radical. it is to be found in the aggregate of his “green-hued book,” whose fertile tension between continuity and originality traces in miniature the direction in which the genre would head. in Annabel Patterson’s introduction to Pastoral and Ideology, she registers a note of exasperation at the dizzying range of things called “pastoral” and announces that she will not “launch another attempt to define the nature of pastoral—a cause lost as early as the sixteenth century, when the genre began to manifest the tendency of most strong literary forms to propagate by miscegenation.”43 some might view the propagation of these manifold versions as not a loss but a gain, and also as an indication of pastoral’s extensive transmedial reverberations in Western culture, but if the criterion is an unyielding genre taxonomy, the cause was lost not in the sixteenth century but rather in the fourteenth, and the change was effected not by “miscegenation” but rather by Boccaccio’s immanent transformation of the genre through progressive experimentations with its dialogical potential. yet i would agree with Patterson that this sea change liquidated the possibility of a rigid set of expectations. Boccaccio is pastoral’s Pandora moment and, however we view its renaissance hybrids, there would be no putting it back in the box. noTes

1. The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser, ed. William A. oram et al. (new Haven: yale university Press, 1989), 18. 2. These studies include Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1969); Renato Poggioli, The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Ideal

106

A Boccaccian Renaissance

(cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 1975); Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1987), and Paul Alpers, What Is Pastoral? (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1996), all of which either entirely ignore Boccaccio or mention him only in passing. other important studies that discuss Boccaccio are W. Leonard Grant, Neo-Latin Literature and Pastoral (chapel Hill: university of north carolina Press, 1965); Helen cooper, Pastoral: Mediaeval into Renaissance (Totowa, nJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977); e. Kegel-Brinkgreve, The Echoing Woods: Bucolic and Pastoral from Theocritus to Wordsworth (Amsterdam: J. c. Gieben, 1990), and Thomas K. Hubbard, The Pipes of Pan: Intertextuality and Literary Filiation in Pastoral Tradition from Theocritus to Milton (Ann Arbor: university of Michigan Press, 1997), though their assessments are frequently quite negative, especially that of Grant and cooper, and all four consider him a minor figure in the trecento eclogue revival when compared to Dante and Petrarch. 3. For the Caccia as “sylvan fantasy,” see Anthony K. cassell and Victoria Kirkham, Diana’s Hunt = Caccia di Diana: Boccaccio’s First Fiction (Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 3. on the contested dating of Buccolicum carmen, see Pier Luigi Ricci, “Per la cronologia del ‘Buccolicum carmen,’” in Studi sulla vita e le opere del Boccaccio (Milan and naples: Ricciardi, 1985), 50–66; and David Lummus, “The changing Landscape of the self (Buccolicum carmen),” in Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, eds. Victoria Kirkham, Michael sherberg and Janet Levarie smarr (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2013), 155–69, 407 n 4. 4. on the significance of the locus amoenus in much of Boccaccio’s oeuvre, but not Buccolicum carmen, see Maria elisa Raja, Le muse in giardino: Il paesaggio ameno nelle opere di Giovanni Boccaccio (Alessandria: edizioni dell’orso, 2003). essential to such considerations is what Giuseppe Mazzotta has termed Boccaccio’s “pastoral of literature” in The World at Play in Boccaccio’s “Decameron” (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 1986), 51, whose entire second chapter (47–74) is relevant to this analogy. For the discontinuity of Boccaccio’s pastoral approach, generally ascribed to the shifting models he privileged (first Vergil, then Dante, then Petrarch), see Janet Levarie smarr, “Boccaccio pastorale tra Dante e Petrarca,” in Autori e lettori di Boccaccio, ed. Michelangelo Picone (Florence: cesati, 2002), 237–54, and Giuseppe chiecchi, “Per l’interpretazione dell’egloga ‘olimpia’ di Giovanni Boccaccio,” Studi sul Boccaccio 23 (1995): 219–44. 5. For pastoral’s intermittent medieval tradition, see Kegel-Brinkgreve, The Echoing Woods, 191–237. For Boccaccio’s active role in the revival, see Guido Martellotti, “Dalla tenzone al carme bucolico: Giovanni del Virgilio, Dante, Boccaccio,” in Dante e Boccaccio e altri scrittori dall’umanesimo al romanticismo (Florence: olschki, 1983), 71–89, and “La riscoperta dello stile bucolico (da Dante al Boccaccio),” in ibid., 91–106; Giorgio Padoan, “Giovanni Boccaccio e la rinascita dello stile bucolico,” in Il Boccaccio, le Muse, il Parnaso e l’Arno (Florence: olschki, 1978),

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book

107

151–98; Giuseppe Velli, “‘Tityrus redivivus’: The Rebirth of Vergilian Pastoral from Dante to sannazaro (and Tasso),” in The Western Pennsylvania Symposium on World Literature: Selected Proceedings, 1974–1991; A Retrospective, ed. carla e. Lucente (Greensburg, PA: eadmer, 1992), 107–18; and smarr, “Boccaccio pastorale.” 6. see Martin eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature: Dante, Petrarch, Cavalcanti, and the Invention of Italian Literature (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2013). 7. Boccaccio transcribed the oldest copy of these poems that we possess. For the manuscript tradition, see Marco Petoletti, “egloge: nota ai testi,” in Dante Alighieri, Le Opere, vol. 5 (Rome: salerno, 2016), 505–15. For Boccaccio’s place in the compositional history and circulation of Petrarch’s eclogues, see nicholas Mann, “The Making of Petrarch’s ‘Bucolicum carmen’: A contribution to the History of the Text,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 20 (1977): 127–82, esp. 133–34. His collecting and anthologizing of pastoral literature is discussed in Giuseppe Billanovich, “scuola di retorica e poesia bucolica nel Trecento italiano iii: Giovanni del Virgilio, Pietro da Moglio, Francesco da Faiano,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 6 (1963): 203–34, esp. 224–25, and Billanovich and František Čáda, “Testi bucolici nella biblioteca del Boccaccio,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 4 (1961): 201–22. 8. The Genealogia was an extremely popular work in the Renaissance, while the letter, which provides a gloss for each of the eclogues of Buccolicum carmen, was included in many of the manuscripts containing his Buccolicum carmen (see Ginetta Auzzas, “epistole e lettere,” in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 5: 1, ed. Vittore Branca [Milan: Mondadori, 1992]: 838 n 2), as well as the transhistorical eclogue anthology published by Giunti in Florence in 1504. For an extensive discussion of the letter, as well as the importance of pastoral (especially Petrarch’s Bucolicum carmen) to Boccaccio’s defense of poetry in the Genealogia, see Angelo Piacentini, “La lettera di Boccaccio a Martino da signa: Alcune proposte interpretative,” Studi sul Boccaccio 43 (2015): 147–76, though i think Piacentini minimizes the impact of Boccaccio’s Latin eclogues. The Giunti anthology, like the Shepheardes Calender seventy-five years later, positions Petrarch and Boccaccio as the clear chapter between pastoral poets of antiquity (Vergil, nemesianus, calpurnius siculus) and those of the present (Mantuan and Pomponio Guarico). 9. They are embedded in Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (Ameto). see “comedia delle ninfe fiorentine,” ed. Antonio enzo Quaglio, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 2, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1964), chaps. 11 and 14. For their inaugural position in the italian eclogue tradition, see Attilio Hortis, Studj sulle opere latine del Boccaccio (Trieste: Libreria Dase, 1879), 66. 10. Boiardo composed ten eclogues in Latin and ten in the vernacular; sannazaro composed six eclogues in Latin and twelve in the vernacular. 11. For sannazaro’s indebtedness to Boccaccio’s vernacular pastorals, see Giuseppe Velli, “L’Ameto e la Pastorale, il significato della forma,” in Marga

108

A Boccaccian Renaissance

cottino Jones and edward F. Tuttle, eds. Boccaccio: Secoli di Vita (Ravenna: Longo, 1977): 67–80; and William J. Kennedy, Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (Hanover, nH: university of new england Press, 1983), esp. 109–26. 12. on the space that Boccaccio gives the female voice, see Jane Levarie smarr, “introduction,” in Giovanni Boccaccio, Eclogues, trans. smarr (new york: Garland, 1987), esp. lxviii–lxix. 13. see Grant, Neo-Latin Literature, 258–89, for Boccaccio’s major influence on subsequent christian pastorals. For the influence of his lament for his deceased daughter in Buccolicum carmen 14 on pastorals of Boiardo, Pontano, sannazaro, and castiglione, see smarr, “introduction,” lxiv–lxv. 14. For Buccolicum carmen and Mantuan, see smarr, “introduction,” lxiii–lxiv. For the influence of Buccolicum carmen on fifteenth-century Latin eclogues more broadly, see Gianvito Resta, “codice bucolico boccacciano,” in I classici nel Medioevo e nell’Umanesimo (Genoa: università di Genova, 1975): 59–90. For Ninfale fiesolano in Medicean Florence, see Paolo orvieto, “Boccaccio mediatore dei generi o dell’allegoria dell’amore,” Interpres 2 (1979): 7–104. For Ameto and sannazaro, see note 11. 15. i cite from Giovanni Boccaccio, “Teseida delle nozze d’emilia,” ed. Alberto Limentani, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 2, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1964), with my translation. smarr, in “Boccaccio pastorale,” 240, also interprets Ameto’s novelty in terms of this pronouncement. 16. The classic study of this project of renewal is Vittore Branca, “Giovanni Boccaccio, rinnovatore dei generi letterari,” in Atti del Convegno di Nimega sul Boccaccio (Bologna: Patron, 1976), 13–35. it is revealing that one of the few major literary works not mentioned is Buccolicum carmen. 17. in Epistola 10.3, Boccaccio tells Petrarch that he will articulate his critique “sub pastorali cortice” [under pastoral bark]. 18. Boccaccio’s Caccia di Diana, Filocolo, Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, Amorosa visione, Elegia della madonna Fiammetta, Ninfale fiesolano, Buccolicum carmen, Decameron, and some of his epistles are inflected by pastoral at the global or the local level. 19. For Ameto, see note 11. For Ninfale fiesolano’s relation to the pastoral tradition, see susanna Barsella, “Myth and History: Toward a new order (Ninfale fiesolano),” in Boccaccio: A Critical Guide, 145–53, esp. 146–47. For the “pastoral heterocosm” of the brigata, see Mazzotta, The World at Play, 53. narrative readings of Buccolicum carmen have focused on the autobiographical. see Giorgio Bernardi Perini’s introduction to Giovanni Boccaccio, “Buccolicum carmen,” in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 5: 2, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1994), 696; Grant, Neo-Latin Literature, 110; and esp. silvia Labagnara’s Il poema bucolico del Boccaccio (Rome: Luigi Ambrosini, 1968), 31–41, in which she views the sequence as a spiritual ascent. 20. smarr, “Boccaccio pastorale,” 254.

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book

109

21. The glosses of Bucc. carm. 3 and 14 are found in Epistola 23.5 and 27–28, respectively. 22. “comedia delle ninfe fiorentine,” chaps. 11 and 14. 23. Lummus, in “The changing Landscape,” 156, shows how Epistola 23 stages Boccaccio as the “modern successor of Virgil.” 24. “Boccaccio pastorale,” 242. Among the former are Hortis, Studj sulle opere, 66; Velli, “L’Ameto e la Pastorale,” 199; and Padoan, “Giovanni Boccaccio,” 155. see Jane Tylus, “on the Threshold of Paradise (Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, or Ameto),” in Boccaccio: A Critical Guide, 133–43, esp. 138–39, for the suggestive interpretation that the debate addresses the dangers of idleness. 25. The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. caryl emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: university of Texas Press, 1981), 304. 26. Book 3.14 of Filocolo, ed. Antonio enzo Quaglio, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 1, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1967). on the tomb in Filocolo, see Victoria Kirkham, Fabulous Vernacular: Boccaccio’s “Filocolo” and the Art of Medieval Fiction (Ann Arbor: university of Michigan Press, 2001), 64–72. 27. The Dialogic Imagination, 10. 28. elaborated over two decades, this collection is the product of Boccaccio’s most sustained engagement with pastoral but is his least studied pastoral text. simona Lorenzini, in “Rassegna di studi sul Boccaccio bucolico,” Studi sul Boccaccio 38: (2010): 153–65, surveys the meager scholarship. 29. For their historical context, see smarr’s “notes” to Giovanni Boccaccio, Eclogues, 201–4. 30. i cite throughout from Giovanni Boccaccio, “Buccolicum carmen,” ed. Giorgio Bernardi Perini, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 5: 2, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1994), with translations from Giovanni Boccaccio, Eclogues, trans. Janet L. smarr (new york: Garland, 1987). 31. “Pamphyle, tu” and “recubas” calque “Tityre, tu patulae recubans” (Bucolica 1.1); “patrio antro” calques “nos patriae finis” (1.3); and “lentus” calques “lentus” (1.4). i cite from Virgil, Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid I–VI, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 1999). Labagnara, Il poema bucolico, 55–69, catalogues Vergilian citations throughout the collection. 32. in his insightful analysis of variations in topographical representation throughout the collection, Lummus, in “The changing Landscape,” 162–63, also notes this juxtaposition but interprets it in terms of the threat that politics poses to pastoral imagination. 33. The opening of Palemon’s narrative (12–15) interlaces Bucolica 1.1 with Aeneid 2.268 and 270. 34. The highly Vergilian Buccolicum carmen 1–2 are dominated by the theme of love. it is a critical commonplace that, with his third eclogue, Boccaccio converted to Petrarchan pastoral after reading Vergil’s Argus (Buc. carm. 2), a partial model for Boccaccio’s Faunus (Bucc. carm. 3), and is frequently the sole aspect

110

A Boccaccian Renaissance

of Faunus to receive attention. see cooper, Pastoral, 36; Kegel-Brinkgreve, The Echoing Woods, 275; and Hubbard, The Pipes of Pan, 242. even Janet smarr, who has been the most eloquent and insightful advocate of Buccolicum through her translation and “Boccaccio pastorale,” considers his turn to Petrarchan allegories a “malattia” [illness” (247)]. Particularly influential is Velli, who in “Tityrus redivivus,” esp. 112 and 115, considers Boccaccio’s post-Faunus pastorals a “step back” (112) from his earlier innovative approach. i will show that these innovations subtend Boccaccio’s entire pastoral career and expand in artistic and theoretical complexity. 35. Boccaccio’s source for this cognomen is ovid’s Fasti 4.69. 36. For an analysis of this version, see Martellotti, “Dalla tenzone,” 88; smarr, “Boccaccio pastorale,” 244–46; and esp. Giovanni Boccaccio, La corrispondenza bucolica di Giovanni Boccaccio e Checco di Meletto Rossi e l’egloga di Giovanni del Virgilio ad Albertino Mussato, ed. simona Lorenzini (Florence: olschki, 2009), and simona Lorenzini, “The Two Versions of the eclogue Faunus: Boccaccio’s Different Approaches to the Bucolic Genre,” in Boccaccio 1313–2013, ed. Francesco ciabattoni, elsa Filosa, and Kristina olson (Ravenna: Longo, 2015): 149–57. 37. Petrarch’s Argus also opens with a peaceful Arcadia (in a conventional pastoral style) that is then subjected to peril (and allegorical narratives). yet while Petrarch juxtaposes the genre’s past and present only once before definitively turning to the latter, Boccaccio repeatedly rehearses the juxtaposition. 38. see note 31. 39. Hubbard, in The Pipes of Pan, 236–37, investigates the same phenomenon but suggests, rather unconvincingly, that Boccaccio chooses his Vergilian calques based on their thematic proximity to his own, when in fact they consistently mark moments when he radically diverges from Vergil. 40. enrico carrara, in La poesia pastorale (Milan: Vallardi, 1909), 126–27, calls it the first “poesia domestica [italiana].” smarr, in “Boccaccio pastorale,” 252, and chiecchi, in “Per l’interpretazione,” enumerate many of its unorthodox elements. 41. see chiecchi, “Per l’interpretazione,” 223, and Jonathan usher, “Who Was Boccaccio’s yschiros? (Buccolicum carmen 14.129),” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America (1996). There is no doubt that christian allegory flourishes in this eclogue. As is well established, Boccaccio’s principal guide is Dante’s Commedia, especially the cantos of earthly Paradise. (see chiecchi, “Per l’inpretazione,” 231–36. Guyda Armstrong, in “Heavenly Bodies: The Presence of the Divine Female in Boccaccio,” Italian Studies 60, no. 2 [2005]: 134–46, argues that the Paradiso is equally relevant.) Boccaccio’s career-long imitation of Dante has perhaps distracted from the novelty of an eclogue in which he attempts to integrate a miniature Commedia into its structures. By so doing, in Olympia he presents an example of pastoral at its most omnivorous, as it appropriates a

under the cover of a Green-Hued Book

111

sweeping narrative and casts it into material for an eclogue, thereby generating a new strand of pastoral representation. (see note 13.) yet many critics argue that, for Boccaccio, these Dantean appropriations dismantle classical pastoral, which christian revelation renders insufficient. (see chiecchi, “Per l’inpretazione,” 231, and note 41.) i disagree with Thomas Hubbard’s assertion that Olympia “makes the classical conception appear inadequate in comparison with the christian and sets up an implied agonism between the two” (in Pipes of Pan, 244). Rather, it shows how capacious the former can be, for Olympia is a protracted attempt to mediate between “pagan” fiction and christian message without the latter subsuming the former. Though silvius progressively approaches olympia’s message, he never fully accepts it. As Boccaccio figures himself as the not-yet-saved representative of pagan pastoral, he revitalizes the dual poet figures at the end of Faunus, which shades the entire eclogue into a meditation on how to accommodate antiquity and medieval christianity while maintaining the integrity of the classical perspective until the very end. 42. Giuseppe Velli, in “A proposito di una recente edizione del Buccolicum Carmen del Boccaccio,” Modern Language Notes 105, no. 1 (1990): 33–49, notes Olympia’s “pronunciata teatralità” (44). 43. Pastoral and Ideology, 7.

cHAPTeR 5

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture A New Model for the Study of Biography

r hian non dan ie ls

The biographical tradition is an ancient one. Lives of eminent classical poets, Virgil in particular, continued to circulate throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and they remained a template for subsequent life writing.1 Boccaccio himself contributed significantly to the genre with the composition of biographies of living and dead “modern” poets, both of which have been described as “firsts” and had a significant impact on early modern culture. in the 1340s he composed a life of Petrarch, the De vita et moribus Francisci Petracchi, “the first secular biography of a contemporary by an italian writer,” and in the 1350s a biography of Dante (revised in the 1360s) commonly referred to as the Trattatello in laude di Dante and presented as the first secular biography written in the italian vernacular.2 Thus Boccaccio contributed to the development of a genre that would come to include a healthy tradition of biographies documenting his own life. The first biography of Boccaccio was written within a decade of his death in c. 1381 and authored by Filippo Villani; it exists in two redactions, 112

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

113

the second of which is dated to between 1395 and 1397.3 Domenico Bandini’s encyclopedic work, the Fons memorabilium universi, was probably begun while Boccaccio was still alive but was not completed until the beginning of the fifteenth century. Book 30 deals with illustrious men and includes the second biography of Boccaccio. This was followed by a cluster of biographies by fully fledged humanists: Leonardo Bruni (1436), sicco Polenton (c. 1437), and Giannozzo Manetti (1440), before a second chronological grouping appeared toward the end of the fifteenth century consisting of biographies by Girolamo squarzafico (1472) and Fra Jacopo Filippo Foresti (1483), along with the anonymous Speculum historiale (1494). Another handful of biographies followed in the sixteenth century.4 Analyzing the contents of a biography has long been a method for reconstructing the scope and scale of information that is known about an author at a particular moment in history. A life is also a rewarding source for reception studies that illuminate the ways in which biographical data can be manipulated, amplified, and suppressed in order to reflect ideologies operating at different moments in cultural history. However, what is often overlooked is the value of evaluating the production context in which a biography has been transmitted and received. As we have learned from the now mature fields of textual studies and the history of the book, the author who creates a text is only one of a wide range of possible agents who work to ensure that the text reaches an audience. similarly, the text is only one element within the book object that transmits the word of the author, and this book package is itself a highly expressive medium that contains traces of its production agents and the technologies that have been used to give it form and also actively contributes to the shaping of its reception.5 i therefore propose, in this chapter, a new model for studying Boccaccio’s biographical tradition—and biographies in general—that does not take the contents of the biography as the sole focus but instead considers the contents in tandem with the publication and transmission history of the text.6 My case study will be centered on one of the most significant lives of Boccaccio that was transmitted during the Renaissance: the biography composed by Girolamo squarzafico.7 His was the first life of Boccaccio to be published as a text to accompany one of the author’s own works, in this case an edition of the Filocolo printed in Venice in 1472.8 other biographies of Boccaccio began life in manuscript and found their way into

114

A Boccaccian Renaissance

print later, but squarzafico’s Vita was the first to be composed directly for the print medium and went on to be included in nine successive editions of the Filocolo printed before 1600, as well as five editions of the Decameron published in the same period.9 in its originating Renaissance context, squarzafico’s biography is, therefore, a paratext as well as a text, and squarzafico needs to be recognized as an editor as well as an author.10 in other words, his text was designed to be read not in isolation, as a freestanding literary work in its own right, but as part of the package of textual and nontextual components that formed an early modern printed edition. in this chapter, therefore, quattrocento italian print culture will play a key role in our interpretation of the contents of squarzafico’s biography and its significance as an index of Boccaccio’s reception history. The importance of accounting for publication context is clear when we consider, even briefly, the numbers of biographies produced. even if we adopt a conservative estimate of the numbers of print runs of fifteenthcentury editions of the Filocolo, nearly two thousand copies of squarzafico’s biography may well have been produced before 1600, with the potential to reach an audience of which earlier biographers, writing for the medium of manuscript, could only dream.11 By comparison, Manetti’s most recent editor describes the manuscript tradition of his collection of biographies of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, Vitae trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum [Lives of Three illustrious Florentine Poets], which dates from 1440 and exists in thirteen extant witnesses, as enjoying “a certain success.”12 in terms of the number of members of its potential reading public, therefore, it is the very nature of its production context that determines the overriding success of squarzafico’s biography and affects the way in which we measure its historical significance. if we are interested in understanding the impact that Boccaccio exerted on the Renaissance, we must acknowledge that—outside a restricted elite of intellectuals—by far the majority of Boccaccio’s fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century readers would have accessed the outlines of his life and achievements through the lens supplied by squarzafico’s editorial work.13 once we see squarzafico’s Vita as a paratext, this throws into relief its distance from the preceding tradition of biographies of Boccaccio, which have not been designed to accompany works authored by Boccaccio and do not even concern Boccaccio alone. indeed, earlier biographers designed their lives of Boccaccio only as single members of a series of

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

115

biographies or biographical sketches. This difference in form determines a difference in function between the two sets of lives—squarzafico’s on the one hand and those of Villani et al. on the other. The precise nature of the ideological preoccupations transmitted by collections of biographies changed as humanism itself evolved, but fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury biographical compendia are connected through their use of the biographical genre to make political points that were intended to have an impact well beyond that of enhancing the status of an individual author. The De viris illustribus tradition, which included, but was not limited to, a celebration of Boccaccio and his fellow crowns, Dante and Petrarch, was an important statement of the particular brand of Florentine humanism built up by coluccio salutati and his followers in the final decades of the trecento and the early part of the quattrocento. in this context, the earliest lives authored by Villani and Bandini were first and foremost political documents and were concerned with a history of Florence that enhanced the status of the city rather than the fates of individual authors.14 Bruni and Manetti were part of a new generation of humanists, both reacting to the De viris tradition—Bruni by appearing to break the mold by writing a pair of what might be described as “stand-alone” lives of Dante and Petrarch, and Manetti by according the Three crowns equal treatment for the first time—and yet both biographers were still arguably under the influence of the need and desire to promote the heritage of Florence and its ongoing cultural supremacy.15 Although squarzafico’s biography is not concerned with a civic function, it is nevertheless political in nature, and i shall go on to explore the ways in which it engages with and reflects the politics of late fifteenth-century print culture. The authoring of a Vita di Boccaccio represents only a fragment of squarzafico’s editorial activity. The precise details of his contractual arrangements with the print shops of northern italy may not be clear, but points in his network of relationships with printers—in Venice and Milan in particular—and in geographical locations across italy and into Greece, have been reconstructed from a range of paratextual letters, dedications, and lives. squarzafico’s working life as a humanist whose editorial activities for the presses probably supplemented his income as a tutor stretched across thirty years (1471–1503) and is witnessed by at least twenty editions.16 The particular production context of the Vita di Boccaccio must therefore be mapped against squarzafico’s role as a “minor” humanist

116

A Boccaccian Renaissance

doing editorial work preparing copy-texts and supplementary paratexts, as well as in the wider context of northern italian print culture.17 Recognition of the Vita as a product of quattrocento print culture not only takes us beyond the text to consider the agents involved in its production but also allows us to consider the matter of the page on which the text is printed. The material disposition of squarzafico’s biography within the 1472 edition of the Filocolo—including the choice of typeface, the layout of the text, the addition of decorative initials or rubrics, and so on—reflects the workings of the fifteenth-century print shop and holds clues to the types of reader to which it was designed to appeal.18 The transmission history of the biography, in the details of its material positioning within successive editions of the same text, adds a chronological dimension to our understanding of squarzafico’s Vita, as it moves beyond the immediate range of his control and takes on a life of its own in the history of Boccaccio’s biography.19 T He su PPoRT i nG F u nc T ion oF T H e B i o G R A P H i c A L PA R AT e X T

Beginning from a definition of squarzafico’s Vita as a printed paratext— in other words, as a supporting text rather than an independent one— how might this definition affect our interpretation of the contents of the biography? in many ways, the letter of squarzafico’s life follows a format that is largely familiar from the preceding tradition, beginning with an account of Boccaccio’s education and poetic vocation and proceeding to a description of his output via his dedication to Greek studies. The opening line, “iohanne, il quale per cognome è detto Boccatio, fu da certaldo” [iohanne, who is known by his surname Boccatio, was from certaldo],20 recalls the opening lines of Bandini’s Latin life: “Johannes, cuius agnominatio est Boccatius, fuit de certaldo” [ Johannes, also known as Boccatius, was from certaldo] (677). Bruni is named directly as the source of information about Boccaccio’s pride and rejection of patronage (697), and Manetti’s enthusiastic promotion of Boccaccio’s knowledge of Greek is echoed in several lines of praise reserved especially for Leonzio Pilato. There are amplifications of themes dealt with more cursorily by others, such as Boccaccio’s early education and study of canon law, but the most

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

117

radical departures from the established biographical template occur at the beginning, when squarzafico opens with a first-person account of his own visit to certaldo, and at the end of the life, when he discusses a selection of Boccaccio’s vernacular texts. it is these two sections of the biography that form the catalyst for the following discussion of the significance of the text in the context of quattrocento print culture. Boccaccio as Auctor in the editions of the Filocolo that include squarzafico’s Vita, the life is placed at the back of the book, after the Filocolo. its status as a paratext that accompanies an authorial text nevertheless suggests some ideological overlaps in function with the accessus ad auctores [introductions to the authors], which usually preceded the text they were designed to introduce.21 in the late medieval and early modern periods, the life of the author formed an essential component of much literary criticism. The scholastic practice of the accessus, which continued to be employed by humanists contemporary with squarzafico, such as cristoforo Landino, commonly included a section of biographical information as part of a wider introduction to a commentary on the work in question.22 The tension between using paratextual commentary in order to authorize an author at the same time as providing historical and exegetical material in order to render the author more familiar to the reader is the same tension that squarzafico plays with in the opening section of his biography, in which he describes his own visit to certaldo: He visits the church where Boccaccio is buried, reads his epitaph on the wall, and is moved by the “gelido sasso dove ricubano le sue frigide membra” [icy stone where his cold body lies]; before he leaves he has time to visit Boccaccio’s house.23 The account serves to bridge the distance between an author who has been dead for nearly a century and prospective readers, demonstrating—by way of some unobtrusive historical detail (such as the name of the church where Boccaccio is buried)—that it is possible to feel a close spiritual connection through physical touchstones such as the author’s grave, and—implicitly—the books containing his texts. At the same time, squarzafico underlines Boccaccio’s status as an auctor whose final resting place is worthy of literary pilgrimage. He achieved this not only through the literal account of his journey to certaldo but

118

A Boccaccian Renaissance

also through a complex mesh of intertextual parallels that play on the notion of biography as a literary monument that overlaps with and has the potential to exceed a physical monument. These parallels exist both in biographies of Boccaccio and in Boccaccio’s own writings, biographical and otherwise, and one undoubtedly feeds the other. in Villani’s biography (subsequently imitated by Bandini), Boccaccio allegedly makes his own pilgrimage to the burial site of a classical auctor: Virgil’s tomb in naples.24 in the Trattatello, Boccaccio presents his own contribution to the poet’s immortalization as a literary monument, building on and reprising the same themes for Petrarch in a letter written shortly after Petrarch’s death to Francescuolo da Brossano.25 These textual allusions are replicated at the physical level of the printed edition. squarzafico not only marks Boccaccio as an auctor worthy of a biography in the contents of his text but also joins his biography of the trecentista directly to a vernacular work in the same way that Renaissance humanists would read the life of Virgil, for example, in their editions of Virgil’s works. Quattrocento humanist interest in biography as a form of historical writing and commentary on literary works, arguably stimulated over a century earlier by Boccaccio and Petrarch, found full expression in Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444). Gary ianziti has shown how fundamental the biographical genre was to Bruni’s program of cultural activities in the first half of the fifteenth century: Bruni not only composed his lives of Dante and Petrarch in the vernacular but was occupied for nearly a decade in translating Plutarch’s Lives, as well as composing his own biographies of ancient authors. Bruni’s “Life of cicero” was so successful that it was included in place of Plutarch’s version in the first Latin print of Plutarch’s Lives, published in 1470.26 in this context, squarzafico’s activities as both an author and an editor are consistent with a contemporary appetite for compendia of ancient biographies as well as biographical paratexts, but it is nonetheless striking that Boccaccio is presented in the same way as ancient authorities.27 in the same year that he authored his life of Boccaccio, squarzafico wrote lives of catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius for an edition of their works printed by Windelin of speyer (1472; reworked in 1475). Within a few years he also produced biographies of sallust (1478) and Flavius Josephus (1481), as well as collections of secular and religious lives: Platina’s Vite dei pontefici in 1479 and Plutarch’s Lives in 1502.28

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

119

As a point of comparison, we should note that it was virtually standard for fifteenth-century editions of Petrarch’s Canzoniere and Trionfi to include a biography of the author.29 in 1484 squarzafico completed Filelfo’s commentary on Petrarch’s Trionfi, but there was no call for him to add a vernacular life, since ilicino’s biography was already included as part of the accessus. instead squarzafico composed a life of Petrarch in Latin to accompany an edition of Petrarch’s Latin Opere printed in 1501.30 in contrast, quattrocento editions of Dante contain a host of paratexts—most commonly the Credo di Dante—but only beginning in 1477 with Windelin of speyer’s edition of the Comedy, which is also the first and only Quattrocento Dante to include a biography: Boccaccio’s Trattatello in laude di Dante.31 Boccaccio as Love Poet The addition of biographies to Boccaccio’s vernacular works in prose and Petrarch’s vernacular works in verse reflects a particular humanist interest in the style of their fourteenth-century language as an appropriate vehicle for the expression of high-status literature. it is no doubt this interest that allowed squarzafico to extend the project begun by Boccaccio’s earlier biographer, Giannozzo Manetti. Manetti claims to have written his biography of Boccaccio in Latin in order to make the erudite and learned sit up and take notice of a vernacular author they had previously ignored.32 He may have hoped, indirectly, to encourage humanists to read Boccaccio’s vernacular works, but his biography is triply distanced from Boccaccio’s vernacular output by virtue of its language of transmission, its mode of transmission (gathered together with biographies of other authors), and its contents, which emphasize Boccaccio’s diligence as a collector of ancient manuscripts and his pioneering work as a scholar of Greek without pausing to comment on the contents or qualities of individual vernacular texts. While Manetti’s preoccupations with stressing Boccaccio’s credentials as a classicist scholar remain in squarzafico’s life, squarzafico is able to use the fact that his biography is a paratext to the Filocolo in order to present Boccaccio as a diligent scholar alongside, and in addition to, an up-front new portrait of him as a love poet. Thus squarzafico uses his paratext to support and reflect the rich literary contents of Boccaccio’s

120

A Boccaccian Renaissance

text, which bring together Latin epic, history, scripture, and canon law with vernacular romance traditions.33 These are the new details on Boccaccio’s vernacular output provided by squarzafico: Fu molto dato alla libidine delle donne, et de diverse fu inamorato, e tra l’altre d’una fiorentina, la quale era dicta Lucia, dove lui Lya sempre apella. Ancora che non gli era già convenevole per la sua bassa condizione, se lassò spingere ad amare la figliola naturale del serenissimo re Roberto, la quale madonna Maria era chiamata. . . . et per amore de costei compose il Filocolo et la Fiammetta. Varie sono l’opinione di quello che seguitasse di questo amore; alcuni voleno dire che l’ultimi desiderii che si ricercano ne l’amore ebbe da lei, et dicono lui averlo quasi manifestato nel prologo delle Cento novelle, quando disse che assai piú alto che non conteneva la sua condicione fu inamorato.34 [He was very given to lusting after women, and fell in love with various of them, and amongst them a Florentine who was known as Lucia, although he always calls her Lya. Although it was not appropriate to his lowly circumstances, he allowed himself to be driven to love the illegitimate daughter of the most serene King Robert, who was called madonna Maria. . . . And out of love for her he composed the Filocolo and the Fiammetta. There are various opinions about what followed from this love; some like to say that the final desires that he sought out were for her, and they say that he almost demonstrated this in the prologue of the Cento novelle, when he said that he was in love with someone much higher than his own status.] The significance of the content of the life has been discussed most fully by Johannes Bartuschat, who points out that squarzafico uses the last section of his biography, traditionally reserved for a moral portrait of the author, as a way of presenting the vernacular works.35 Thus the literary texts are read as an autobiographical expression of Boccaccio’s own amorous experiences: “La vie de l’auteur authentifie pour ainsi dire les œuvres et leur confère une qualité nouvelle: la sincérité; elles sont le reflet d’une

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

121

passion vraie” [The life of the author authenticates, as it were, the works and confers on them a new quality of sincerity; the works are the reflection of a true passion].36 There are strong echoes here of Boccaccio’s own justifications of his work in the conclusion to the Decameron, where the narrator attempts to evade blame for including all the details that he has by claiming to be simply transcribing, as accurately as possible, events that have been recounted to him.37 similarly, he defends the rhetorical rules according to which the style of telling must conform to the essence of the subject matter (conclusion, 4–5). By making this connection between fiction and history, squarzafico is following a precedent in biographies of Petrarch. As early as 1426, Pier candido Decembrio composed a life of Petrarch that framed him for the first time as a vernacular poet rather than a humanist scholar.38 Decembrio’s discussion of Petrarch’s Laura, which occupies a substantial proportion of his life, is grounded in a justification of the historical existence of Petrarch’s beloved and therefore presents Petrarch’s sonnets as a fictional representation of real-life events and emotions. evidence for the historical details of Laura’s biography is supplied via lengthy quotations from Petrarch’s works: a letter to Giacomo colonna in which he claims that Laura is not a figment of his poetic imagination, a transcription from Petrarch’s copy of Virgil in which he records his first meeting with her, and a “confession” of his youthful desires from the Posteritati. As squarzafico’s biography is a companion for Boccaccio’s vernacular prose, it also seems likely that Decembrio’s biography was designed to accompany a copy of Petrarch’s sonnets, probably a commented version of the Canzoniere, since Decembrio makes reference to the “presenti sonetti.”39 in an interesting parallel with his life of Boccaccio, squarzafico’s life of Petrarch was the final one to insist on his achievements as both humanist and love poet, and from the sixteenth century onward, Petrarch was consistently framed as an amorous vernacular poet.40 in fact, the historical nature of Laura appears to have been insisted upon to a far greater degree within squarzafico’s lifetime than was the historical existence of Fiammetta. To really drive home the point, quattrocento editions of the Canzoniere e Trionfi also circulated with an additional paratext to the biography, marked out with a separate rubric titled “Memorabilia quaedam de Laura manu propria Francisci Petrarca scripta in quodam codice Virgilii in papiensi biblyoteca reperta.”41

122

A Boccaccian Renaissance

in the context of the Boccaccian tradition, squarzafico was not the first to frame the author as an amorous poet.42 indeed, if we consider the self-portrait that Boccaccio draws of himself as a libidinous author of vernacular texts that are not safe for a female audience (epistle XXii, addressed to Mainardo cavalcanti), Boccaccio himself might be described as the author of his own fortunes on this count.43 others followed this characterization to warn audiences away from the less salubrious aspects of Boccaccio’s literary career or to contrast Boccaccio’s lack of restraint negatively with Petrarch’s superior control: Matteo Palmieri famously defines all of Boccaccio’s vernacular texts as “pieni di tanta lascivia e dissoluti essempli d’amore” [full of so much lasciviousness and licentious examples of love], which he claims “abbino nociuto e nuochino a molti” [have harmed and are harmful to many].44 More subtly, in the 1450s Angelo Galli’s untitled text pits Boccaccio and Petrarch against each other in a dispute over literary form; Petrarch prays to the god Apollo for victory, while Boccaccio turns to Bacchus, god of wine and women.45 Boccaccio was also instrumental in linking libidinous desires and poetic endeavors in modern literary biography. in the first redaction of his life of Dante he not only discusses Dante’s meeting with Beatrice but also lists the other women with whom he was in love, and also laments the difficulties of desisting from “natural” desires. in both the first and the second redactions he includes misogynist passages on the impediments of women and marriage to the scholarly life. His portrayal of Dante as a man with healthy earthly desires has to be negotiated in subsequent biographies, with different biographers adopting a variety of solutions, from Villani’s insistence that Dante’s love for Beatrice was chaste to Landino’s interpretation of Dante’s love as a sign of inner nobility.46 in the same vein, since squarzafico is potentially negotiating the image that Boccaccio created of himself in epistle XXii, squarzafico is the first to present an autobiographical reading of Boccaccio’s vernacular fictions in the service of positively promoting the author and his works, and it is this innovation that makes the writing of squarzafico’s Vita a key moment in successive constructions of Boccaccio’s image. The amorous author is embraced as a positive interpretive frame for reading his works; in other words, a justification and encouragement for reading rather than as a warning against reading. in its context as a supporting text for the Filocolo, this adds a layer of metatextual framing that echoes and extends Boccaccio’s metafictional

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

123

framing, as the commission to compose the Filocolo is bestowed upon the narrator by Maria in the first book of the Filocolo. Whether this is a sophisticated reading strategy on squarzafico’s behalf or simply a literal transposition of paragraphs 17–30 is more difficult to determine. squarzafico’s innovatory framing is enthusiastically received and amplified by later biographers writing biographical paratexts; for example, Francesco sansovino reads Boccaccio’s life almost entirely through quotations from his vernacular fictions.47 Biographers writing lives of Boccaccio after squarzafico, and not writing paratexts, do not seem to make these same connections between Boccaccio’s love life and his fiction, thereby underlining the extent to which the content of squarzafico’s biography is linked to its context as a paratext.48 The Vita is not just a way of framing the text and the author, but also a way of framing the value of the publishing endeavor. We should not ignore the role of the paratextual biography as a marketing tool, since the authority of the author and his text is bound up with the credibility of squarzafico as an editor and his ability to continue to find editorial work. in this context the decision to specify some vernacular texts by name, but not others, reflects squarzafico’s personal evaluation of Boccaccio’s works and dovetails with those texts he would subsequently go on to prepare for the press. since squarzafico names the three vernacular texts by Boccaccio that he prepared for print in the order in which they appeared, this reads like an advertisement for his editorial ambitions.49 The reference to his love for Lya undoubtedly comes from the Ameto, but this work is not mentioned by name, perhaps because squarzafico did not intend to edit it. conversely, the only evidence that squarzafico was involved in editing the 1472 edition of the Genealogia printed by Windelin of speyer is his mention of the text in his life of Boccaccio.50 The Material Presentation of squarzafico’s Vita in the Filocolo Tradition Let us now turn to consider the placement and presentation of squarzafico’s biography in the layout of late fifteenth-century and early sixteenthcentury editions of the Filocolo. What can be deduced from this about the status of the text and its accompanying biographical paratext? The text that squarzafico prepared for his 1472 edition of the Filocolo forms

124

A Boccaccian Renaissance

the basis of all subsequent editions until Tizzone Gaetano made revisions for his 1527 edition.51 Following the fortunes of squarzafico’s textual editing, his Vita is included in all but two of the twelve editions of the Filocolo published before 1527. The first of these to omit the biography was the Florentine editio princeps, which must have been printed in the same weeks and months that squarzafico’s edition was being printed in Venice and therefore does not represent a deliberate omission.52 in terms of both its text and its material presentation, the Florentine edition is distinct from the following tradition, which did not see another Tuscan edition until 1564. Beyond the superficial similarities of choice of folio format and use of roman typeface, differences between the princeps and later incunables are most visibly apparent in the choice of layout and printed rubrication.53 As one might expect, Venice dominates the print history of the Filocolo, although there is some geographical variation in the early years, with editions appearing in both Milan (1476 and 1478) and naples (1478). it is less easy to explain the reason for the absence of squarzafico’s life in the 1481 edition printed by Filippo di Pietro in Venice, since Filippo is named in the colophon as one of the two printers of the 1472 edition. Filippo and Gabriele di Pietro parted ways in 1473, and Filippo may have wanted to distinguish his later activity from that of his former associate.54 comparing the presentation of the two editions (see figs. 5.1 and 5.2), we can see that although the later edition follows the layout of the opening of the text very closely, using the same wording in the opening rubric, similar spacing for the decorated initial, and the same-sized roman font (body 115), the 1481 edition places thirty-eight lines of text in each column, compared with the forty lines used in the 1472 edition. This results in an increase in the number of leaves needed to contain Boccaccio’s text alone: the 1472 edition numbers 224 leaves, including squarzafico’s Vita, which occupies most of the final two leaves, while the 1481 edition numbers 230 leaves, not including any additional paratexts. Another explanation for the absence of the life, then, may simply have been a desire to save money by not increasing the length of the edition any further. Here, perhaps, is evidence of a trade-off between the aesthetics of a well-balanced layout—with the relationship between the size of the text space and the width of the margins of elegant proportions—and the inclusion of additional paratexts.55 information about the material layout, therefore, allows

F i G u R e 5.1. opening of the text. Filocolo (Venice: Gabriele and Filippo di Pietro, 1472), oxford, Bodleian Library, Holk. c. 2, fol. 1r. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the university of oxford.

F i G u R e 5.2. opening of the text. Filocolo (Venice: Filippo di Pietro, 1481), cardiff, university Library, incunabula 42, fol. a2r. Reproduced with the kind permission of special collections and Archives, cardiff university.

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

127

us to speculate about the possible impact of pragmatic decisions, influenced by the commercial drives inherent in print culture, and warns us against attributing all decisions to purely intellectual drives connected to the perceived intrinsic values of a biography. similarly pragmatic reasons, no doubt, determined the trend toward replicating the appearance of the Venetian 1472 edition alongside its function as a textual model. it made practical and commercial sense that when printers looked to a previously successful edition for the text they also replicated the general layout, and in this context we can assume that squarzafico’s Vita was deemed an important part of the Filocolo “brand” that was being imitated. in the fifteenth century, the text was transmitted in a fairly homogenous and seemingly high-status format consisting of a folio edition in roman type arranged in two columns, leaving wide margins around the text. There is also evidence from individual copies that the text found its way into the hands of owners and readers who deemed it worthy of expensive professional hand-painted decoration, including elaborate initials that extend into the wide borders of the page, and also coats of arms. in some cases the style of embellishment reflects the contemporary humanistic taste for vine-scroll initials, and at least one extant copy is printed on vellum.56 The 1478 Filocolo printed by sixtus Riessinger in collaboration with Francesco del Tuppo seems to be an anomaly within the tradition, not only because it is the only edition printed in naples but because its appearance is markedly different from that of other incunables thanks to the inclusion of a series of forty woodcut illustrations. it is a folio edition printed in roman type, but is the only Filocolo in this format to have a full-page layout, apart from the Florentine editio princeps. Beyond the history of the Filocolo, sixtus’s edition is significant as the first illustrated edition of any of Boccaccio’s works to be produced in italy and as the first illustrated edition of any text to come out of naples.57 it was published some years ahead of the first illustrated Decameron, printed by Giovanni and Gregorio De Gregori in Venice in 1492, and the woodcut illustration of a soldier that adorns the title page of the 1498 Filostrato printed in Bologna. Rather, it is more similar to the illustrated editions of Boccaccio’s works that were being printed outside the peninsula, such as the ulm edition of De mulieribus claris (1473). This illustrated edition of the Filocolo is witness to the particular cultural milieu of naples in the period: an

128

A Boccaccian Renaissance

international melting pot of influences from German printers, the Aragonese court, and its interest in spanish, Franco-Burgundian, and Flemish traditions.58 The appearance of squarzafico’s life, which had previously circulated only in Venetian and Milanese editions, underscores how rapidly the Vita was incorporated into the textual canon and was judged an essential component, even when the visual tradition was overturned and Boccaccio’s text was being prepared for remarkably different audiences. The Venice 1472 edition sets the basic template for the positioning of squarzafico’s life at the end of the edition, where it appears after the colophon that announces the end of Boccaccio’s text. it is possible that the printing of Boccaccio’s text began before squarzafico had finished preparing the Vita and therefore that its position was determined by purely practical circumstances.59 it is not unusual to find paratexts of this nature at the ends of editions in this period. For example, five elegiac distichs by Bonino Mombrizio are included at the end of the 1476 edition of the Filocolo; the sonnet by Girolamo Bologni that was added to the 1479 Ameto appears after Boccaccio’s text; and dedicatory letters were placed at the ends of editions of the Fiammetta.60 Lives of Petrarch were also added to the ends of quattrocento editions of the Canzoniere e Trionfi.61 From 1488, tables of contents began to be added to editions of the Filocolo that were also placed at the ends of the volumes; they moved to the front only in 1520, when the format changed to quarto. Whatever the reason for its position, therefore, it does not seem necessary to read the placement of a biography at the end of a volume as a reflection of its reduction in status compared with other paratexts. in order to understand in more detail the relationship between the text and the paratext and the implications that this has for understanding contemporary perceptions of the biography, let us look more carefully at the precise placement of the life on the page in relation to other elements of the material layout. The exact positioning and layout of the biography (and other material features) must be read in the context of an understanding that early printers were continually working to produce more cost-effective volumes by reducing the quantity of paper used.62 As Brian Richardson has noted: “The case of the Filocolo epitomizes a gradual deterioration in standards among Venetian printers as one moves into the 1490s: a deterioration which jointly affected the quality of printing, cramped and inelegant, and the philological quality of the works printed.”63

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

129

Both the collation and the mise-en-page of editions of the Filocolo indicate that squarzafico’s life was considered an integral component of the text object. it was printed in the final quire, running on from the end of Boccaccio’s text, and therefore could not have been detached without also losing part of the main fiction. The presentation of the Vita also echoes the presentation of textual divisions within the Filocolo: in the Venice 1472 edition the biography opens with a rubric followed by a space for a decorated initial (which is filled with a printed decorated initial in later editions), imitating the layout used for parts of Boccaccio’s text (see fig. 5.3). As the presentation of editions developed throughout the fifteenth century, subtle changes in layout and rubrication evolved to cement the relationship between Boccaccio’s text and squarzafico’s paratext more strongly. The 1476 edition includes five distichs after the life that are spaced farther apart than the life is from Boccaccio’s text, visually reinforcing the idea that squarzafico’s Vita is more integrated than Mombrizio’s paratext (see fig. 5.4). in the Milanese edition printed in 1478, an additional colophon is printed after the end of the Vita, neatly tying up the ends of squarzafico’s text, and the volume as a whole, in the same way as Boccaccio’s text. This allowed the printer (Filippo da Lavagna) not only to advertise his own name once more but also revealed a degree of anxiety about the moral compass of the work that had been printed. The reader is advised: “in esso saperai solo dio amare: & lo amore sfrenato lasciarai: il quale in se piu alloe confesse che melle contiene” [in this you will learn only to love God and you will leave behind unrestrained love, which grants more bitterness than it contains sweetness] (fol. &9r). it is difficult not to read this as a direct response to squarzafico’s presentation of Boccaccio’s lack of amorous control, presented, in this edition, on the same page as the colophon: “Fu molto dato ala libidine de le donne: e di molte fu inamorato” [He was very given to lusting after women, and fell in love with various of them]. in the same year, the neapolitan edition started a precedent for closing Boccaccio’s text with an explicit “Qui finisce il Libro del Philocolo di Messer iohanne Bocchacio da certaldo Poeta illustre” [Here ends the Book of the Philocolo of Messer iohanne Bocchacio da certaldo, illustrious Poet] (fol. F8r) and placing a single colophon at the end of the Vita, thereby visually coding it as an integral part of the text. This is reflected in the wording of the colophon, which now explicitly marks the end of both Boccaccio’s text and squarzafico’s: “Finisce el Philocolo. composto per lo

F i G u R e 5.3. end of the text, colophon, and opening of squarzafico’s Vita. Filocolo (Venice: Gabriele and Filippo di Pietro, 1472), oxford, Bodleian Library, Holk. c. 2, fol. 222r. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the university of oxford.

F i G u R e 5.4. end of squarzafico’s Vita and five distichs. Filocolo (Milan: Domenico da Vespolate, 1476), oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. 2 Q 1.28, fol. y7r. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the university of oxford.

132

A Boccaccian Renaissance

generoso e magnifico Messere iohanne Bocchacio poeta Florentino laureato [sic]. Quale per amor redusse in tal compendio. Dove e la vita del dicto Messer iohan Bocchacio.” [Here ends the Philocolo. composed by the noble and magnificent Messere iohanne Bocchacio, Florentine poet laureate. Who reduced it into this compendium out of love. Which also contains the life of the said Messer iohan Bocchacio . . . ] (fol. F9v). not only is the Vita name-checked (although squarzafico is not), but squarzafico’s presentation of the text as of amorous inspiration is repeated, showing how quickly the notion was transmitted and cemented that Boccaccio and his character(s) could be elided and labeled as amorous. From 1488 it became usual to place the colophon after squarzafico’s life. That this represents a symbolic endpoint to a text that now combines the Filocolo and squarzafico’s Vita is emphasized in the 1503 edition, which includes a table of contents that follows the colophon (see fig. 5.5). After the table of contents is a letter by squarzafico, which therefore seems to have less connection to Boccaccio’s text than the life: it is materially separated from it (at the very back of the book, after the table of contents), and the two are not bound by a colophon that connects them. indeed, the contents of the letter have an exegetical element that reads like a commentary on squarzafico’s Vita. The letter does not begin with the usual deference paid to the recipient, but—in order to satisfy a reported request on behalf of Francesco contareno for more information about Boccaccio’s work—goes straight to the heart of the matter: Boccaccio’s aim in writing the Filocolo was to pronounce on the correct kind of love: “Quanto laudabile sia un vero, degno, cordiale e non finto amore, lassandoni molti, iohanne Boccatio trovo averlo mostrato nel libro suo chiamato Philocolo” [i find that iohanne Boccatio has demonstrated in his book called Philocolo how praiseworthy is love which is true, worthy, warm-hearted and not false].64 squarzafico goes on to give a short account of the circumstances of the work’s composition before continuing to expound in more detail the ways in which it should be interpreted. The essence of his argument is that Boccaccio demonstrates the importance of loving one person: “Quanto di commendatione sia degno colui che milita sotto uno e non sotto diversi amori; l’uno è degno di laude, l’altro di vituperio e biasmo grandissimo . . . quanto l’uno è virtuoso, tanto l’altro libidinoso” [How worthy of commendation is he who serves under one love and not under many; one is worthy of praise, the other of insult and great censure . . . as one is virtuous, so is

F i G u R e 5.5. end of squarzafico’s Vita, colophon, and opening of the table of contents. Filocolo (Venice: Donino Pincio, 1503), oxford, Bodleian Library, 4 Delta 34, fol. n2v. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the university of oxford.

134

A Boccaccian Renaissance

the other lascivious] (291–92). squarzafico is presumably referring here to the central love story of Florio and Biancifiore, although it is difficult not to read this as a reflection of some anxiety over his biography of the author as a man motivated by successive desires (“et de diverse [donne] fu inamorato” [and he fell in love with various women]). in this sense, the addition of the letter, which amplifies and nuances the contents of the life, has the same function (albeit at more length) as the second colophon added by Filippo da Lavagna (Milan 1478). interestingly, this sense of a deepening unease with the moral contents of the text is not discernible in a letter squarzafico wrote to accompany this same 1478 edition. in this case the letter functions much more clearly as a dedication, in both its material positioning at the beginning of the edition and in the letter of the text, which opens with an extended passage of praise for the virtue of friendship. Very little space is given to discussing either Boccaccio or the Filocolo, but what little there is presents the poet in the same mode as does the biography, as both a lover and a scholar: “sí che ora mai, concludendo, piglierai, carissimo il mio Alloyssio [the addressee], questa vita dil nostro inamorato poeta e vederai quanto egli fu ardente e con quanto animo cercò sempre de imparare e di farse in questi studii di l’humanitade prestante” [such that now, in conclusion, my dearest Alloyssio, you will take this life of our poet-inlove and you will see how ardent he was and with how much spirit he always sought to learn and to excel in these studies in the humanities] (276). This passage is also significant for its invitation to read the Vita (as opposed to the Filocolo). This is what is really at stake in this dedication, which reads like a piece of marketing propaganda for squarzafico’s editorial career, where he describes in some detail his preparation of the biography and its publication details: “È piú tempo ch’io aveva tra l’altre vite composto quella di Gioanne Boccatio in vernacula lingua e già per avanti era suta impressa insieme col suo Philocolo e testé se imprimeva di novo in ne l’alma e grande citade de Milano ch’io a questi impressori la voleva aconzare là dove gli primi avevano errato.” [it has been some time since i composed, among others, that life of Gioanne Boccatio in the vernacular tongue and it has already

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

135

been printed together with his Philocolo and again just now in the immortal and great city of Milan, since i wanted to adjust it in those places where the first printers had erred]. (275) it is not only his life of Boccaccio that squarzafico is keen to promote, but also his other biographical works: e solamente questa sua intentione (l’intentione di Boccaccio di farse in studii di l’humanitade prestante) prima sí me mosse ch’io la sua vita a la memoria de le lettere mandasse, come di molti altri ho facto e farò, se Dio la vita me concede. e di quelle che per me sono composte, come quella di M. Tullio cicerone, di salustio, di catulo, Propertio e Tibulo, nulla mai a persona alcuna abbio vogliuto intitulare si non questa quale al presente a te ho scripta. [And it was this intention of his alone (Boccaccio’s intention to excel in studies in the humanities) that first moved me to commit his life to memory through writing, as i have done with many others and will continue to do, if God grants me enough life. And of those lives which i have composed, like that of cicero, of sallust, or catullus, Propertius and Tibullus, i have never wanted to dedicate any of them to anyone apart from this one which i have addressed to you.] (276) Before leaving this broader discussion of the layout of the life, it is also worth considering its relationship to the opening rubric of Boccaccio’s text.65 in the 1472 Venice edition, the rubric that opens the Filocolo is both visually significant, occupying a good quarter of the first column of text, and functionally important. Title pages were not introduced into the Filocolo tradition until 1497, and so in the visual economy of the page, the opening rubric assumed added importance as the first piece of text encountered by the reader and was vital for labeling and orientation. squarzafico’s rubric reads as follows: incoMenciA iL LiBRo PRiMo: Di FLoRio: & Di BiAnzafiore chiamato philocolo che tanto e adire quanto amorosa faticha co[m]posto per il clarissimo poeta miser iohanne boccacio

136

A Boccaccian Renaissance

da certaldo ad instancia di la illustre: & generosa madonna Maria. figluola naturale delinclito Re Ruberto.66 [Here begins the first book of Florio and of Bianzafiore called philocolo which is an amorous labor composed by the very famous poet miser iohanne boccaccio da certaldo at the request of the famous and noble madonna Maria, illegitimate daughter of the illustrious King Robert.] This is substantially longer and more communicative than the rubric transmitted in the Florentine princeps, which reads simply coMinciA iL PHiLocoLo Di: M: G: BoccHAcii. [Here begins the Philocolo by M(esser) G. Bocchacii.] squarzafico’s edition thus opens with a paratext that blends historical author with fictional sponsor in a way that anticipates the blurring of distinction between historical reality and narrative fiction that occurs in the world of Boccaccio’s text, as well as in his biography. The breadth and complexity of the range of authorial roles with which Boccaccio plays within the text of the Filocolo are well documented,67 but the paratextual apparatus that book-ends the text, stemming from squarzafico’s editorial interventions in both rubrics and biography, effectively reduces Boccaccio’s metafictional subtleties into a one-dimensional narrative of the historical author’s amorous exploits. The three sixteenth-century editions that contain both full title pages and squarzafico’s life retain the same opening rubric used in the Venice 1472 edition, but don’t all use the same wording on their title pages.68 The Venice 1520 does choose to use an almost identical wording as the rubric, strengthening squarzafico’s message even further: inamorame[n]to di Florio e di Bia[n]zafiore chiamato Philocolo che ta[n]to a dire qua[n]to amorosa faticha co[m]posto per il clarissimo poeta messer Joanni Boccatio da certaldo ad instantia dela illustre e generosa madonna Maria figliuola naturale delinclito Re Roberto. novamente stampato.

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

137

[The love affair of Florio and of Bianzafiore called Philocolo which is an amorous labour composed by the very famous poet messer Johanni Boccatio da certaldo at the request of the famous and noble madonna Maria, illegitimate daughter of the illustrious King Robert. newly printed.] What is more, the coupling of Boccaccio-Maria is now visually transposed into the image of a man and woman facing each other in the woodcut border that surrounds the title (see fig. 5.6).69

F i G u R e 5 .6 . Title-page. Filocolo (Venice: Bernardino da Lesona, 1520), cardiff university Library, PQ4270.F5.B20, fol. Ú1r. Reproduced with the kind permission of special collections and Archives, cardiff university.

138

A Boccaccian Renaissance concLusion

Drawing together the two parts of this chapter, which have considered elements of squarzafico’s authorship in the context of his role of editor, as well as the visual presentation of the Vita within the text object, we can begin to get a sense of how quickly and effectively the new medium of print was exploited as a means of marketing Boccaccio to the Renaissance reader. The arrival of the printing press in Venice obviously offered a fresh opportunity to humanists like squarzafico to produce something marketable and thereby turn a profit, and the composition of a new biography of Boccaccio must be seen as part of that commercial process. However, the long history of the biographical tradition reminds us that it was by no means reliant on print for its genesis. Within the parallel history of Dante’s fortunes, a number of manuscripts containing his works circulated with a variety of different biographies attached to them. Likewise, elements of the editorial work in which we have seen squarzafico involved— preparing a biography and positioning it together with a particular text, and perhaps also composing the rubrics that introduce and further shape the text object—were not new to print culture. Throughout this chapter we have been reminded of the pivotal role Boccaccio played, not only as an author, but also as an editorial innovator and book maker. His creation of the manuscript compilations that include the Trattatello in laude di Dante was an important contribution to the ways in which the canonization of authors was being effected through the careful placement of biographies, which began in handwritten texts and continued throughout the quattrocento and beyond. Within Boccaccio’s own tradition, however, the addition of a biography to the Filocolo, which had not previously been accompanied by this manner of paratext, and indeed the addition of a biography for the first time in any of Boccaccio’s texts, whether in Latin or the vernacular, seems to have been triggered by the new culture of print. The spectacularly porous nature of the biographical paratext, which was used to frame another text and its author rather than necessarily being considered in its own right as a piece of literature, is witness to a particular moment enjoyed by the Filocolo at the end of the quattrocento, when it was probably considered a higher-status text than either the Decameron or the Fiammetta.70 even though the Decameron was printed with greater frequency in the quattrocento (eleven editions compared with

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

139

eight containing the Filocolo), it took twenty years for squarzafico’s biography to be transferred to a printed edition of the Decameron, and the life never crossed over into the Fiammetta, despite squarzafico’s involvement with the editing of this text.71 in spite of the excitement that must have surrounded the production of texts by mechanized means, the early print tradition was remarkably conservative in its desire to replicate what had gone before. it was left to a relatively small number of printers to make innovative leaps, in terms of both textual editing and the visual presentation of their texts. if squarzafico’s biography represents one of these leaps, in the Filocolo tradition Tizzone Gaetano’s 1527 edition marks another, in which both the text and its structural and visual presentation underwent an overhaul, with the result that squarzafico’s biography was ejected as a symbolic element of the “old order.” Between these two extremes, and looking beyond the aims of the producers of the text, one wonders how far the inclusion of the life resonated with individual readers. There is precious little evidence, in the copies of these editions that i have seen, at least, to suggest how readers viewed it, or even whether they read it.72 new lives were produced for sixteenth-century editions of the Decameron and the Genealogia, whose fortunes continued to ascend, but the removal of squarzafico’s life in 1527 marked the beginning of the end for the Filocolo. A P P e n D i X : e D i T i o n s o F T H e F I L O C O L O 1472 –1 52 7

Date

City

Printer

12 november 1472

Florence

Johann Petri

*20 november 1472

Venice

*14 June 1476

Milan

Gabriele and Filippo di Pietro

Domenico da Vespolate

Squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio

Other paratexts

ID

isTc ib00739000 GW4462



isTc ib00740000 GW4463



isTc Five elegiac distichs ib00741000 GW 4464 by Bonino Mombritio

140

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Date

City

Printer

Squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio

Other paratexts

4 February 1478

Milan

Filippo da Lavagna

8 March 1478

naples



*19 April 1481

Venice

sixtus Riessinger per Francesco del Tuppo

*24 December 1488

Venice

Pellegrino Pasquali



Table of contents

*22 november 1497

Venice



Table of contents

*21 April 1503

Venice

Antonio da Gussago Donino Pincio



*1514

Venice



*1520

Venice

Agostino de Zanni

Table of contents; letter by squarzafico to Francesco contareno

*25 March 1520

Milan



Letter by squarzafico to Alloyssio Marcello

Filippo di Pietro

Bernardino da Lesona n. n. (nomen nescio) [Alessandro Minuziano]

ID

isTc ib00741500 GW 4465 isTc ib00742000 GW 4466

isTc ib00743000 GW 4467 isTc ib00744000 GW 4468 isTc ib00745000 GW 4469

cnce 6230

Table of contents

cnce 6237



Table of contents

cnce 6254



Table of contents

cnce 6255

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

Date

*6 september 1527

City

Venice

Printer

iacopo Penzio, ed. by Tizzone Gaetano

Squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio

Other paratexts

141

ID

cnce 6273

Notes: editions marked with an asterisk are the ones i have viewed in person. A checkmark indicates that the Vita has been included. isTc = incunabula short Title catalogue (http://istc.bl.uk); GW = Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (http://www .gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de/GWen.xhtml); cnce = prefix used in eDiT 16 censimento nazionale delle edizioni italiane del XVi secolo (http://edit16.iccu .sbn.it/web_iccu/ihome.htm).

noTes

1. The bibliography on classical life writing is vast. selected highlights include Duane Reed stuart, “Biographical criticism of Vergil since the Renaissance,” Studies in Philology 19, no. 1 (1922): 1–30; Patricia cox, Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1983); Tomas Hägg, The Art of Biography in Antiquity (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2012); Mary Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets, 2nd ed. (London: Bristol classical Press, 2012). 2. see Martin McLaughlin, “Biography and Autobiography in the italian Renaissance,” in Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography, ed. Peter France and William st clair (oxford: oxford university Press for the British Library, 2002), 37–65 (citation from 46); John Larner, “Traditions of Literary Biography in Boccaccio’s Life of Dante,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 72 (1990): 107–17; Karl enenkel, “Modelling the Humanist: Petrarch’s Letter to Posterity and Boccaccio’s Biography of the Poet Laureate,” in Modelling the Individual: Biography and Portrait in the Renaissance, with a Critical Edition of Petrarch’s “Letter to Posterity,” ed. Karl enenkel, Betsy de Jong-crane, and Peter Liebregts (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 11–49. 3. Lest we imagine that a poet of Boccaccio’s caliber should automatically be due a biography, Larner reminds us that chaucer had no biography until the first half of the sixteenth century (“Traditions,” 109). 4. Biographies of Boccaccio (together with those of Dante and Petrarch) were collected into an edition at the beginning of the twentieth century: Angelo

142

A Boccaccian Renaissance

solerti, ed., Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio: Scritte fino al secolo decimosesto (Milan: Vallardi, [1904–5]). see also Aldo Franc. Massèra, “Le più antiche biografie del Boccaccio,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 27 (1903): 298– 338, which contains the text of lives by Villani, Bandini, Polenton, and Manetti. Details of more reliable recent critical editions of individual biographies are included in Johannes Bartuschat, Les “Vies” de Dante, Pétrarque et Boccace en Italie (XIVe–XVe siècles): Contribution à l’histoire du genre biographique (Ravenna: Longo, 2007), 241–45. squarzafico’s biography has not been edited since the publication of solerti’s anthology. 5. Within print culture, agents might include but were not limited to printers, publishers who financed the undertaking, compositors, editors, correctors, binders, and booksellers. For a very accessible introduction to early modern print culture, see Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1999); see also his Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text 1470–1600 (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1994). Foundational texts for the history of the book remain: D. M. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1999); Roger chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, trans. Lydia G. cochrane (cambridge, uK: Polity Press, 1994). Recent work in this field within Boccaccio studies includes Rhiannon Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy, 1340–1520 (London: Legenda, 2009); Guyda Armstrong, The English Boccaccio: A History in Books (Toronto: university of Toronto Press, 2013); Martin eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature: Dante, Petrarch, Cavalcanti and the Authority of the Vernacular (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2013). 6. Previous studies in the context of Boccaccio have traced the intertextual connections between biographies independently of their material packaging and without consideration of the technologies by which they were transmitted; see, for example, Bartuschat, Les “Vies.” 7. The text of squarzafico’s biography is given in solerti, Le vite, 695–97; on squarzafico himself, see Joseph Allenspach and Giuseppe Frasso, “Vicende, cultura e scritti di Gerolamo squarzafico, Alessandrino,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 23 (1980): 233–92. For a discussion of the contents of the biography, see Bartuschat, Les “Vies,” and now Bartuschat, “Vie du poète et paratexte: Girolamo squarciafico, les éditions de Boccace à la Renaissance et les enjeux de la biographie,” in Vies d’écrivains, Vies d’artistes dans l’Europe moderne (Espagne, France, XVe–XVIIe siècles), ed. Danielle Boillet et al. (Paris: sorbonne nouvelle, 2014), 21–36. 8. see the appendix for a list of editions of the Filocolo printed up to 1527. 9. it is a common misconception that it was also included in editions of the Fiammetta: e.g., in her entry for Gabriele di Pietro in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Tiziana Plebani writes: “il  Filocolo  usciva così corredato della

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

143

vita del Boccaccio composta dallo squarzafico che da allora in poi sarà inserita in tutte le edizioni successive sia del  Filocolo  sia della  Fiammetta” [The Filocolo was issued in this way accompanied by squarzafico’s life of Boccaccio, which from that point onward would be inserted into all the successive editions of both the Filocolo and Fiammetta]; see http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/gabriele-di -pietro_(Dizionario_Biografico)/. squarzafico was involved in an edition of the Fiammetta printed in 1481, for which he composed a letter addressed “alle donne innamorate” [to women in love]. This letter was reprinted in editions of the Fiammetta dated 1491, 1503, and 1511. see Allenspach and Frasso, “Vicende,” 241–61, and elisa curti, “L’Elegia di madonna Fiammetta nella seconda metà del cinquecento: storia di un monopolio,” Studi sul Boccaccio 37 (2009): 127–54 (151–52). i am also very grateful to elisa curti for her advice and assistance on this matter in private correspondence. 10. on paratexts, see Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane e. Lewin (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1997); Helen smith and Louise Wilson, eds., Renaissance Paratexts (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2011); Marco santoro, Michele carlo Marino, and Marco Pacioni, Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio e il paratesto: Le edizioni rinascimentali delle “tre corone,” ed. Marco santoro (Rome: edizioni dell’Ateneo, 2006). 11. Brian Richardson comments that the early Venetian norm “seems to have been about 300–400 copies.” By the sixteenth century this rose to 1,000 copies. see his Printing, Writers and Readers, 21. 12. Giannozzo Manetti, Biographical Writings, ed. and trans. stefano u. Baldassarri and Rolf Bagemihl (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 2003), 289. A survey of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century editions listed in the incunabula short Title catalogue, isTc (http://istc.bl.uk); Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, GW (http://www.gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de/GWen.xhtml); and eDiT16 (http://edit16.iccu.sbn.it/web_iccu/ihome.htm) indicates that none of the earlier biographies were circulating in print at the same time as squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio. Leonardo Bruni’s parallel lives of Dante and Petrarch apparently enjoyed substantial success in manuscript (156 extant codices survive), but Bruni included only very abbreviated comments on Boccaccio; see James Hankins, “Humanism in the Vernacular: The case of Leonardo Bruni,” in Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. christopher s. celenza and Kenneth Gouwens (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 11–29 (appendix A, 25). 13. squarzafico’s life appears for the last time in an edition of the Decameron (Venice: Bernardino de Viano, 14 January 1525). in the second half of the sixteenth century, the most widely diffused life of Boccaccio was authored by Giuseppe Betussi and circulated in vernacular translations of the Genealogia that were printed in italy with great frequency from the 1540s onward. see simon Gilson’s chapter in this volume. While large numbers of readers may

144

A Boccaccian Renaissance

not have had access to manuscript copies of the earlier biographies that were in circulation, there is a strong tradition of intertextual references and also overt acknowledgements that reveal that biographers themselves were familiar with the texts of their predecessors. For example, in Manetti’s preface to his Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita, he gives a history of the biographical tradition belonging to the Three crowns, and in so doing name-checks Boccaccio as a biographer of Dante, Leonardo Bruni as biographer of Dante and Petrarch, and Filippo Villani as biographer of illustrious Florentines (Manetti, Biographical Writings, 3–5). Leonardo Bruni’s engagement with Boccaccio’s Trattatello in his own life of Dante is so pervasive that Gary ianziti has commented: “Bruni’s Dante can be seen as more than a simple biography: it is also a running commentary on Boccaccio”; see ianziti’s Writing History in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past (cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 2012), 173. 14. sicco Polenton was not Florentine, but his life of Boccaccio is also part of a history of Latin writers—Scriptorum illustrium latinae linguae libri (c. 1437)— which is not centered on Boccaccio alone. 15. see ianziti, Writing History, 169–85; see also simon Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2005), 114–24. in Bruni’s parallel biographies of Dante and Petrarch, Boccaccio does not warrant his own life, but, as ianziti notes, “in actual fact, of course, Boccaccio—the one whose life is not being written—occupies a rather constant space at intervals throughout the work. His name is evoked in each of the four sections: Preface, Dante, Petrarch, Comparison” (ianziti, Writing History, 182). Manetti also composed biographies of seneca and socrates, making an important point about the continuation of Florentine culture. The fullest treatment of biographies in the context of the Three crowns is Bartuschat, Les “Vies.” 16. Allenspach and Frasso, “Vicende.” 17. see Frasso’s description: “in ogni modo lo squarzafico fu, seppur piccolo, un umanista” [in every way, squarzafico was a humanist, albeit a minor one] (“Vicende,” 243). on the different roles encompassed by the general term “editor,” see Richardson, Print Culture, esp. 8–18. it seems more likely that squarzafico was commissioned to prepare copy-texts, probably away from the print shop, rather than simply being involved in the correction of proofs (Print Culture, 10). 18. on the circuit linking production, reception, and text object, see Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, 14–24. 19. Discussion is limited in this chapter to the nine editions of the Filocolo that contain the Vita. 20. solerti, Le vite, 695. Translations are my own unless otherwise stated. 21. Bartuschat notes: “L’invention de l’imprimerie provoque un retour à la logique de l’accessus, dans la mesure où de nombreuses éditions sont accompagnées de notices biographiques” [The invention of printing led to a return to the

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

145

logic of the accessus, in so far as many editions are accompanied by biographical notes](Les “Vies,” 210). on the overlap between biography and accessus, see also Fausto Ghisalberti, “Mediaeval Biographies of ovid,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946): 10–59, and ianziti, Biographical Writings, 165. 22. Boccaccio also wrote an accessus as part of his commentary on Dante. see Giorgio Padoan, ed., Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Vittore Branca, 10 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1965), vol. 6. on the accessus in general, see edwin A. Quain, The Medieval “accessus ad auctores” (new york: Fordham university Press, 1986), reprinted from Traditio 3 (1945): 215–64; A. J. Minnis and A. B. scott, eds., Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100–c. 1375: The Commentary Tradition, with the assistance of David Wallace, rev. ed. (oxford: clarendon Press, 1991). 23. solerti, Le vite, 695. 24. ibid., 672–73. in Villani, this visit is the reason for Boccaccio’s turning away from his mercantile activities toward his true vocation as a poet. This may well have been inspired by epistle ii (Allegoria mitologica), an early letter composed by Boccaccio and copied into his notebook, the Zibaldone laurenziano, in which he experiences a vision in front of Virgil’s tomb; see Tobias Foster Gittes, “Boccaccio and Humanism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, ed. Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels, and stephen J. Milner (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2015), 155–70 (155). 25. see Jonathan usher, “Monuments More enduring than Bronze: Boccaccio and Paper inscriptions,” Heliotropia, 4 (2007), available at http:// scholarworks.umass.edu/heliotropia/vol4/iss1/5/; Victoria Kirkham, “The Parallel Lives of Dante and Virgil,” Dante Studies 110 (1992): 233–53; and eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 45–49. 26. ianziti, Writing History, 44–45. 27. We cannot with certainty attribute the decision to append biographies to editions to squarzafico, who may have been working jointly with printers and/ or publishers. 28. see Allenspach and Frasso, “Vicende,” 247–60. 29. These are variously attributed to Antonio da Tempo, Leonardo Bruni, and ilicino. The isTc lists twenty-six editions that combine the Canzoniere and Trionfi, and of these only three do not contain biographies. 30. Allenspach and Frasso, “Vicende,” 259. 31. The prologue to cristoforo Landino’s commentary on Dante’s Comedy, which was included for the first time in 1481, includes a section on the life and customs of Dante, which might be considered a biography. see Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence, 182–86. 32. Manetti, Biographical Writings, preface, 6. 33. For studies of the text of the Filocolo, see steven Grossvogel, Ambiguity and Allusion in Boccaccio’s “Filocolo” (Florence: olschki, 1992); Victoria Kirkham,

146

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Fabulous Vernacular: Boccaccio’s “Filocolo” and the Art of Fiction (Ann Arbor: university of Michigan Press, 2001); Roberta Morosini, “Per difetto rintegrare”: Una lettura del “Filocolo” di Giovanni Boccaccio (Longo: Ravenna, 2004). 34. solerti, Le vite, 697. 35. Bartuschat, Les “Vies,” 205–7. The suetonian model of biography had already been recast by Leonardo Bruni in his life of Dante, which ianziti describes as the invention of modern literary biography, but a residue of the ancient models persisted. see ianziti, Writing History, 169–85. 36. Bartuschat, “Vie du pòete,” 29. 37. conclusion, 16–17: “saranno similmente di quelle che diranno qui esserne alcune che, non essendoci, sarebbe stato assai meglio. concedasi: ma io non pote’ né doveva scrivere se non le raccontate, e per ciò esse che le dissero le dovevan dir belle e io l’avrei scritte belle. Ma se pur prosuppor si volesse che io fossi stato di quelle e lo ’nventore e lo scrittore, che non fui, dico che io non mi vergognerei che tutte belle non fossero.” see Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Amedeo Quondam, Maurizio Fiorilla, and Giancarlo Alfano (Milan: Biblioteca universale Rizzoli, 2013), 1662–63. [There will likewise be those among you who will say that some of the stories included here would far better have been omitted. That is as may be: but i could only transcribe the stories as they were actually told, which means that if the ladies who told them had told them better, i should have written them better. But even if one could assume that i was the inventor as well as the scribe of these stories (which was not the case), i still insist that i would not feel ashamed if some fell short of perfection]. Translation by G. H. McWilliam, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 2003), 800. it is not unusual for editors to repurpose an authorial text, through either allusion or direct quotation, in the construction of their paratexts; see, for example, elisa curti’s discussion of dedicatory letters added to editions of the Fiammetta: “‘Per certo donna Fiammetta veggio voi non havere letto gli Asolani del Bembo’: Lettere di dedica e postille nelle edizioni del primo cinquecento dell’Elegia di madonna Fiammetta,” Studi sul Boccaccio 36 (2008): 39–61 (41–42). see also the discussion of dedicatory letters in editions of the Decameron in Rhiannon Daniels, “Reading Boccaccio’s Paratexts: Dedications as Thresholds between Worlds,” in Reconsidering Boccaccio: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts, ed. olivia Holmes and Dana e. stewart (Toronto: university of Toronto Press), 48–78. 38. in solerti’s collection this biography is incorrectly attributed to Antonio da Tempo and is presented in two redactions (Le vite, 329–38). on Decembrio’s authorship of the longer of these two redactions and on its presentation of Petrarch as a vernacular poet, see Bartuschat, Les “Vies,” 179–82. 39. solerti, Le vite, 332. Bartuschat describes it as likely to be a kind of accessus (Les “Vies,” 180). Allenspach notes that squarzafico describes meeting Decembrio in Ferrara and that Decembrio “gli narrò particolari nuovi—e fantastici—sul soggiorno milanese del Petrarca” (“Vicende,” 237). it is tempting to speculate that squarzafico was influenced by Decembrio’s life of Petrarch. Allenspach dates the

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

147

meeting after 1472 because squarzafico does not mention it in his biography of Boccaccio, but this does not mean they might not have met earlier or that squarzafico was not familiar with the earlier biography independently of this discussion in person. 40. Bartuschat, Les “Vies,” 190–92. 41. see, for example, Canzoniere e Trionfi (Venice: [Gabriele di Pietro], 1473). 42. He is also not the first to read fiction as a pure reflection of history: from Villani onward, biographers have plundered Boccaccio’s narratives for apparently autobiographical comments. on this tendency in the biographical genre, see also Janet Fairweather, “Fiction in the Biographies of Ancient Writers,” Ancient Society 5 (1974): 231–75. 43. on epistle XXii, see Rhiannon Daniels, “Rethinking the critical History of the Decameron: Boccaccio’s epistle XXii to Mainardo cavalcanti,” Modern Language Review 106, no. 2 (2011): 453–77. compare this also with eisner’s interpretation of Boccaccio’s comments on ovid’s libidinous works in Genealogia, XiV. 15 as sympathetic to ovid and not as material to be avoided (Boccaccio and the Invention, 17–18). 44. Matteo Palmieri, Della vita civile (set in 1430 and dated to the same decade), quoted in claudio Varese, ed., Prosatori volgari del Quattrocento (Milan: Ricciardi, 1955), 356–57. 45. see Berthold Wiese, “ein unbekanntes werk Angelo Gallis,” Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 45 (1925): 445–583. 46. see Bartuschat, Les “Vies,” 113 (Villani), 128 (Bruni), and 146–47 (Landino). Gilson discusses the Platonic dimensions of Landino’s interpretation in his Dante and Renaissance Florence, 182–83. 47. sansovino’s life is first included in the 1546 edition of the Decameron, printed in Venice by Gabriele Giolito; it is reproduced in solerti, Le vite, 713–19. 48. see, for example, Jacopo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo’s brief account of Boccaccio, included in his historical compilation, the Supplementum chronicarum, first printed in Venice in 1483 (solerti, Le vite, 698), and the anonymous passage in the Supplementum added to Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum historiale in 1494 (solerti, Le vite, 699), which follows Foresti’s account almost word for word. 49. Fiammetta (Venice: Filippo di Pietro, 1481) and Decameron (Venice: Giovanni and Gregorio De Gregori, 1492). 50. Frasso, “Vicende,” 245–46. The Buccolicum carmen is also named but was not edited by squarzafico. 51. see Antonio enzo Quaglio, “La tradizione del testo del Filocolo,” Studi sul Boccaccio 3 (1965): 55–102; Giorgio Padoan, “‘Habent sua fata libelli.’ Dal Gaetano al Boccaccio: il caso del Filocopo,” Studi sul Boccaccio 27 (1999): 19–54; Richardson, Print Culture, 31; Andrea Mazzucchi, “Filocolo,” in Boccaccio autore e copista, ed. Teresa De Robertis et al. (Florence: Mandragora, 2013), 67–74 (70).

148

A Boccaccian Renaissance

52. if we take the colophons at face value, there is only an eight-day gap between them: Florence, 12 november 1472, and Venice, 20 november 1472. 53. note that the Biblioteca europea di informazione e cultura (Beic; http://www.beic.it/) describes the Florentine 1472 edition as in quarto, although it is described as an edition in folio in both the GW and the isTc. 54. There is no evidence that they were brothers, and the origins of their relationship remain obscure. see the entries in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani for Filippo (ed. Mario infelise; http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/filippo-di-pietro _%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/) and Gabriele (ed. Tiziana Plebani; http://www .treccani.it/enciclopedia/filippo-di-pietro_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/). 55. The digitized copy in the Beic (from the copy held in Rome’s Biblioteca corsiniana) shows much wider margins than the copy held in cardiff library, which i have seen in person and has obviously been trimmed (cardiff Rare Books collection, incunabula 42). in 1481 Filippo di Pietro also printed a Fiammetta that includes a letter by squarzafico at the end, but the physical presentation of these two editions doesn’t suggest that they are companion volumes: The Fiammetta is in quarto, with gothic type arranged in a full-page layout. A digital facsimile of the 1481 Fiammetta is available via the Beic. 56. For example, a copy of the Venetian 1472 edition held in the Bodleian library in oxford, which i have seen in person, has illuminated humanistic vinescroll initials (Holk. c. 2, see fig. 5.1); almost identical illuminated humanistic-vine scroll initials are included in the copy held by Florence at the Biblioteca nazionale centrale: a digital copy is available via the Beic, and it is also described in Mostra di manoscritti, documenti e edizioni: Firenze—Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana 22 maggio–31 agosto 1975, 2 vols. (certaldo: A cura del comitato Promotore, 1975), vol. 2, 26–27, which identifies the coat of arms in the lower margin as belonging to simone Berti. A copy of the Venice 1472 edition held by Glasgow university Library includes an elaborate illuminated initial on a blue ground; see http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/incunabula/a-zofauthorsa-j/bf.1.9/. see also the digitized version of the Biblioteca corsiniana’s (Rome) copy of the 1481 edition available via the Beic, which has an elaborate illuminated initial and coat of arms in the lower margin. The vellum copy is held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in new york and described in neil Harris, “una pagina capovolta nel Filocolo veneziano del 1472,” La Bibliofilìa 98 (1996): 1–21 (2–3). 57. Gianvittorio Dillon, “i primi incunaboli illustrati e il Decameron veneziano del 1492,” in Boccaccio visualizzato: Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. Vittore Branca, 3 vols. (Turin: einaudi, 1999), vol. 3: Opere d’arte d’origine francese, fiamminga, inglese, spagnola, tedesca, 291–318 (301). 58. ibid., “i primi incunaboli,” 302. 59. i am grateful to Brian Richardson for this suggestion. neil Harris’s bibliographic analysis of the 1472 edition reveals that it was printed on two presses,

squarzafico’s Vita di Boccaccio and early Modern Print culture

149

and also that the format of the Vita was manipulated in order to ensure that it finished on the recto of the final leaf rather than spilling over onto the verso, which is occupied in many copies by a piece of text printed upside down; see Harris’s “una pagina capovolta.” 60. in the 1480 Fiammetta, a letter from Francesco del Tuppo is addressed to Giovanni conte di Tursi; in the 1481 Fiammetta, a letter from squarzafico is addressed to “donne innamorate.” The text of squarzafico’s letter is reproduced in Allenspach and Frasso, “Vicende,” 283–85. see curti, “‘Per certo donna,’” and Bartuschat, “Vie du pòete.” 61. interestingly, Ghisalberti describes how a “true biography” of ovid (as distinguished from an accessus) is located on the last folio of a late fourteenthcentury manuscript (“Mediaeval Biographies,” 23). in contrast, Boccaccio’s Trattatello is added to the beginning of the 1477 edition of the Comedy printed by Windelin of speyer, perhaps influenced by its original prefatory position in Boccaccio’s manuscript compilation. in the 1477 edition, the biography’s analogies with the accessus tradition are also strengthened through the addition of rubrics dividing the Trattatello into sections (a digital copy is available via the Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum Digitale Bibliothek (MDZ) at http:// www.digitale-sammlungen.de/). 62. see also a similar trend in early editions of the Decameron: Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, 102–9. 63. Richardson, Print Culture, 31. 64. The letter, along with other paratexts composed by squarzafico, is published in Allenspach and Frasso, “Vicende,” 291. 65. Rubrics are variously defined as both text and paratext. i have argued elsewhere that the rubrics that form part of the autograph manuscript of the Decameron and are transmitted in the same form in manuscript and print should be considered part of the authorial text (see Rhiannon Daniels, “Where Does the Decameron Begin? editorial Practice and Tables of Rubrics.” Modern Language Review 114, no. 1 (2019): 52–78). since there is no extant autograph manuscript of the Filocolo, the authorial status of the rubrics transmitted in print is less easy to ascertain, but it seems probable that squarzafico (or someone else involved in the production of the edition) is responsible for the wording of the rubrics. one of the most textually reliable manuscripts does not include any rubrics: oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms, canon. ital. 85 (Autore e copista, 70–71; digital images are also available at bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk). Another manuscript dated six years after the publication of squarzafico’s edition has a layout very similar to that of the incunables, including an opening rubric of some length, but with a different wording: “incoMinciA iL LiBRo DeL PHyLocoLo coMPosTo PeR M GioVAnni BoccAccio PoeTA FioRenTino neL QVALe sinARRA LAViTA eT GLAcciDenTi DiFLoRio eT BiAnciFioRe” [Here begins the book of the Phylocolo composed by M. Giovanni Boccaccio,

150

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Florentine poet, in which is told the life and fortunes of Florio and Biancifiore] (see Autore e copista, 74). This underlines the significance of the choice of wording in the Venice 1472 edition. 66. This rubric remains in use in all the following editions until 1527, when the edition of Tizzone Gaetano appears, whose title page announces the editor as well as the author and includes an opening dedication and a shortened rubric at the beginning of Boccaccio’s text that reads: “comincia il libro chiamato Philocopo, il qual narra de la vita di Florio & di Biancofiore” [Here begins the book called Philocopo, which tells of the life of Florio and of Biancofiore]. 67. see Janet Levarie smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta: The Narrator as Lover (urbana: university of illinois Press, 1986), 34–60; Roberta Morosini, “Boccaccio the Poet-Philosopher of the Filocolo: Rewriting Floire et Blancheflor and Writing Literary Theory,” Exemplaria 18, no. 2 (2006): 275–98; Giancarlo Alfano, “in forma di libro: Boccaccio e la politica degli autori,” in Boccaccio angioino: Materiali per la storia culturale di Napoli nel Trecento, ed. Giancarlo Alfano, Teresa D’urso, and Alessandra Perriccioli saggese (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2012), 15–29 (24–29). 68. The title-page of the Venice 1514 edition reads: “Philocolo in lingua vulgare tosca composto per el singular orator e poeta Misser Joan[n]i Boccatio da certaldo in nelqual soto velamento de amor se contien soto brevita tutta lhumana vita” [Philocolo, in the vernacular Tuscan tongue, composed by the singular orator and poet Misser Joanni Boccatio da certaldo in which, under the veil of love, is contained all of human life in summary]. The phrase “soto velamento de amor” [under the veil of love] might be interpreted as an echo of the interpretive frame established by squarzafico. 69. The biographical tradition of Petrarch as a poet-lover is also accompanied by a visual tradition; see Bartuschat, Les “Vies,” 190 n 93. 70. it seems significant that there are no biographies of Boccaccio printed in this period as independent works. By comparison, sicco Polenton’s biography of Petrarch was printed as a separate pamphlet. 71. For a list of editions of the Decameron, see Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, 101. 72. There are few, if any, traces of use, such as readers’ notes or drawings, from which i can construct an argument for reading habits.

cHAPTeR 6

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century italy Notes on Niccolò Liburnio’s Delli Monti, selve, Boschi and Giuseppe Betussi’s Genealogia de Gli Dei

s imon a . g ils on

Boccaccio scholarship has closely investigated the ways in which Boccaccio’s vernacular works were “translated” into Latin in what were often highly sophisticated cultural operations that, in the late trecento and quattrocento, involved both humanistic rewriting and classicizing legitimization of the Decameron, or at least of privileged parts of it.1 We also know—though this is perhaps less familiar territory—that the traffic was two-way, since, alongside the Latinizing of the vernacular Boccaccio, there was a keen interest in vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio.2 The vernacularization of Boccaccio latino was largely a sixteenth-century phenomenon that invested—perhaps not surprisingly—the two major vernacular print capitals in italy—Venice and, to a lesser extent, Florence. The De claris mulieribus was printed five times, first in Venice in 1506 and then again in that city in 1545 in a vernacular version by Giuseppe Betussi that was to be reprinted four times before the end of the century: in Venice in 1547, 1558, and 1588 and in Florence by the Giunti Press in 1596. The De casibus, in a translation also produced by Betussi, 151

152

A Boccaccian Renaissance

appeared in three prints, two Venetian ones, first in 1551 and then in 1554, and finally in 1598 a Florentine version of Betussi’s text, again issuing from the Giunti Press. The De montibus, in a translation made by niccolò Liburnio, was printed twice, first in Venice in the mid to late 1520s, and then again in 1596. The latter version was reprinted in Florence, once again by Filippo Giunti.3 As for the vernacular versions of the Genealogie, the volgarizzamento was again the work of Betussi, and it first appeared in print in 1547. This vernacular translation had a quite remarkable editorial fortune; indeed it was probably one of the most popular vernacular books in the second half of the cinquecento in italy. in the sixteenth century it was reprinted at least ten times (in 1553/1554, 1556, 1560, 1564, 1569, 1574, 1581, 1585, 1588, and 1591).4 The editions of Betussi’s Genealogia degli dei gentili are all Venetian, and they emerged from many of the major print shops and vernacular publishers of the period: comin da Trino, Giacomo sansovino, Giovan Battista and Melchior sessa, Giovanni Antonio Bertano, Marcantonio Zaltieri, Francesco Lorenzini da Torino, and Fabio and Agostino Zoppini. The Genealogia degli dei gentili continued to flourish in the first half of the seventeenth century in at least four more prints (1606, 1617, 1627, and 1644). This chapter has two main objectives: first, to provide some reflections on the phenomenon of the vernacularization of the Latin Boccaccio in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century italy and then, to more closely examine Liburnio’s Delli Monti, selve, boschi and Betussi’s Genealogia, paying particular attention to their paratexts, by means of which we will consider the cultural strategies adopted by their vernacularizers, and also some of the questions raised with regard to their likely contemporary readership. B o c c Ac c i o L AT i n o “ FAT T o Vo L G A R e ”

At one level, the shift from Latinizing the vernacular Boccaccio to vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio can be understood as a by-product of two interrelated cultural phenomena: on the one hand, the sixteenthcentury questione della lingua, which valorized and codified italian as a language of literature and culture, and, on the other, the increasingly dynamic set of relationships between emerging vernacular reading publics and the flourishing vernacular print industry in the cinquecento.5 We

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

153

should, of course, resist any temptation to present, without either qualification or nuance, a grand narrative that attempts to polarize Boccaccio’s reception into late trecento and quattrocento Latinization and cinquecento vernacularization. After all, much depends on the particular text, its own earlier reception history, questions of contemporary readership, and individual editorial initiative. even with the Latin texts that appear only to begin to “speak” in the vernacular in the sixteenth century, the reality is—as we will see—more complex. And similar considerations may be applied to the Latin voices that are given to novelle from the Decameron, where an interest in Latinizing persisted well into the sixteenth century.6 if we restrict our inquiry to the volgarizzamenti of Latin works, it is also worth remembering that Boccaccio’s most popular Latin work in late medieval italy—the De mulieribus—was in fact the object of quite precocious vernacularization, twice in the later fourteenth century, first by the Augustinian friar Antonio da sant’elpidio (c. 1370) and subsequently by the teacher of rhetoric and grammar Donato degli Albanzani (c. 1397). The terrain is now familiar following the foundational work of Hortis and Torretta, as well as the recent studies by Kolsky and others.7 Albanzani’s vernacularization is perhaps the best known, in part because of its reverberations through the este court, but sant’elpidio’s version was also copied in italy in the quattrocento (and the cinquecento), and it formed the basis of a subsequent Tuscanization by niccolò sassetti that was printed in the 1506 Venetian edition by Giovanni Tacuino. This print has an important set of woodcuts and paratexts that Rhiannon Daniels has recently studied. Daniels has, in particular, stressed the edition’s preoccupation with respectability, authorization, and usefulness, as well as the ways in which the paratexts cast light on their potential readership and raise questions regarding readership among females and their level of education.8 We need to be equally mindful of the earlier histories of the De montibus and the Genealogie—our main objects of inquiry in this chapter—in vernacular form in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century italy. Before we begin our inquiry proper, it may be helpful to make an excursus on that earlier reception, both Latin and vernacular. The excursus will take us into some unexplored territory with regard to Boccaccio’s fifteenth-century vernacular reception. We might start, however, by recalling that Boccaccio was himself a vernacularizer and a self-vernacularizer. Recent work seems

154

A Boccaccian Renaissance

to confirm that he authored at least the fourth decade of the celebrated trecento volgarizzamento of Livy.9 As regards self-vernacularization, one thinks in particular of the late Dante lectures, the Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, which contain a rich body of lore that he recycled from his Latin works. For example, in the lengthy prologue to these public readings he refashioned several passages in the Genealogie that define poetry, give an account of the classical names of Hell, and provide general information about Hades. What is more, at the level of lexical annotations in the commentary proper, many of the Greek etymologies Boccaccio provides in the Esposizioni derive from—or, at the very least, parallel—ones found in the Latin work.10 it may well be interesting to investigate more carefully how Boccaccio handled material from the earlier Latin work in the vernacular Dante commentary and to examine in particular continuities and variations in his exegetical techniques and citations across both works. As regards the early reception of the Latin Genealogie in late trecento and quattrocento italy, the popularity of the work in italy and europe is well known, above all in erudite, Latin-educated, élite male circles. one need only think of prominent figures such as coluccio salutati, Filippo Villani, Domenico Bandini, Leonardo Bruni, Giacomo Manetti, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, and Paolo cortesi.11 For all the broadsides and brickbats that a humanist like Bruni directed at the dreadful Latin of the least glittering crown, who “non ebbe mai la lingua latina molto in sua balia” [never had the Latin language very much in his control],12 humanists tend to remain fulsome in their praise for the usefulness and learning of his Latin works and give pride of place to the Genealogie in such eulogies. This is demonstrably the case with Bruni, for whom the books of this Latin work “tengono il principato” [hold the primary place], as it is later in the century with Gianozzo Manetti, Girolamo squarzafico, Paolo cortesi, and others.13 Given this kind of context, it is not surprising that the early Latin print history in italy is a rich one that sees the Genealogie almost always traveling with the De montibus, with seven editions printed between 1472 and 1511, beginning with Vindelino da spira’s edition in 1472 and ending with the 1511 edition by Bartolomeo Zanni.14 The ways in which late trecento and quattrocento italian humanist culture mined and reworked the Genealogie would make for a very rich study. We now have closer investigations of some individual figures, such as nicolò Perotti and Giovanni Tortelli, but study in this area could well

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

155

be broadened and extended in various ways to encompass major figures such as Poliziano, Ficino, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, as well as entire fields of critical and literary production, such as Latin commentary on poetry, poetic theory, and neo-Latin poetry.15 The fifteenth-century italian reception of the Genealogie was not, however, exclusively Latin and humanist. one can detect various traces in the quattrocento that show us how Boccaccio’s encyclopaedia also infiltrated non-Latin culture and vernacular writings. once again, this is a broader and more extensive phenomenon than has traditionally been thought, and one that may well reward further study. My aim here is to provide some preliminary orientation and indicative examples. For the mediation of the Genealogie at middling or lower cultural levels and in non-Latin literate environments, one might consider at least two main contexts. First, we could reflect in a more sustained and focused way on the role of the Genealogie in late quattrocento and early cinquecento artistic culture and production. Piero de’ cosimo and sandro Botticelli in particular seem to have had familiarity with the work,16 and in the early sixteenth century (still long before Betussi’s first volgarizzamento) Raphael may have used hints provided by the work in his Parnassus.17 second, though the volgarizzamento of the entire work was not complete until 1547, it is noteworthy that sections of the Genealogie were copied and reproduced in works of vernacular commentary when explicating mythology and for various other erudite purposes. Thus we find excerpts of the Genealogie in some quattrocento commentaries on Boccaccio’s own romance works, which—as Dionisotti so pertinently noted—themselves presuppose vernacularization but without any attempt to rival Latin.18 Perhaps the best example here is that found in the vernacular commentary on the Teseida by Piero Andrea de’ Bassi, which survives both in manuscript and in print form (both c. 1475). Bassi made it clear to his readers at the outset that one of his roles as expositor was to provide mythographic instruction and basic orientation for those readers who struggled to understand the text’s more obscure aspects of ancient mythology, history, and literature: e per lo amore el quale a poesia portate, avendo vuy de la lectura del Teseo sommo piacere, ritrovandosi alchuni a li quali le historie poetiche non sono cussì note come a vuy, vi ha piacuto commandare a mi, Piero Andrea dei Bassi, vostro antique e fidele famiglia ’l

156

A Boccaccian Renaissance

dechiari lo obscuro texto del ditto Teseo, facendo a quello giose per le quale li lectori possano cavare sugo de la loro lectura: el quale tanto per obscurita de le fictione poetiche è difficile ad intendere. [And out of the love that you have for poetry, and because you gain great delight from reading the Teseida, though there are some to whom, unlike you, the poetic histories in the text are not familiar, you wished to ask me, Pier Andrea da Bassi, your longstanding and faithful courtier, to expound the obscure text of this Teseida, providing for it glosses by which readers may be able to gain sustenance from their reading, given that the text is difficult to understand because of the obscurity of the poetic fictions.]19 An important study by cristina Montagnari has indicated that there at least are some thirty-five favole in Bassi’s commentary in which he refashioned material from the Genealogie.20 We may well encounter similar re-use (and also of the De montibus) in Petrarchan commentary, for example, in the early print commentary on the Trionfi by Bernardo Lapini (or ilicino), which was first printed in 1475 and reprinted widely thereafter, as well as in early sixteenth-century print commentaries such as those by sebastiano da Longiano (1533) and Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo (1533).21 The Dante commentary tradition provides a still more conspicuous example of how exegetes of the vernacular “classics” mined the Genealogie for information on erudite and mythological topics. There are, for example, some occasional references to the Genealogie in the works of late trecento Dante commentators such as the Pisan Francesco da Buti and the so-called Anonimo Fiorentino.22 The late trecento Dante commentator who made the most extensive use of Boccaccio’s mythological encyclopedia was a Latin commentator, Benvenuto da imola (c. 1375–83), but even here we must not forget that the bilingual nature of the textual transmission of some Dante commentary means that we also find vernacularizations of Benvenuto.23 The best example of an extensive textual bricolage based on the Genealogie is found in cristoforo Landino’s celebrated and widely reprinted 1481 Florentine print commentary, Comento sopra la Comedia di Danthe Alighieri. Most of Landino’s use of the Genealogie involves—like de’ Bassi’s own—unattributed copying, though there is one direct reference that recalls Boccaccio’s gloss on the exhumation of

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

157

the gigantic body of Pallantes in his chiosa to Turnus at Inferno 1.108. As for the other examples, as cardini first showed,24 Landino re-reworked a passage from the Genealogie in his prologue, in which he celebrates the religious origins of poetry, though it is notable that he updates this material with a strong emphasis on the divinity of poets and an accompanying welter of Platonic and Platonizing references. But it is most especially in Landino’s chiosa, or commentary proper, that we find around twenty-five other passages, some quite lengthy, in which the Florentine commentator had lifted material on mythological figures; information on Greek etymologies; quotations from Homer; citations of auctores as varied as Pliny, Augustine, eusebius, Theodontius, and solinus; and even some medical and astrological lore. The best examples of such dependencies are Landino’s glosses on all of the four mythological giants mentioned in Inferno 31: for each giant we are presented with a vernacular paraphrase of corresponding passages in the Genealogie.25 L i B u R n i o ’ s D E L L I M O N T I , S E LV E , B O S C H I A n D   Be T u s s i ’ s G E N E A L O G I A

Let us now turn to the sixteenth-century vernacularizations of De montibus and Genealogie and more closely examine their circumstances, and contexts, the approaches of their translators, and questions about their readership. in spite of useful general essays by Zaccaria and scarpati and some more focused critical work on the two main vernacularizers, both Liburnio and Betussi merit further research on their Boccaccian translations.26 in what follows we will examine some of the underlying issues of cultural and linguistic context that are related to their vernacularizations, as well as considering the likely readers, intended or otherwise, above all through an analysis of the paratexts inserted. The vernacularization of the De montibus is a quarto without indication of its publisher and date. internal references indicate that it probably dates from the late 1520s (probably in or soon after 1526), and it was most likely printed by Gregorio De’ Gregorii.27 its full title is Opera dell’huomo dotto et famoso Giovan Boccaccio da Certaldo, dalla lingua latina nel toscho idioma per Messer Nicolò Liburnio nuovamente trallatata: Dove per ordine d’alphabeto si tratta diffusamente delli monti, selve, bosche, fonti, laghi,

158

A Boccaccian Renaissance

fiumi, stagni, paludi, golfi et mari dell’universo mondo; con le nature et tutte l’altre cose memorabilia in quelli anticamente fatte et da poeti, cosmographi over historici discritte. The work includes not only the vernacularized text and Boccaccio’s defence of the work, but also Liburnio’s own concluding set of definitions of each continent of the known world and a list of their respective provinces. The vernacularization is preceded by a dedication, and there is an interesting address to students and humble readers at the end of the volume (“nicolo Liburnio alli studianti & modesti lettori”). Here, after setting out the familiar fiction of the book’s coming into his hands, Liburnio immediately addresses questions about its usefulness and readership (fols. 69r–v): L’anno dunque preterito vennemi alla mani un libbro per messer Giovanni Boccaccio da certaldo in lingua latina composto, nel quale di monti, di selve, di boschi, di fonti, di laghi, di fiumi, di stagni, di paludi, e fini di golfi e mari per ordine d’alphabeto diffusamente hebbe a trattare. Questa veramente mi parve materia non solamente dilettevole [e] varia ma etiandio di molta utilità, e a quegli massimamente, li quai sono più pronti a leggere le cose latine, che ad intenderle, quantunque nella età del sopradetto Boccacio la eccellenza della lingua latina non fusse di gran longa della celebrità e gloria in che hoggidì si trova. non rade volte pure interviene candidissimi lettori che . . . in componimenti non tersi né facondi alcuna volta cascando sentenze, figure, e ogni cognition di cose degne certo di laude non picciola, il perché di lingua latina in thosca emmi iaciuto [sic: piaciuto] lo sovradetto libbro convertire, acciò che gli’ingegni accorti del tempo nostro in eloquenza latina non al dovere ammaestrati e disianti secondo l’idioma thoscano in rima comporre, habbiano abondevol materia, con cui possano gli poemi loro arricchire e acconciamente addornare. oltre a questo, per porgere ogni possibil aiuto alli medesimi componitori col favor di strabone Amasino, di Plinio naturale, di Pomponio mela, di Ptolemeo, di Giulio solino, di Dioniggi, di Vibio sequesto, e Zacharia giglio sotto il presente libbro Boccacciano io con brevità ho volute incontatanente apporre le provincie tutte dell’universo mondo conosciute, portandole similemente dal sermone latino al thoscano, io volli oltre a questo, seguendo le dottrine de gli antichi, dimonstrar da onde Asia, europa, & Aphrica, sortirono il

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

159

nome, & che cosa sia provincia. Dirò anchora di alchune provincie in che modo al prisco tempo appellati furono, & di che nome a nostri di sono chiamate. Veramente nella infinita varietà d’inventioni cotai materie sono molto necessarie cosi a rimatori, come a scrittori di professione alli quai nella grammatica delle tre nostre Fontane istimo (se non m’inganno) per alphabetto discoperta havere tanto fiorita e abondevole campagna della thosca lingua, che una fatica tale da giusti giudici del suo debito grido forse non sara mai spogliata (emphasis mine). [Last year there came into my hands a book that had been composed in Latin by Giovanni Boccaccio of certaldo, a book in which he deals extensively and in alphabetical order with mountains, forests, woods, water sources, lakes, rivers, dried-up swamps and swamps, gulfs and seas. This seemed to me to be subject matter that was not only varied and enjoyable but also of great utility, above all to those who are more keen to read Latin works than they are able to understand them, even though in the time of the aforementioned Boccaccio the excellence of Latin was quite far from the celebrity and glory in which we now find it. . . . Quite often it happens that in compositions that are not polished and fecund one finds sententiae, figures, and all sorts of knowledge that are worthy of much praise, and so it has pleased me to translate this book from Latin into the vernacular so that the keen minds of our age who are not sufficiently trained in Latin eloquence but who wish to compose verse in Tuscan have abundant material with which they can enrich and suitably adorn their poems. And, in addition to this, so that these same poets can be offered every possible assistance, i have wanted to add straightaway to the present book of Boccaccio all the provinces of the known world, translating their names from Latin to the vernacular, with the assistance of strabo of Amasia, Pliny the elder, Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy, Julius solinus, Dionysius Aser, Vibius sequester, and Zacharias Lilius. Following the ancients, i also wanted to demonstrate where the names “europe,” “Africa,” and “Asia” are taken from and the meaning of the term “province.” i will also give an account of their names in former times and the names by which they are called today. Truly such subjects are very necessary to allow an infinite variety of subjects to be available to

160

A Boccaccian Renaissance

both poets and professional writers from whom we—if i am not mistaken—have already, i believe, in my grammar Three Fountains uncovered alphabetically that remarkably flourishing and abundant ground of the Tuscan language in such a way that this undertaking will perhaps not be deprived of its due acclaim by true judges.] several points are worth making in relation to this address. First, we should note that Liburnio recognized the deficiencies of Boccaccio’s Latin; as we have already seen, this is a familiar theme, but it is one that had gained a particular acuity by the late 1520s. Writing in the same period as Liburnio (c. 1520s), the humanist historian and biographer, Paolo Giovio commented most pertinently on the seesawing critical fortunes of Boccaccio’s works in italy at the very moment that his Latin works, deemed to be increasingly obsolete as well as poorly written, had begun to languish, in stark contrast to the growing popular appeal of the Decameron: obsolescunt enim et aegre quidem vitae spiritum retinent libri De genealogia deorum, De varietate fortunae et De montibus, accurate potius quam feliciter elaborati, quando iam illae decem dierum fabulae, Milesiarum imitatione, in gratiam oblectandi ocii, admirabili iucunditate compositae, in omnium nationum linguas adoptentur et, . . . applaudente populo, cunctorum operum gratiam antecedant. (1546, fol. 7v) [The books, The Genealogy of the gods, and The Variety of fortunes and On mountains are becoming obsolete and retain barely a breath of life. These are works that are more diligently than they are felicitously put together, while those fables of the ten days, composed with wonderful verve in imitation of Milesius, are being translated into all languages, and, amid the acclaim of all, surpass all his other works in popularity.] of course, in the Delli Monti Liburnio’s concern lay not with a scholarly, humanistic judgment of the quality of Boccaccio’s Latin. His focus rested instead on the work’s content and its potential value to a specific reading and writing public, namely, “those who are more desirous of reading Latin works than they are to understand them,” who, though “not sufficiently

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

161

schooled in Latin eloquence,” nonetheless require “abundant material with which they can enrich and fittingly adorn their poems.” Liburnio was concerned, that is, with the rich materials that this “trallatata,” or “translated” work of Boccaccio might offer to a non-Latin-educated public, including aspiring poets writing in italian. in this way, Liburnio’s vernacularization can, of course, be located firmly within his production tout court, especially in contemporary works printed in the 1520s, such as Le vulgari eleganzie (1521) and Le tre fontane (1526), which had already begun to sweep up the Boccaccio of the Decameron (and the other two Florentine crowns) in an incipient grammatical and lexicographical vogue that, by the middle of the century, would be the stock-in-trade of grammarians and editors of the Decameron and some of Boccaccio’s other vernacular works. As Dionisotti has taught us, Liburnio cast a revealing light on a new reading public, one that was unable to absorb the patrician theoretical solemnities of Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua in a period that saw the emergence of new categories of readers in need of new kinds of text.28 The vernacularization of the De montibus is, then, to be understood in close relation to those grammatical and stylistic guides, the concordances, word lists, and florilegia produced by Liburnio (and others) earlier in 1520s and in growing numbers from the 1530s. indeed, Liburnio’s more detailed treatment of questions of grammar and eloquence, Le tre fontane (printed in 1526), was, as the above quotation shows, mentioned in the concluding address. it should come as no surprise, then, that this work addresses a similar public, stating how useful and pleasurable it will be “agli disianti di venire ad alcuna intelligenza e ragione della tosca loquela” [to those who wish to gain some knowledge and understanding of the Tuscan language] and how its contents “possono essere di commodo a que’ candidi ingegni che in verso et in prosa toscanamente, cioè con eleganza e splendidamente, disiano scrivere” [can be useful to those keen-witted ones who wish to write verse and prose in Tuscan, that is, to write with elegance and splendor].29 Alongside such concerns, Liburnio draws his readers’ attention to the supplements he has provided, which show his apparent concern with providing the maximum assistance to the reader by using ancient authors and a modern one in order to set out the provinces of the ancient world and their modern names. But, in the competitive world of Venetian printing, giunte, or additions, take many different forms, and the grandiose

162

A Boccaccian Renaissance

claims that Liburnio makes to his readers do not live up to his rhetoric. Liburnio, in fact, does no more than sketch a page of definitions for the words “Asia,” “europe,” “Africa,” and “province” (namely, “le regioni lungi dall’italia con battaglia acquistate” [the regions far from italy acquired in battle]) and list the names of some fifty provinces of Asia, thirty-four of europe and twelve of Africa.30 Here he makes no use whatsoever of the Greek and Roman geographical authorities invoked—strabo of Amasia, Pliny the elder, Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy, Julius solinus, Dionysius Aser or Periegetes, Vibius sequester, or his close contemporary, the Veronese Zacharius Lilius. This is a list that he probably derives, at least in part, from some familiarity with Boccaccio’s own citations and sources. one might note, too, further parallels of general approach with one of Liburnio’s lesser-known works, his vernacular compendia of ancient sayings, Le virtù et ammaestramenti delle savi antiqui, printed by stagnino in Venice in 1527. This quarto offers a medley of vernacularized quotations, organized by topic, from ancient orators, philosophers, moralists, and theologians. it is a work written at the most middling intellectual level. The qualities that are prized, as the title of the frontispiece indicates, are ease of reference and the commodious assemblage of disparate information: “Per comodo & piacere delle felici ingegni disianti con brevità di saper, & intendere una bella squadra di saggi e oppenioni, & memorabilia sentenze delle prudentissimi antichi” [For the convenience and pleasure of the keen witted who wish to know in a synthetic way and to understand a fitting collection of wise opinions and memorable sententiae of the most prudent ancients]. The need to supplement Boccaccio’s text, which is such a notable feature of his Latin reception tout court, would become more pronounced in later vernacular translations, not only in Betussi but also in the later Florentine reprints of Betussi’s and Liburnio’s works that left the presses of Filippo Giunti. Francesco serdonati provided various giunte to Betussi’s translated versions of Boccaccio’s De casibus and the De mulieribus. The supplementary material is quite extensive, and, for Betussi in particular, it has been studied closely.31 As regards the later Florentine edition of Liburnio’s vernacularization, it is not clear whether serdonati played a part in the edition. Liburnio’s text has nonetheless been revised in line with late cinquecento orthographical and linguistic standards, and a new opening address by Filippo Giunti draws attention to this fact. Giunti also highlights the apparently strange choice of an editorial “accoppiamento”

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

163

[coupling] of Boccaccian texts, that is, the decision to print Liburnio’s translation along with another vernacular work, the Urbano, one of the pseudo-Boccaccian works that appears to have been especially popular in the cinquecento.32 in his own preface to the edition, Giunti comments that the work had previously been edited “da persona, che questo nostro linguaggio non intendeva forse gran fatto” [by a person, who did not really understand very much our language]. Alongside linguistic revision (and criticism) of Liburnio, Giunti’s reprinting was motivated—as Liburnio’s had been—by the desire to divulgate the rich variety of pleasing information contained in the work. At the same time, however, this reprinting also formed part of a broader editorial project to recover and print all of Boccaccio’s vernacular and vernacularized works: Volendo io stampar tutte l’opere, così le volgarizzate come quelle scritte volgari non bisognava tralasciare questa nella quale sono una infinità di belle e vaghe notizie. La cagione per tale accoppiamento è stata picciolezza dell’opera e ’l cercare col metterle insieme, che l’una possa conservare l’altra, e anche sono accommodate in modo, che si possono separare. Tosto, Dio concedente, si stamperanno alcune lettere d’esso Boccaccio, e altresì la vita che egli scrisse del nostro divin Poeta, le quali si son cavate della copiosa libreria di cose a penna del sig. Riccardo Riccardi.33 [since i wished to print all his works, both the ones rendered into the vernacular from Latin and the vernacular ones, it behooved me not to leave behind this one, in which there is an infinite range of beautiful and pleasing information. The reason for my coupling is the small size of the work, and the desire to put them together so that one might preserve the other, though they have been arranged in such a way that they can be separated. soon—God willing—we will print some letters by Boccaccio and also the life that he wrote on our divine poet, and these latter works have been taken from Riccardo Riccardi’s abundant library of manuscript works.] The other paratext added by Giunti—the vernacular version of Giovio’s life of Boccaccio—is of course one that fits well with the kind of project of producing a vernacular Boccaccio that was set out in the address,

164

A Boccaccian Renaissance

especially given the way Giovio so celebrates the Boccaccio volgare over the author of the Latin works.34 Liburnio was already writing in a decade when Boccaccio’s Latin works were entering critical decline among the Latin-educated élite. As we now move to consider Betussi’s vernacularization of the Genealogie, we reach a period, the 1540s, when new mythographical works had begun to supplant Liburnio’s translation, in particular Lilio Gregorio Giraldi’s Historia de diis gentium (1548), which was to be followed later by Vincenzo cartari’s vernacular Imagini degli dei degli antichi (the only later mythography that makes any substantive reference to Boccaccio) and, later still, natale conte’s Mythologiae (1581).35 in comparison to Liburnio’s work, Bettusi’s Genealogia is a much more substantive undertaking, a full translation, one that forms part of a trio of vernacular versions of Boccaccio’s Latin works, including the De mulieribus and De casibus. All these works were completed and printed in three years of “vita tranquilla” (1545–47) while Betussi was under the protection and patronage of the soldier collaltino di collalto at his court in san salvador in Marca Trevigiana.36 indeed, Betussi tells us in the letter in which he dedicated the Genealogia to collaltino that he actually would have finished the work sooner had production not been interrupted by a trip to england and some difficulties with his printers. in spite of Giovio’s judgment and the fact that the Genealogie appeared ever more dated to the cognoscenti by the 1540s, it was this decade that marked a remarkable expansion of vernacular printing in Venice, one that saw a flourishing industry in the vernacularization of classics in Venetian printshops,37 accompanied by a growing interest in collections of classicizing sententiae (even Liburnio’s collection of ancient sayings was reprinted in 1543 by the Giolito Press). in this context, Betussi was—as Bassani has rightly argued in her important monograph—a very astute player in reading the cultural scene and responding to growing areas of demand and interest in the market for vernacular print books.38 considerable work remains to be done on the various editions of Betussi, the emendations made by him and later editors, and the relationship of the prints to one another and to the Latin text or texts upon which they were based and corrected, as well as on Betussi’s own strategies as a translator and, of course, the extent and nature of his work’s influence on later readers, including women and artists. There has been a tendency to judge his translation quite critically, even ferociously,39 but such judgments

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

165

tend to be made not in relation to Betussi’s own context and aims, but rather on the basis of the questionable assumption that any significant deviations from Boccaccio’s own text should be considered mistreatments. For our purposes, we will close this chapter by offering an overview and preliminary analysis of the rich array of paratexts that Betussi provides, which are of considerable interest for what they reveal about contemporary judgments on Boccaccio, the nature of Betussi’s intervention, and the intended readership of the “translation.” The first thing to note is the title itself: Geneologia degli Dei. I quindeci libri di M. Giovanni Boccaccio sopra la origine et discendenza di tutti gli Dei de’ gentili, con la spositione et sensi allegorici delle favole, et con la dichiaratione dell’historie appartenenti a detta materia. Tradotti et adornati per Messer Giuseppe Betussi da Bassano. Aggiuntavi la vita del Boccaccio, con le tavole dei capi et di tutte le cose degne di memoria che nella presente fatica si contengono. Allo illustre et magnanimo suo Signore il S. Conte Collaltino di Collalto (Venice: Al segno del Pozzo, 1547), which draws attention to the interpretation of the “favole” and the exposition of the “historie” and already refers to several of the supplements provided, including the life, the indexes, and the dedication to collaltino. The full list of paratexts is as follows: fols. iir–iiiv: dedication to collaltino di collalto fols. iiiir–Viiiv: biography of Boccaccio fols. 224v–225r: a separate dedication to collaltino di collalto on the novelty and importance of the final two books,40 which the printers have mistakenly placed (“per trascuragine degli impressori”: fol. 225r) before the thirteenth book fols. 283v–284v: a dedicatory letter to Giacopo Lionardi on the translation of the work: “Allo illustrissimo et honoratiss. sign. Gio. Giacopo Lionardi conte di Monte Abbate et Ambasciatore di urbino” fols. 285r–v and 286r–v: a series of other dedicatory letters fols. 287r–293r, 293v–299v, 300r–301v, and three “tavole,” or indexes, two covering the names and contents of the work as a whole and a third dedicated to the final two books: “Tavola terza et ultima di tutti i capi e cose degne che nel quartodecimo et quintodecimo libro si contengono” fols. 302r–302v: a dedicatory letter to Giovan Battista Bebbio Reggiano (Benedetto di Martini)41

166

A Boccaccian Renaissance

of particular note in the opening dedication is Betussi’s felt need for the work to be of assistance to those who do not know Latin or are unable to spend the time needed on it: Percioché non potendo ciascuno essere capace della lingua latina, et nel lungo uso di quella spendere il tempo, ho cercato nella natia nostra scrivere alcuna cosa di mio, et ridurdui più un degno volume del presente auttore; il quale se (mentre visse) cercò giovare a tutti gli studiosi, diritto è che ritrovi alcuno che si sforzi donar novella vita et ritornare in luce l’opere di lui già tanti anni nelle tenebre sepolte. Le quali, se saranno bene essaminate, per aventura arrecheranno maggior utile al mondo che forse non fanno le attioni di molti vivi tra noi, non poco istimati et havuti in pregio. [For, because not everyone is able to know Latin, and to spend time acquiring it, i have attempted to write in our native language some things of my own, and to provide you with a worthy volume for this author, who, given that he (while he lived) tried to be useful to all scholars, it is only fitting that someone attempts to give new life and to return to the light his works that have already been buried in oblivion for many years. These works, if examined closely, may well bring greater benefit to the world than the deeds of many who are alive among us and who are esteemed and valued highly.] This formulation may appear similar to that of Liburnio, but in its insistence on the length of time spent learning Latin and its stress on res over verba, Betussi’s phrasing strongly recalls sperone speroni’s polemic regarding the problem of classical languages and the transmission of knowledge in the Paduan milieu of the 1530s. in this way Betussi’s dedication offers evidence of the influence of currents of ideas associated with the Accademia degli infiammati—of which Betussi was a member— upon his thinking and his attitude toward vernacularization.42 As regards the “Vita di Boccaccio,” Betussi states that he is building on the lives of squarzafico and sansovino, especially the latter.43 He notes in particular that he has followed sansovino’s example in using Boccaccio’s own works to build his biography. Betussi had included a life of the certaldese in his earlier Delle donne, but he now explains his reasons for

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

167

providing a revised one, namely, that he has found a number of other relevant loci in Boccaccio’s works and that the Genealogie, as Boccaccio’s own most important work, requires that there be a life.44 in the life itself, Betussi cites more extensively from the Latin works, De casibus, Genealogie, and Seniles, than any earlier biographer, including sansovino. Given the circulation of Betussi’s work, we need to be mindful that this life was probably one of the major lenses through which contemporary readers gained information about Boccaccio. As regards the Genealogie themselves, Betussi inserts the following comment (fol. 6v) into the life, which again reiterates his view on their worth and usefulness: i quali di quanta dignità, utilità siano, non è nessuno che ne possa far giudicio non gli havendo letti et gustati. Questo so bene io, che in quelli vi è incluso la maggior parte delle cose utili et necessarie non solamente alla poesia, ma ancho alle altre scienze, che a gran fatica in molti altri poetici libri si potrebbe ritrovare. et in ciò ho conosciuto lo errore che infiniti nostri moderni pigliano, i quali si fanno beffe delle scritture che non hanno l’odore d’antichità, come quasi non si possa più scrivere cosa che buona sia. [no one who has read and savored them can fail to judge their great worth and utility. And i know well that in them are found a great proportion of things that are not only useful and necessary for poetry but also of value for the other sciences, and they are not to be found other than with great effort in many other books on poetry. And, for this reason, i have come to recognize the error into which countless numbers of moderns fall when they make quips about writings that do not have the sacred odor of antiquity—as if one can no longer write anything good after the ancients.] Two more paratextual elements deserve mention here. First is the separate letter of dedication, actually placed before Book 13 rather than Book 14, that draws attention to the novelty of printing the final two books.45 Perhaps the most interesting paratext of all, however, is the letter to Jacopo Leonardi on the translation itself, which i have reproduced in the appendix to this chapter. This dedicatory missive calls for closer study and contextualization in emerging discussions in mid-cinquecento

168

A Boccaccian Renaissance

italy on the difficulties and problems raised by the vernacularization of Latin and Greek works, the different kinds of translations possible, and the requirements presupposed by differing types of text. Betussi shows that he is acutely aware of the arguments and some of the theoretical formulations being proposed and debated at the time.46 He is conscious, too, that he might be criticized if his translation does not follow his own precepts in his linguistic writings that are soon to be published. in particular, he notes the need to avoid a close literal translation, not only because of the differences between Latin and the vernacular but also because of the very content of Boccaccio’s text—with its many etymologies, difficult words, and names; its theological and philosophical material; and the presence of Greek material—as well as Boccaccio’s own style. There are also factors outside of Betussi’s control that he includes in his preemptive defence against likely attacks on the translation, such as the corruption of the Latin text itself and problems experienced during the printing itself. A P P E N D I X : B E T U S S I ’ S D E D I C AT O R Y L E T T E R

O N T H E T R A N S L AT I O N O F T H E G E N E A L O G I E : “A L L O I L L U S T R I S S I M O E T H O N O R AT I S S .

S I G N . G I O. G I AC O P O L I O N A R D I C O N T E D I

M O N T E A B B AT E E T A M B A S C I AT O R E D I U R B I N O ”

Parrà forse cosa strana a V. s. et ad altri vedere questa tradottione in molte parti differente dall’altre mie scritture; di che intendo in parte sopra ciò produrre alcuna delle molte ragioni che potrei. Altro è il formare una scrittura da sé . . . et altro ancho si può considerare essere la tradottione delle historie, nelle quali lo spositore può servirsi et solamente del senso et delle clausule, et ancho delle pure parole del suo primo scrittore. Ma di gran lunga è diseguale la risonanza, ove più in una lingua che in un’altra si comprendono le varietà delle scienze appartenenti più ad uno idioma che ad un altro. Perché si trovano molte voci che sono proprie dell’uno, et straniere et contrarie degli altri; et differente ancho è la tradottione pura delle parole da un parlare nell’altro di quello che sia la spositione delle cose, che sotto la lingua in cui sono scritte hanno un significato che, volendole ridurre in un altro, non pure il perdeno, ma caggiono

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

169

in diverso. Questo principalmente a me sarebbe avenuto, benché io sia certo in tutto non poterne essere andato assolto, se volendo solamente attendere alla politezza della lingua havessi pigliato il solo suggetto delle parole dell’auttore, et da un parlare portate nell’altro; il che nella pura historia molto bene si ricerca, ma nella presente opra, dove per lo più si contengono sotto coperta di favole et parole molte derivationi et origini di scienze, vocaboli, sensi, nomi, misteri theologici et philosophici, et altre cose sublimi et degni, ciò a me pare non sarebbe convenuto. Attento che, dove da molte dittioni greche si sono tratti dei vocaboli et significati Latini, s’io havessi voluto trapportare quelle in volgari, la origine si sarebbe perduta. È ben vero che con le circonlocutioni molto m’havrei possuto aiutare, il che in alcuni luoghi ho fatto; ma se in ciascuno havessi seguito tale stile, l’opra di gran lunga sarebbe divenuta maggiore, et credendo forse dare maggiore lume all’auttore, per aventura altrettante maggiori tenebre gli havrei aggiunto . . . m’è paruto meglio et più m’ho contentato in tale spositione includervi di molte parole Latine et di molte derivate dal greco (così però poste dall’auttore), che mutandole né per circonlocutioni, né per parole volgari più pure et più chiare fare una nova Metamorphosi. Di questo m’è parso dirne queste poche parole non solamente per purgarmi da quelle calonnie che i maligni sopra ciò mi potrebbono dare, quanto perché (non andrà molto) essendo io per mandare in luce insieme con alcuni diversi ragionamenti un picciolo mio trattato et discorso sopra la degnità et grandezza della lingua volgare . . . non paia ch’io non habbia serbato quell’ordine et regola che agli altri cercherò mostrare. Bene so io che, leggendosi questo libro, vi si vedranno per entro molte terminationi che non comporta né cape in sé la lingua volgare, come sono patronimichi, molti dei partecipii, et altre infinite locutioni che hora non mi sovengono nella memoria. so che vi saranno ancho molte derivationi et espositioni che parranno oscure, né così di liggiero saranno intese; il che è avenuto che le dittioni vocali della lingua latina in tutte le locutioni volgari non hanno quella desinenza né risonanza che la latina comporta. onde così sono stato sforzato fare, overo che sarebbe stato necessario lasciarle adietro; il che in tal loco, come cosa di nessun momento, ho fatto. et oltre ciò, il testo latino della presente opra quasi estinta si vede tanto

170

A Boccaccian Renaissance

scorretto, et in alcuni luoghi le clausule così intricate et al roverscio poste che i nodi di quelle non sarebbono sciolti da un altro edippo, che non sarà maraviglia se in qualche loco potrò havere compreso una cosa per l’altra; et non vi è dubbio alcuno che, se in molti luoghi per gli historici poeti et altri auttori che altrove ho visto et letto non havessi havuto notitia delle historie, favole et altre materie, sarei stato sforzato fare quello che degli altri hanno fatto, o lasciare la imperfetta, o senza il mio nome darla a leggere. . . . Ma duolmi bene che si lasci vedere così scorretta et guasta dalli stampatori, con molti versi et parole in molti luoghi invece del suo loco poste nell’altro. Ma se il favoloso Argo a quelli facesse la guardia, non potrebbe vedere gli errori ch’essi fanno. it will perhaps seem strange to your lordship and to others to see that this translation differs in many sections from my other writings . . . and on these differences i wish in part to put forward some of the many explanations that i could provide. it is one thing to write works as the author and another to translate histories in which the translator can follow directly the sense and the sentences, and also the very words of the writer whom he is translating. But far more unequal is the effect when one language compared to another contains a greater variety of sciences that belong to the former language. For one finds many words that are proper to one language but are strange and ill-fitting in others; and there is a difference between a simple translation made on the basis of turning the words from one language into another as opposed to the so-called exposition or interpretatio of things that in the source language have a meaning that, if one wishes to make it fit another language, not only loses its sense but changes it into something entirely different. it is this that would have been my experience (though i am certain that i would not have been absolved from all charges) if, wishing to attend only to the niceties of language, i had taken only the core sense of the words of the author and moved them from one language to another; and this is something that is very much sought after in pure history. But this would not—it seems to me—have been fitting for the present work, because it mostly contains, under the veiling of fables and many words, derivations and the origins of

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

171

sciences, rare words, meanings, names, theological and philosophical mysteries, and many other worthy and sublime things. Given that, where the words and meanings of Latin words are derived from Greek ones, if i had transported them into the vernacular, their origin would no longer be visible. it is, of course, very true that had i used circumlocutions this would have helped me, and i have done this in some places; but if i had followed this procedure throughout the work it would have become very much bigger and, though believing that i was giving greater light to the author, i might well have added just as much darkness to him . . . so it seemed to me better, and i have satisfied myself with including in this translation many Latin words and many that are derived from the Greek (and placed in this way by the author himself ) rather than creating a new Metamorphoses by changing them either by circumlocutions or by using vernacular words that are clearer and more transparent. And i have felt the need to say these things not only to exculpate myself from the calumnies that might be heaped upon me by those malign ones but also because very soon i am about to publish together with some of my various ragionamenti a small treatise or discourse on the dignity and greatness of the vernacular language. . . . i do not want it to appear that i have not maintained the rules and order that i will attempt to show to others. i know all too well that, on reading this book, one will see many endings that the vernacular language does not usually have, such as patronyms and many of the participles and infinite other locutions that do not now come to my mind. i know that there will be many derivations and expositions that will appear obscure, and will not be easily understood as a result; and this has happened with the vowels in Latin for which the vernaculars do not have the desinences or the resonance that one finds in Latin. i have thus been forced to do this in the present translation or else it would have been necessary to leave them all out. And, in addition to this, it will not be a surprise if in some places i may have understood one thing for another, given that the Latin text of the present work is almost extinct, and seen to be so corrupt, and in some places to have such intricate and contorted clauses, that another oedipus would not be able to cut through all the knots. And there is no doubt that if i had not known the histories, tales, and other things from my

172

A Boccaccian Renaissance

previous reading of historians, poets, and other authors, then in many places i would have been forced to do that which others have done, namely to leave the work in an imperfect state or give it to readers without my name. . . . But it pains me truly that the work shows itself to be so poorly corrected and full errors on account of the printers, with many verses and words in many other places instead of in the correct ones. But if the mythical Argus (with his hundred eyes) were to keep watch on them (sc. printers) he would not be able to see all the errors that they make.

noTes

1. see Gabriella Albanese, “Fortuna umanistica della Griselda,” Quaderni Petrarcheschi 9–10 (1992–93): 571–62; Federico Poletti, “Fortuna letteraria e figurativa della ‘Ghismonda’ (Dec. iV, 1) fra umanesimo e rinascimento, 1 parte,” Studi sul Boccaccio 32 (2004): 101–43; and Poletti, “Fortuna letteraria e figurativa della ‘Ghismonda’ (Dec. iV, 1) fra umanesimo e rinascimento, 2 parte,” Studi sul Boccaccio 35 (2004): 239–302. see also Annalisa cipollone, “Leggere e interpretare Petrarca: Griselda tra propizia e avversa fortuna,” in Per Petrarca latino: Opere e traduzioni nel tempo, ed. natascia Tonelli (Padua and Rome: Antenore, 2018), 223–41, and, on other Latin versions, see Martin L. McLaughlin, “Humanist Rewriting and Translation: The Latin Griselda from Petrarch to neri de’ nerli,” Humanistica 1 (2006): 23–40. 2. see especially claudio scarpati, “note sulla fortuna editoriale del Boccaccio: i volgarizzamenti cinquecenteschi delle opere latine,” in Boccaccio in Europe: Proceeding of the Boccaccio Conference, Louvain (December 1975), ed. Gilbert Tournoy (Leuven: Leuven university Press, 1977), 209–20, and Vittorio Zaccaria, “i volgarizzamenti del Boccaccio latino a Venezia,” Studi sul Boccaccio 10 (1977–78): 285–306. 3. eDiT16, available online at http://edit16.iccu.sbn.it/web_iccu/ihome.htm (accessed 13 June 2018), lists a copy in the Turin state archives of another print edition of the Liburnio text that is recorded as printed in Rome by Girolama de’ cartolari in 1545. i have not, however, been able to trace this edition to other libraries. Full titles and descriptions are found in Attilio Hortis, Studj sulle opere latine del Boccaccio (Trieste: Dase, 1879), 867–69. 4. A preliminary list in Hortis, Studj, 852–65, does not include the 1556, 1560, 1591, or 1617 editions. 5. on the rise of vernacular reading publics, see the classic essay by carlo Dionisotti, “Tradizione classica e volgarizzamenti,” in carlo Dionisotti, Geografia

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

173

e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: einaudi, 1960), 125–78. see also Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600 (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1994); Paolo Trovato, Con ogni diligenza corretto: La stampa e le revisioni editoriali dei testi letterari italiani (1470–1570) (Bologna: il Mulino, 1991); and Trovato, L’ordine dei tipografi: Lettori, stampatori, correttori tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1998). 6. see Michela Parma, “Fortuna spicciolata del Decameron tra Tre e cinquecento: Per un catalogo delle traduzioni latine e delle riscritture italiane volgari,” Studi sul Boccaccio 31 (2003): 203–70, and Parma, “Fortuna spicciolata del Decameron tra Tre e cinquecento: Tendenze caratteristiche delle rielaborazioni,” Studi sul Boccaccio 33 (2005): 299–364. A particularly interesting case in point is offered by olimpia Fulvio Morata (d. 1555), whose Latin translations of Decameron 1.1 and 1.2 strongly mediate her Reformist and classicizing interests; see stefano Prandi, “Ex sola Dei benignitate: olimpia Morata e la traduzione latina delle prime due novelle del Decameron,” in Olimpia Morata: Cultura umanistica e riforma protestante tra Ferrara e l’Europa, Atti del Congresso internazionale (Ferrara, Palazzo Bonaccossi, 18–20 Novembre 2004), ed. Gigliola Fragnito et al. (Ferrara: schifanoia, 2005), 265–78. A little-known and fascinating view of the Decameron as a work of self-translation is that provided by orazio Toscanella, who, in his Discorso del Tradurre, in Discorsi cinque di Oratio Toscanella (Venice: Pietro de’ Franceschi e nepoti, 1575), 28–35, argues that Boccaccio had initially composed the Decameron in Latin before translating it into the vernacular; see p. 34: “Per questo [sc. on the need to maintain syllabic count in translations] si giudica le novelle del Boccaccio essere così numerose, perche egli le habbia prima fatte latine; & poi tradotte in volgare; obligandosi à rispondere con la tradottione ad ogni parola secondo la sua natura, & à porla (quando acconciamente fare lo potea) nel luoco, ove ella latinamente giacea. nella quale opinione mi confermano li scritti di pugno d’esso Boccaccio, i quali al presente sono in mano del clarissimo M. Domenego Veniero unica & sempiterna gloria delle muse italiane, & mio signore singolarissimo, & quando anco questo non fosse, che il Boccaccio cioè non havesse fatto questa fatica; si vede nondimeno & chiarissimamente, che le lettere di Monsignor Bembo per questo sono più belle (& siami con pace de’ nostri scrittori lecito dirlo) di quante hoggidi si leggono; perche egli ha servato nello scriverle il numero di cicerone, & i concetti, & le forme, che esso usa nelle sue lettere latine: Per venire alla conchiusone dico, che il traduttore deve servare la medesima inventione, la medesima disposition, & la medesima elocutione, che haverà servato lo autore, ch’egli traduce per tutto, dove potrà farlo; che lo potrà far quasi sempre, eccetto in pochissimi luochi; che pel loro poco numero non sono da essere posti in consideratione. et questo poco numero ancora, à chi vorrà durar fatica, entrerà benissimo in questa regola.” [For this reason Boccaccio’s tales are judged to have a metrical quality, because he first composed them in Latin and then translated them into the vernacular. in this way, he had to deal in

174

A Boccaccian Renaissance

the translation with every word according to its specific character and to position it (when he could do this fittingly) into the place that it occupied in the sentences of the Latin version. This view is confirmed, to my mind, by the autograph writings of Boccaccio that are currently in the possession of the most distinguished Domenico Venier, that unique and eternal glory of the italian Muses and my most exceptional lord. And even if this were not the case, that is, that Boccaccio did not undertake this kind of translation, one can nonetheless observe most clearly that the letters of lord Bembo are more elegant than any others current today because of this very feature (let me be allowed to make this point—a valid one, i believe—pace our current writers). The reason for this, in Bembo’s case, is that he followed in the vernacular the numerical prose, concepts, and forms that cicero used in his Latin letters. To conclude, then, let me say that the translator should follow the same subject matter, arrangement of words, and stylistic ornamentation that the author did. The translator should do this throughout where she can, and she will almost always be able to do it except for a very few places, and because of their scarcity these are not worthy of consideration. And even in these few places, for those who are willing to sustain the effort, one will also be able to conform most fittingly to this rule.] i am grateful to Anna Laura Puliafito for this reference. 7. The pioneering work was undertaken by Hortis, Studj, 797–819, and Laura Torretta, “il Liber de claris mulieribus di G. Boccaccio: i traduttori del Liber de Claris mulieribus,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 40 (1902): 35–50. see also Vittorio Zaccaria, “La fortuna del De mulieribus Claris del Boccaccio nel secolo XV: Giovanni sabbadino degli Arienti, iacopo Filippo Foresti e le loro biografie femminili (1490–97),” in Il Boccaccio nelle culture e letterature nazionali: Atti del Congresso internazionale, ed. Francesco Mazzoni (Florence: olschki, 1978), 519–45. And see now Paola cosentino, “sulla fortuna cinquecentesca del De Mulieribus claris. Boccaccio, il teatro e la biografia femminile,” Critica letteraria 44, no. 1 (2016): 41–68; Vincenzo caputo, “una galleria di donne illustri: il De mulieribus claris da Giovanni Boccaccio a Giuseppe Betussi,” Cahiers d’études italiennes 8 (2008): 131–47; stephen Kolsky, The Ghost of Boccaccio: Writings on Famous Women in Renaissance Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); and elsa Filosa, Tre studi sul “De Mulieribus Claris” (Milan: edizioni universitarie di Lettere, economia, Diritto, 2012), 172–78. Kolsky’s study is especially valuable. 8. Rhiannon Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy, 1340–1520 (oxford: Legenda, 2009), 154–65. The edition in question is Giovanni Boccaccio, L’opera de miser Giovanni Boccacio de mulieribus Claris (Venice: Giovanni Tacuino, 1506). 9. see cosimo Burgassi, “Livio in Accademia: note sulla ricezione, sulla lingua e la tradizione del volgarizzamento di Tito Livio,” Studi di lessicografia italiana 30 (2013): 5–25, and Lorenzo Dell’osso, “Reopening a Question of Attribution: Programmatic notes on Boccaccio and the Translation of Livy,” Heliotropia 10,

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

175

nos. 1–2 (2013): 1–16. see, more broadly, Alison cornish, “Vernacularization in context (Volgarizzamenti of Livy, Valerius Maximus and ovid),” in Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham et al. (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2013), 255–64. 10. simon Gilson, “Modes of Reading in Boccaccio’s Esposizioni sopra la Comedia,” in Interpreting Dante: Essays on the Traditions of Dante Commentary, ed. Paola nasti and claudia Rossignoli (notre Dame, in: university of notre Dame Press, 2013), 255, 260–62, and 276, nn 25 and 26. 11. on the Latin manuscript tradition and early reception of the Genealogie, see at least Vittorio Zaccaria, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Geneologie deorum gentilium, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, vols. 7–8 (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), esp. vol. 8, 1591–99; susanna Gambino Longo, “La fortuna delle Genealogiae deorum gentilium nel ’500 italiano: Da Marsilio Ficino a Giorgio Vasari,” Cahiers d’études italiennes 8 (2008): 115–30; and Marianne Pade, “Perotti, Boccaccio e salutati,” Studi umanistici piceni 15 (1995): 179–93. on the Genealogie as “for two centuries, the central storehouse from which educated men drew their knowledge of the gods,” see Jean senzec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 1981; first French edn. 1940), quotation on 224. For celebratory mentions of the Genealogie in the Boccaccian lives by Filippo Villani, Domenico Bandini, and sicco Polenton, see, respectively, the following: Angelo solerti, ed., Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio scritte fino al secolo decimosesto (Milan: Vallardi, 1904), 674, 677, 694: “opus quidem sane amoenum, utile et peropportunum volentibus poetarum integumenta cognoscere . . . opus quidem laboriosum et utile volentibus poetarum figmenta cognoscere . . . ingens ac utile” [a certain work that is very pleasing, useful and apposite for those who wish to know the veilings used by poets . . . a diligent and useful work for those who wish to know about the veilings used by poets . . . extensive and useful]; Filippo Villani, who also refers to the work as “eleganti stilo” [written in an elegant style], in Le vite, ed. solerti, 674; and for Gianozzo Manetti on the “egregium librum” and “praeclarum opus” [outstanding book . . . signal work], see Le vite, ed. solerti, 687, 688. it is notable that the early “fortune” of Boccaccio’s other Latin works is, however, poorly represented in italy compared to other european countries. 12. Leonardo Bruni, Opere letterarie e politiche di Leonardo Bruni, ed. Paolo Viti (Turin: uTeT, 1996), 558: “Apparò [sc. Boccaccio] la grammatica da grande, et per questa cagione non ebbe mai la lingua latina molto in sua balìa. Ma per quello che scrisse in vulgare, si vede che naturalmente egli era eloquentissimo et aveva ingegno oratorio.” [He learned the Latin language when he was a grown man, and for this reason he never had Latin entirely in his control. But, as regards the vernacular, one can see that he was naturally most eloquent and had a keen wit in matters of oratory.] similarly, in niccoli’s “retraction,” of the outspoken condemnation of Boccaccio in Book i of the Dialogi, Bruni praises the Latin works,

176

A Boccaccian Renaissance

especially the Genealogie. see Leonardo Bruni, Dialogi ad Petrum Histrum, ed. stefano ugo Baldassarri (Florence: edizioni del Galluzzo/sisMeL, 1999), 273. Bruni is, of course, one the humanists who made a Latin rendering of Decameron 4.1 in 1436 (this Latin novella often circulated in manuscripts with the Vita di Dante). see David Marsh, “Boccaccio in the Quattrocento: Manetti’s Dialogus in symposio,” Renaissance Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1980): 337–50. 13. squarzafico’s short life, which prefaces his 1474 edition of Il Filocolo, is interesting for its echo of Bruni on the primacy of the work and his comment on his own involvement in a forthcoming Latin edition; see Le vite, ed. solerti, 697: “Ma di tutti ottengono il principato le Genealogie delli Dei, le quali al presente per mia intercessione se gettano in stampa et tosto saranno in luce molto bene ornate” [But of all his works the principal place is taken by the Genealogies of the Gods, which presently through my efforts are to be made ready for printing and soon will be published in an ornate manner]. For Manetti, see note 11. 14. on the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century prints, still valuable is the essay (first published in 1917) by ernest H. Wilkins, “The Genealogy of early editions of the Genealogia deorum,” in ernest H. Wilkins, The Invention of the Sonnet and Other Studies (Rome: edizioni di storia e Letteratura, 1959), 147–62. The other italian print editions are Reggio 1481, Vicenza 1487, Venice 1494 and 1497, and Venice 1507 by Tacuino. 15. on Perotti and Tortelli, see Pade, “Perotti,” and Paola Tomé Marcassa, “Giovanni Tortelli e la fortuna umanistica del Boccaccio,” Studi sul Boccaccio 28 (2001): 229–59. An informed and synthetic overview is found in Longo, “La fortuna.” on Pico della Mirandola’s ownership of copies, see Pearl Kibre, The Library of Pico della Mirandola (new york: columbia university Press, 1966; 1st ed. 1939), 189, 193. For Poliziano, see Vittore Branca, Poliziano e l’umanesimo della parola (Turin: einaudi, 1993), 321. For neo-Latin poetry, see, e.g., the parallels noted for ugolino Verino’s Carlias in nikolaus Thurn, Kommentar zur Carlias des Ugolino Verino (Munich: W. Fink, 2002), 174–78. 16. For Botticelli, see stanley Meltzoff, Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola: Theologia Poetica and Painting from Boccaccio to Poliziano (Florence: olschki, 1987), 14, 176–81, 184–87, 194–95, 203–4, 211–12. For Piero de’ cosimo, see erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (new york: oxford university Press, 1939), 50. For Leonardo, it may be worth further exploring the connections in the Trattato della pittura and the “comedia di Danae.” 17. For Raphael, see Paul F. Watson, “To Paint Poetry: Raphael on Parnassus,” in Renaissance Re-reading: Intertext and Context, ed. Maryanne cline Horowitz, Anne J. cruz, and Wendy A. Furman (urbana: university of illinois, 1988), 114–41. The later reception of the Genealogie in the vernacular has strong and demonstrable links with artists such as Titian (this occurs via Betussi’s translation; see Longo, “La fortuna”). it may well be that the popularity of

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

177

Betussi’s volgarizzamento is, at least in part, explained by its usefulness to artists. of note, too, is the use of Betussi’s Genealogia in such works as cornelius Ripa, Iconologia overo descrittione dell’imagini universali cavate dall’antichità et da altri luoghi (Rome: Heredi di Giovanni Gigliotti, 1593), 98, 120, and especially in the expanded second edition printed in siena by Matteo Florimi in 1613 (with over thirty references), and Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura . . . Diviso in sette libri ne’ quali si contiene tutta la Theorica & la prattica di essa pittura (Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1584), 586. 18. Dionisotti, “Tradizione classica,” 115. 19. see Ms Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, cod. D 524 inf. fol. 2v, quoted in cristina Montagnari, “il comento a Teseida di Pier Andrea de’ Bassi,” in Studi di letteratura italiana offerti a Dante Isella (naples: Bibliopolis, 1983), 13–14. The print edition is La Teseida (Ferrara: Agostino carnerio, 1475). 20. see previous note. 21. For Gesualdo’s use of the De montibus, see Gino Belloni, Laura tra Petrarca e Bembo: Studi sul commento umanistico-rinascimentale al “Canzoniere” (Padua: Antenore, 1992), 86, 210. 22. Francesco da Buti (1395), Commento di Francesco da Buti sopra la Divina Comedia di Dante Allighieri, vol. 3, ed. Giannini di crescentino (Pisa: nistri, 1858–62), 621, and Anonimo Fiorentino (1390s). on the latter, see Flavia Rocco, “Presenze boccacciane nel commento dantesco dell’Anonimo Fiorentino,” Studi sul Boccaccio 11 (1979): 406. claudia Tardelli Terry is working on the presence of the Genealogie in Dante commentary and has alerted me to their presence in another Dantean exegetical work, the Breve compendium et utile super tota Dantis Allegherii Comedia (before 1430). 23. Benvenuto da imola, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam, ed. J.  F.  Lacaita, vol. 5 (Florence: Barbèra, 1887), 164: “unum librum magnum et utilem ad intelligentiam poetarum” [a great and useful book for understanding poets]. For a list of Benvenuto’s references to the Genealogie, see Paget Toynbee, “index of Authors quoted by Benvenuto da imola in his commentary on the Divina Commedia: A contribution to the study of the sources of the commentary,” Annual Report of the Dante Society 2 (1899–1900): 17. For the De montibus see Benvenuto, Comentum, ed. Lacaita, vol. 1, 214, 514. For vernacularizations of Benvenuto, see Massimo seriacopi, Volgarizzamento anonimo di Benvenuto da Imola (Florence: Firenzelibri, 2008). 24. see Roberto cardini, ed., in cristoforo Landino, Scritti critici e teorici, vol. 2 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974), 209. 25. see the following passages and parallels in cristoforo Landino, Comento sopra la Comedia, ed. Paolo Procaccioli, 4 vols. (Rome: salerno, 2001), 313, 339, 897, 902–3, 944, 964, 978, 979, 981–82, 986, 1107–8, 1178, 1181, 1231, 1232, 1245–46, 1337–38, 1431–32, 1623, 1636–37, 1680–82, 1712–13, 2023: Inf. 1.73–75; Geneal., Vi, 2–6; Inf. 2.10–36; Geneal., Vi, 1–6; Inf. 26.85–111;

178

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Geneal., V, 44; Inf. 26.112–42; Geneal., iV, 67; Inf. 29.58–66; Geneal., Xii, 45; Inf. 30.97–99; Geneal., ii, 14–15; Inf. 31.91–96, 97–102, 118–20, 124–26; Geneal., X, 47, iV, 18, i, 13, V, 24; Inf. 32.10–12; Geneal., V, 30; Purg. 4.61–63; Geneal., Xi, 7; Purg. 9.1–3; Geneal., Vi, 10–11; Purg. 9.13–15; Geneal., iX, 8; Purg. 12.28–30; Geneal., iV, 18; Purg. 12.37–39; Geneal., Xii, 2; Purg. 13.31–33; Geneal., Xii, 20; Purg. 19.19–21; Geneal., Vii, 20; Purg. 26.82–84; Geneal., iii, 21; Par. 4.103–05; Geneal., Xiii, 45; Par. 5.85–87; Geneal., ii, 7; Par. 8.1–12; Geneal., iii, 22; Par. 10.28–36; Geneal., iV, 3; Par. 33.91–93; Geneal., ii, 22. For fuller documentation and discussion, see simon A. Gilson, “notes on the Presence of Boccaccio in cristoforo Landino’s Comento sopra la Comedia di Danthe Alighieri,” Italian Culture 21 (2005): 17–19, 20–22. 26. For recent interest in Betussi, in particular his dialogues and the role of ecphrasis in his works, see, e.g., Vincenzo D’Amelij Melodia, “il dialogo d’amore e il personaggio Lodovico Domenichi nel Raverta del Betussi,” Humanistica 1, no. 2 (2007): 117–26; Federica Pich, “‘con la propria mia voce parli’: Literary Genres, Portraits and Voice in Giuseppe Betussi,” Italian Studies 69, no. 1 (2014): 51–74; carmen Donia, “Momenti del paragone: Giovanni Betussi e la trattatistica figurativa,” Annali di critica d’arte 9 (2013): 53–77; and Donia, “Boccaccio e Betussi: L’ecfrasi e l’artificio delle immagini,” in Boccaccio veneto: Settecento anni d’incroci mediterranei a Venezia, ed. Luciano Formisano, Roberta Morosini, and Gale sigal (Rome: Aracne, 2017), 109–12. For biographical information, see claudio Mutini, “Betussi, Giuseppe,” in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 9 (Rome: istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1967), 779–81, and the earlier notes in Giuseppe Zonta, “note betussiane,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 52 (1908): 321–66. The fundamental point of reference remains the monograph by Lucia nadin Bassani, Il poligrafo veneto Giuseppe Betussi (Padua: Antenore, 1992). 27. De’ Gregori published over sixty titles, including erasmus, and, although he specialized in the university market for medical and legal texts, he also printed a notable group of vernacular works, including 1525 editions of the Decameron and Fiammetta. For background on De’ Gregori, see ivano Paccagnella, “L’editoria veneziana e la lessicografia prima della crusca,” in Il Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612) e la storia della lessicografia italiana: X Convegno ASLI Padova e Venezia, 29 novembre 2012–1 dicembre 2012, ed. Lorenzo Tomasin (Florence: F. cesati, 2013), 55–62. 28. see carlo Dionisotti, “niccolò Liburnio e la letteratura cortigiana,” Lettere italiane 14 (1962): 33–58. on Liburnio, see also simona Mammana, “Liburnio, niccolò,” in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 2005), vol. 65, 65–68. 29. Quotations from lib. 1 and lib. 3, proemio, in niccolò Liburnio, Le vulgari eleganzie: Le tre fontane, ed. Guglielmo Barucci (Turin: edizioni Res, 2005), 190 and 224, respectively.

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

179

30. in the notes to his edition, Barucci observes that Liburnio himself uses names of lakes in his poetry. see Liburnio, Le vulgari eleganzie, 314, 99, and 104. 31. on Betussi’s Delle donne, see Hortis, Studj, 678–95; Bassani, Il poligrafo, 47–54; and Leatrice Mendelsohn, “Boccaccio, Betussi e Michelangelo: Ritratti delle donne illustri come Vite Parallele,” in Letteratura italiana e arti figurative: Atti del Convegno dell’Associazione Internazionale per gli studi di lingua e letteratura italiana (Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, 6–10 maggio 1985), ed. Antonio Franceschetti (Florence: olschki, 1988), vol. 1, 323–34. of note, too, is the emphasis placed on Boccaccio as a “gran padre della eloquenza Toscana” [great father of Tuscan eloquence] in the Giunti edition of the Libro di M. Giovanni Boccaccio Delle Donne illustri: Tradotto di Latino in Volgare per M. Giuseppe Betussi, con una giunta fatta dal medesimo d’altre donne famose, e un’altra nuova giunta fatta per M. Francesco Serdonati d’altre donne illustri (Florence: Giunti, 1596), 2v. serdonati’s giunte in the De’ casi and Delle donne are very extensive and merit closer study; caputo makes some useful remarks and judiciously speaks of “un testo in continua costruzione”; see also cosentino, “sulla fortuna.” 32. no doubts were expressed in the cinquecento on the authenticity of this pseudo-Boccaccian novella, which was printed three times in Venice (1526 by the da sabbio brothers, 1530 by Zoppino, and 1543 by Bartolomeo L’imperatore) and once in Lucca (1562 by Vincenzo Busdrago). on the fortune of the pseudoBoccaccio in sixteenth-century italy, it would be interesting to more closely examine the interest in the print history and reception of the Regole d’Amore (1532) and Dialogo d’amore (1561, 1574, 1584, 1586, 1592, and 1597); this work is always presented as a vernacularization of one of Boccaccio’s Latin works. Apocryphal novelle are added to editions of the Decameron, including the 1516 Giunti one. 33. Boccaccio, Opera di M. Giovanni Boccaccio, tradotta di Lat. in volgare da M. Niccolò Liburnio, dove per ordine d’Alfabeto si tratta diffusamente de’ Monti, Selve, Boschi, Fonti, Laghi, Stagni, Paludi, Golfi e Mari dell’universo Mondo. E delle loro cose memorabili, come da Poeti, Cosmographi overo Storici sono descritte. E nel fine sono le Provincie di tutto il Mondo d’Asia, Affrica, Europa, e come furono chiamate dagl’antichi, e come si nominano di presente scritte del sopraddetto Liburnio. Aggiuntovi la Favola dell’Urbano del medesimo Boccaccio (Florence: Filippo Giunti, 1598), fol. +2r–v. Riccardo Romolo Riccardi (1558–1612), collector and bibliophile, was a member of the Accademia della crusca, and his book collection formed the original core of the Biblioteca Riccardiana. 34. Boccaccio, Opera, fol. Div: “A dire il vero quei libri suoi delle Genealogie de i Dei, Della varietà della Fortuna & de i Fonti, scritti da lui più tosto accurate che felicemente, i quali si credette gli dovessero apportare un maraviglioso onore non sono in alcuna consideratione” [in truth, those books of his— written more accurately than they are elegantly—on the Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, on the varieties of Fortune, and on springs; these books that he thought would bring him very great recognition are no longer held in any regard].

180

A Boccaccian Renaissance

35. For further background, see especially Vincenzo Cartari e le direzioni del mito nel Cinquecento, ed. sonia Maffei (Rome: Bentivoglio, 2013). 36. on the “tranquilla vita,” see Betussi, I casi Aiiiiv. 37. see especially Dionisotti, “Tradizione classica,” 140. see also Amedeo Quondam, “La letteratura in tipografia,” in Letteratura italiana. Produzione e consumo (Turin: einaudi, 1986), vol. 2, 555–686. 38. Bassani, Il poligrafo, esp. 37–43. 39. see, e.g., Genealogie deorum gentilium, in Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, vols. 7–8, ed. Vittorio Zaccaria (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), vol. 8, 1605: “estremamente confusa [sc. Betussi’s translation], spesso oscura o addirritura errata” [an extremely confused translation that is often obscure or even entirely erroneous]. similar judgments are found in Genealogie Deorum Gentilium Libri, ed. Vincenzo Romano (Bari: Laterza, 1951), vol. 2, 821. see also Bassani, Il poligrafo, 58. 40. Fol. 224v: “in questi due ultimi libri, et massimamente nel primo, ci troverà quello che a gran pena in rivolgere molti et de’ principali vi si potrebbe vedere” [in these two final books, and especially in the first one, you will find that which is difficult to come across in leafing through many and important volumes]. 41. As one would expect, there are some editorial adjustments to Betussi’s paratexts in later Venetian prints of Betussi’s Genealogia. of particular note is the 1569 edition by sansovino, which created a single tavola. The topic would provide interesting material for further study. 42. For Betussi’s membership in the infiammiati, see Giuseppe Betussi, Ragionamenti sopra il Cathaio (Padua, 1573), sig. ZZ 3r/v. on the infiammati and its vernacular program and interest in translations, see Antonio Daniele, “sperone speroni, Bernardino Tomitano e l’Accademia degli infiammiati di Padova,” Filologia veneta 2 (1989): 1–55; Richard s. samuels, “Benedetto Varchi, the ‘Accademia degli infiammati’ and the origins of the italian Academic Movement,” Renaissance Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1976): 599–633; cesare Vasoli, “sperone speroni: La ‘filosofia e la lingua: L’ ‘ombra’ del Pomponazzi e un programma di volgarizzamento del sapere,” in Il volgare come lingua di cultura dal Trecento al Cinquecento: Atti del Convegno internazionale (Mantova, 18–20 ottobre 2001), ed. A. calzona et al. (Florence: olschki, 2003), 339–59; and Valerio Vianello, Il letterato, l’Accademia, il libro: Contributi sulla cultura veneta del Cinquecento (Padua: Antenore, 1988). For a critique of the excessive time spent on Latin and the growing concern with vernacularization, see, e.g., sperone speroni, Dialogo delle lingue, ed. Antonio sorella (Pescara: Libreria dell’università editrice, 1999), 186; Alessandro Piccolomini, Prima parte delle Theorice overo Speculationi de i Pianeti (Venice: Varisco, 1563), 2; and Benedetto Varchi, Lezzioni di Messer Benedetto Varchi academico fiorentino, lette da lui pubblicamente nella Florentina Accademia (Florence: Giunti, 1590), 89. 43. Both lives are printed in Le vite, ed. solerti; see 695–97 and 713–19, respectively.

Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in italy

181

44. The authorizing purposes of lives are well known and are found extensively in classical and vernacular commentary, from Donatus’s commentary on Virgil to the lives of Dante and Petrarch. 45. see, e.g., Vérard’s French translation of 1498. 46. in addition to the seminal work by Folena, see esp. Dario Brancato, “Varchi e Aristotele: nuovi materiali per il commento agli Analytica priora,” Nuova Rivista della Letteratura Italiana 21 (2018): 99–156; Alessio cotugno, “Piccolomini e castelvetro traduttori della Poetica,” Studi di lessicografia italiana 23 (2006): 113–219; Bodo Guthmüller, “Fausto da Longiano e il problema del tradurre,” Quaderni veneti 12 (1990): 9–54; and claudia Rossignoli, “L’ufficio dello ‘interprete’ castelvetro Translator of Melanchthon,” Italian Studies 68, no. 3 (2013): 317–39. A useful point of comparison for several of Betussi’s comments is the address to readers by a fellow infiammiato, Bernardino Daniello, in his 1549 print translation of the Georgics. Daniello here tackles criticisms from “riprensori” [fierce critics] of his translation, noting not only its usefulness to “coloro i quali da diverse cure e maneggi impediti, non hanno ne la loro primiera eta potuto ne a la greca, ne a la latina favella dar opera” (those who have not been able to study the Greek or Latin language in their early years because they were prevented from doing so by various duties and tasks) (biiv), but also, like Betussi, commenting on the prejudicial attitude toward the use of Latinisms in Tuscan (though he declares that he will nonetheless use them, as Dante and Petrarch did) and the less problematic nature of translations of histories.

PART 3 Boccaccio in Renaissance italy

cHAPTeR 7

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose m ic hae l s he r ber g

The prevailing winds of sixteenth-century Petrarchism seem to have blown any corresponding notion of Boccaccism to the farther reaches of our literary histories.1 While there is little doubt that the spread of Petrarchan lyric outpaced any prose counterpart in the Renaissance, the way in which literary histories tilted toward lyric bespeaks not just an empirical reading of that history but also a hierarchy of values as well. The attention lent to Petrarch’s influence over lyric, at the expense of Boccaccio’s impact on prose writing, seems shortsighted, given the fact that the language debates in the sixteenth century had addressed both lyric and prose, in the latter case regularly drawing Boccaccio into the conversation. Boccaccio’s importance as a prose model finds confirmation in the fact that castiglione, in the dedicatory letter to the Libro del cortegiano, explicitly denies—albeit disingenuously—that he has imitated Boccaccio, and he directly responds to those who have criticized him for this choice.2 castiglione does not address the question of lyric models in this passage because he is writing a work exclusively in prose. on the other hand, in the Prose della volgar lingua Pietro Bembo discusses both lyric and prose, in part because he wants to present a comprehensive theory but also because in his own vernacular literary career he had already struggled with both. The Asolani, which he drafted in the waning years of the quattrocento,3 relies on both lyric and prose vernacular models, with Petrarch 185

186

A Boccaccian Renaissance

and Boccaccio playing important roles in Bembo’s development of his own authorial voice.4 Being a prosimetrum, the Asolani furnishes the perfect playground for such an experiment. nor should we neglect to note that of the Three crowns, the only one not to pen a prosimetrum was Petrarch; the formal model, which traced its roots back to Boethius, came to Bembo in the vernacular via Dante and Boccaccio. Boccaccio’s currency during the Renaissance is readily apparent, and, on the surface at least, Bembo appears to be one of his strongest promoters. As Branca has shown,5 Boccaccio’s works began to circulate almost immediately in the fourteenth century, with some of his Latin works finding their way into the vernacular and vice versa,6 and with the advent of printing they quickly found their way to press. They sailed into the Renaissance on a strong wind, though the condemnation of the Decameron in the index in the middle of the century clipped its sails, and the mast appears to have been fully lowered by 1573, when the Deputati published their revision of Boccaccio’s masterpiece. The historical record, for the sixteenth century at least, would appear to suggest that Decameron achieved an apotheosis in Bembo’s Prose and later reached its nadir in the index and the revised editions. A closer study of Bembo’s work, however, suggests that these two moments, rather than standing in opposition to one another, were in fact curiously related. The Decameron, as is well known, entered the Prose as a prose model for Bembo’s ideal trecento vernacular, a companion to Petrarch’s work. Bembo’s theory of the vernacular, often read in the context of the language debates as they played out in the early sixteenth century, has deep roots in the history of the book and in quattrocento literary trends. First published in 1525, with a second edition in 1538 and a significantly revised posthumous third edition dating to 1548, the Prose appeared, from this chronology, to speak to and for the sixteenth century. And yet Bembo dated his dialogue to 1503, and the work made gestures to the culture of the quattrocento, in which Bembo’s own literary career had its roots. Bembo’s vernacular ambitions extended to excellence not merely in verse, but also in prose, as the Asolani and the Prose both demonstrate. The italian literary culture that Bembo confronts in the Prose is one that had become bifurcated during the quattrocento and whose opposition he undertakes to reconcile.7 That history had roots in the bilingualism of the trecento, with Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio all penning works in both

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose

187

Latin and the vernacular that sought and appealed to different audiences. Petrarch’s famous letter to Boccaccio, now Seniles XVii.3, in which he announces that he has translated the Griselda story into Latin, is an early case in point, at once an acknowledgment of the achievement that the story represents and an attempt to redress it for a wider audience, “those who do not know our language.” Petrarch invites Boccaccio to judge “whether i have deformed it or, perhaps, beautified it by changing its garment,”8 a telling metaphor given the story’s attention to Griselda’s own wardrobe. Petrarch also plants the seeds of the venomous tree that would grow from this work, denying that he has read the whole Decameron, dismissing what he has read as “much light-hearted fun,” and excusing passages that are “too frankly lewd” as a reflection of Boccaccio’s age when he wrote the book and “also the style, the idiom, the very levity of the subject matter and of those who seemed likely to read such things” (Letters of Old Age, 655)—in other words, readers not necessarily schooled in Latin. so while he praises Boccaccio for defending himself against the “dogs’ teeth,” by detaching the story from the rest of the collection he effectively dismisses everything else. By the quattrocento Petrarch’s dismissive attitude toward the Decameron had morphed into something that looks like indifference, at least among humanist biographers. Leonardo Bruni, after penning, in the vernacular, a “Vita di Dante” and a “Vita del Petrarca,” wrote a “notizia del Boccaccio e parallelo dell’Alighieri e del Petrarca” that dedicates precisely two paragraphs to Boccaccio. Bruni barely finds time to praise him for the Genealogia deorum gentilium before returning to his true topic of interest, the comparison between Dante and Petrarch. His devotion to the two great poets, however, goes less to their achievements in the vernacular than to those in Latin (and, not surprisingly, he finds Petrarch’s Latin to surpass Dante’s). His near-contemporary Giannozzo Manetti wrote a longer biography of Boccaccio, this time in Latin, but it is shorter than his lives of Dante and Petrarch, despite the fact that Boccaccio’s literary corpus is far and away the largest of the three, and he strangely calls Boccaccio Petrarch’s poetic successor, relegating him to discipleship. Like Bruni, Manetti focuses on the Latin works; the Decameron earns no mention. The only way to rescue the vernacular Boccaccio, it would appear, would be to translate him into Latin, a recurrent practice in the quattrocento.9 compare this history, then, to the astonishing statistics that corrado Bologna reports, not just for Boccaccio but for Petrarch and Dante as well,

188

A Boccaccian Renaissance

for manuscripts and early imprints of their vernacular works. in the case of Boccaccio, readers were devouring not just the Decameron but the other vernacular works, too; Bologna counts eighty extant codices of  the Filostrato, seventy-three of the Fiammetta, seventy-eight of the Corbaccio, sixtyfive of the Teseida, and so forth, with scores more lost.10 indeed, as Bologna takes pains to underscore, the circulation of works by Boccaccio before 1450 far outpaced that of works of Petrarch. Bologna also makes note of the 1496 catalogue of the Florentine chartolaro salvestro di Zanobi, first published by christian Bec, which lists no works by Boccaccio, taking this as a sign that by the end of the fifteenth century the Decameron had left the scene (366–67). He does not reconcile this claim with the fact that the Decameron was printed thirty-eight times between 1470, the year of the neapolitan Deo gratias first edition, and the end of the century, so more than once a year. The Deo gratias appeared in the same year as the princeps of the Canzoniere and two years before the first printed edition of the Commedia, so the Decameron was clearly holding its own as a marketable vernacular text. indeed, the so-called “Parsons fragment,” thought to be the first work printed in an italian vernacular, is dated to 1462, and the first known full text in italian, st. Francis’s Fioretti, appeared in 1469, only a year before the neapolitan Decameron.11 This publishing history tends to undermine Bologna’s claim that the absence of Boccaccio’s vernacular works from late quattrocento catalogues signaled some sort of repudiation of him. certainly Pietro Bembo had not repudiated him, for as elisa curti has detailed, the Fiammetta was a crucial text for the development of the Asolani. it is just as plausible that Boccaccio’s works did not appear in these catalogues because they were selling out; the catalogues, after all, listed what booksellers had in stock, not what had been sold. in this context it bears noting that salvestro di Zanobi’s catalogue listed, by Bologna’s account, “una gran quantità di libri devozionali” [a great quantity of devotional books], (366), which we may assume were expected to sell but which, at the time salvestro circulated the catalogue, were sitting on the shelf; savonarola may actually have killed the Florentine market for devotional books. in other words, one needs to read these catalogues somewhat counterintuitively, as a reflection not of the market but rather of marketing. nobody wants unpurchased books gathering dust in their bins, and if the publication record is any

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose

189

indication, imprints by Boccaccio might just have been leaving salvestro’s shop pretty quickly. in any event, what there was by the turn of the century was a story of two literary cultures in italy, respectively Latin and vernacular, the former promoted by elite humanists, the latter by lay readers who did not appear to care very much about the humanists’ intellectual pretensions or prescriptions. in a tradition that followed in the footsteps of such noteworthy Tuscans as Alberti and Poliziano, Bembo himself undertook to bridge the divide: on the one hand he played the humanist intellectual writing in Latin (producing, for example, the De imitatione epistle, De Aetna, and De Virgilii Culice et Terentii fabulis12), and on the other he wrote in the established vernacular vein of love theory (the Asolani). Witnessing the growing popularity of vernacular literature and observing the expansion of the vernacular corpus in both prose and poetry, Bembo clearly understood that he would have to address the humanist objections to vernacular literature before he could make his specific case about the Tuscan models. nor was his defense of the vernacular without self-interest, because by the time he wrote De Vergilii Culice et Terentii fabulis in 1503, he had already drafted a significant portion of the Asolani. The former may represent his calling card to the circle of Latin humanists (though, curiously enough, he did not publish it until 1530), but the latter marked his first concerted effort to add to a growing corpus of contemporary vernacular works. so the very first pages of the Prose find carlo Bembo, Pietro’s standin, duking it out with ercole strozzi precisely over Latin letters.13 carlo observes to strozzi that “voi parimente schifate e vituperate sempre” [you likewise loathe and always revile] the vernacular, and he describes him as someone who, because he is “di tutte quelle [dolcezze] della lingua latina ripieno, a queste prendere non vi sète volto giammai” [full of all those (sweets) of the Latin language, has never turned to take these].14 not surprisingly, carlo is approaching ercole strozzi on the very terrain that Bembo would use to legitimate the vernacular, that of dolcezza, here applied to Latin but soon to be the standard of measure for the trecento Tuscan of Boccaccio and Petrarch as well. carlo goes on to defend his brother Pietro against a number of critics who had condemned Bembo for reading vernacular literature. Bembo was not charged with the crime of writing in the vernacular because in 1503 he had not yet published

190

A Boccaccian Renaissance

the Asolani; nevertheless, even reading in the vernacular appears to have been execrable. carlo’s statements may be hyperbolic, but they are nevertheless telling, because both Bembos were effectively accusing the Latin humanists, whom strozzi represented, of ignorance of vernacular literature because they arrogantly refused to read it. What Bembo knew, and what his adversaries in the Latin school refused to acknowledge, was that there was a growing community of vernacular readers to whom literary enterprise could and should respond. Petrarch may have criticized the Decameron for having been written “for the common herd and in prose,” but when he observed that Boccaccio had written the work “in our mother tongue” (Letters, 655), he unwittingly acknowledged an advantage that the vernacular would always have over Latin and that it would therefore be an ever more powerful driver of the market. Bembo’s decision to publish editions of Petrarch’s and Dante’s masterpieces in 1501 and 1502, respectively, in an Aldine catalogue replete with Greek and Latin authors, reflects his own sense of the direction in which the culture was moving, which quality publishing must follow. As high-end editions they lent the Commedia and the Canzoniere a certain cachet, making them into literary achievements comparable to those of the ancients.15 Bembo did not follow his editions of Petrarch and Dante with an edition of Boccaccio, and to understand why we need to look more closely at the textual history of the Decameron and at the Prose themselves. The extant copies of the Decameron, beginning with the earliest imprints and continuing through the incunabula and beyond, trace a history of interventions, intentional and accidental, that challenged any effort to stabilize the text until the identification of the Berlin autograph in the twentieth century. even in an essay as late as Michele Barbi’s “sul testo del ‘Decameron,’” published in 1927, which reviews this history, one senses Barbi flailing when he states, with reference to the 1384 Mannelli codex and the Berlin manuscript, not yet identified as an autograph, “non è possibile tuttavia con la tradizione rappresentata da quei due testi avere una lezione corretta del Decameron” [it is still not possible to have a correct edition with the tradition represented by these two texts].16 Barbi thus recommends the same sort of haphazard approach to the text of the Decameron that found its way into Renaissance imprints, which often reflect the same sort of arbitrary decision-making that Bembo had applied centuries earlier to his edition of Petrarch.17 Meanwhile, the Decameron also submitted

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose

191

to the linguistic standards of the times, acquiring a quattrocento linguistic patina, then undergoing a faux-trecento restoration at the beginning of the sixteenth. The textual tradition is indeed confusing, though such manuscripts as the Mannelli codex and what would become the Hamilton 90 autograph appear to have enjoyed a certain authority, as the early imprints suggest and as Barbi himself reported. The autograph, in fact, was hiding in plain sight; internal evidence in the Prose suggests that Bembo himself consulted it without realizing what he had his hands on. Bembo’s edition of choice was instead the one edited by niccolò Dolfin and published in Venice in 1516 by Gregorio De’ Gregorii. This was a very straightforward imprint without any critical apparatus, in the Aldine tradition. About this edition carlo Vecce writes, “Fu innovativa nei confronti di tutta la tradizione a stampa precedente, e presentava un testo radicalmente diverso da quello vulgato” [it was innovative in comparison to all of the previous print tradition, and it presented a radically different text from the vulgate],18 the result of an operation that Dolfin himself described as picking and choosing the best parts from a number of exemplars, a practice not unreminiscent, in some ways, of that suggested by Michele Barbi or, lupus in fabula, Bembo’s own. evidence in the Prose suggests that Bembo may not have found Dolfin’s text to be entirely satisfactory, as he continued to consult other copies of the Decameron, including the unrecognized autograph. none of this would have led him any closer to a stable text, because even the autograph contains a number of corrections in Boccaccio’s own hand that Bembo would have had to puzzle over. in other words, wherever Bembo turned he would have found evidence of the instability of this text, which he undertook to correct with disturbing results. As Vecce points out, “il lettore delle Prose, dal ’25 in poi, si sarebbe trovato di fronte a citazioni di un Decameron che non corrispondeva a nessuno dei testi conosciuti, manoscritti o a stampa” [The reader of the Prose, from 1525 on, would have found before him citations from a Decameron that did not correspond to any of the known texts, either manuscript or printed] (“Bembo, Boccaccio,” 528–29). in other words, the Decameron that emerges from the pages of the Prose is a ghost. While at a microscopic level the Decameron to which Bembo refers in the Prose does not exist, nevertheless there is a macroscopic Decameron that he sought to promote even as he conceded its shortcomings. At the beginning of Book 2 Bembo speaks in his own voice, reviewing the

192

A Boccaccian Renaissance

history of italian vernacular literature that he had defended in Book 1. He offers a lengthy list of poets, culminating in Petrarch, “nel quale uno tutte le grazie della volgar poesia raccolte si veggono” [in which all the grace of vernacular poetry is seen in one place] (Prose, 49). He also offers a much shorter list of prose writers, four to be exact,19 leading up to Boccaccio: “Ma ciascun di loro vinto e superato fu dal Boccaccio, e questi medesimo da sé stesso: con ciò sia cosa che tra molte composizioni sue tanto ciascuna fu migliore, quanto ella nacque dalla fanciullezza di lui più lontana. il qual Boccaccio, come che in verso altresì molte cose componesse, nondimeno assai apertamente si conosce che egli solamente nacque alle prose.” [But each one of them was defeated and surpassed by Boccaccio, and he himself by himself: because among his many compositions each one was better as he grew older. About Boccaccio, although he composed many things in verse, nevertheless it is openly acknowledged that he was born only for prose] (49–50). Already here one can see certain shadings in the approach to Bembo’s two models. The straightforward teleology culminating in Petrarch yielded to a much more convoluted assessment of Boccaccio. Bembo called attention to the fact that Boccaccio improved as a writer as his career advanced—signaling that sometimes being prolific is not helpful—and he located Boccaccio’s talent in his prose writing, not his verse. The latter claim is curious, since Bembo did occasionally cite Boccaccio’s lyrics favorably in the pages of the Prose. in any event, he seemed to sense the need to defend Boccaccio more cautiously. indeed, late in his lengthy Book 2 defense of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Federigo Fregoso concludes with the following words: “ché quantunque del Boccaccio si possa dire, che egli nel vero alcuna volta molto prudente scrittore stato non sia; con ciò sia cosa che egli mancasse talora di giudicio nello scrivere, non pure delle altre opere, ma nel Decamerone ancora; nondimeno quelle parti del detto libro, le quali egli poco giudiciosamente prese a scrivere, quelle medesime egli pure con buono e con leggiadro stile scrisse tutte; il che è quello che noi cerchiamo” [For however much one can say about Boccaccio, truly he was at times not a very prudent writer; inasmuch as he lacked judgment in his writing, not only in the other works, but also in the Decameron; nevertheless those parts of said book that he undertook to write injudiciously, he still wrote all with a good and light style, which is what we look for] (Prose, 87). This sentence contains two key words that demand parsing, prudente and giudicio.

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose

193

The latter follows from the former; prudenza is, according to the 1612 Vocabolario degli accademici della Crusca, “scienza del bene, e del male, che dispone a ben giudicar la cosa da farsi, o fuggirsi” [Knowledge of good and of evil, which disposes one to judge well what is to be done and to be avoided]. Boccaccio does not wholly lack prudenza; Fregoso, in fact, describes him as “alcuna volta [non] molto prudente scrittore” [at times not a very prudent writer]. in a similar manner, he writes at times “poco giudiciosamente” [injudiciously]; evidently his underdeveloped prudence led to moments of poor judgment. This attention to the content of the Decameron appears all the more striking against the backdrop of what readers of the Prose generally take to be its emphasis on aesthetics. Mario Marti made this point half a century ago in a review of Luigi Baldacci’s volume on Petrarchism, specifying that “la sua grammatica è proiettata nel cielo di un’estetica” [his grammar is launched into the heaven of an aesthetic] and emphasizing Bembo’s effort to reconcile the dual demands of gravità, gravity, and piacevolezza, pleasantness.20 Alessandra Martina renewed the argument in her more recent study, pointing out how Bembo de-emphasized content in favor of form in his discussion of Petrarchan lyric. That questions of content should enter the conversation about Boccaccio, even as Bembo balanced them with an insistence on the Decameron’s “buono e . . . leggiadro stile,” good and light style, suggests that the issue of content, first mentioned by Petrarch, had not gone away. By Bembo’s account, Boccaccio stood guilty of making some bad choices for which he, Bembo, had to answer before Boccaccian style could find accommodation as a model that surpassed that offered by his quattrocento successors. The tortured nature of Fregoso’s argument, which combines accusation and concession, exposes the tensions inherent in Bembo’s defense of Boccaccio: if there is less room for debate over Petrarch, there is still plenty of room for debate over Boccaccio. Bembo did manage to praise the varietas of the Decameron, though it was not the variety of registers that he lauded, and one gets the sense that the issue of Boccaccio’s lack of judgment remained a subtext. elucidating the principle that the writer must “schifare la sazietà il più che si può e il fastidio” [avoid satiety and annoyance as much as he can] (Prose, 82)—a big issue for Bembo, who has carlo make the same point in almost the exact same words earlier in Book 221—Fregoso praises Petrarch for finding variety in monotony, something of a backhanded compliment. Boccaccio,

194

A Boccaccian Renaissance

on the other hand, had the advantage of prose, whose arguments are infinite: “Bene si può questo dire che di quelle [cose], la variazione delle quali nelle prose può capere, gran maestro fu, a fuggirne la sazietà, il Boccaccio nelle sue novelle, il quale, avendo a far loro cento proemi, in modo tutti gli variò, che grazioso diletto danno a chi gli ascolta; senza che in tanti finimenti e rientramenti di ragionari, tra dieci persone fatti, schifare il fastidio non fu poco” [one can say this about those things whose variety can be contained in prose, Boccaccio in his novelle was a great master in avoiding satiety, because when having to write a hundred proems he varied them all, so that they give great delight to one who hears them; without which in so many endings and beginnings made among ten people it would not have been easy to avoid annoyance] (Prose, 83). so while Boccaccio earns praise for avoiding the tedium of repetition, Bembo also whittles away at the acceptable material of the Decameron, all but ignoring the passages that prove the arguments advanced in the proems, namely the novelle themselves, because it is the proems that provide grazioso diletto, graceful delight. The defense of varietas matters, too, because it opens the possibilities of subject matter available to prose that are not, thanks to Petrarch, suitable for poetry. The proems, it bears remembering, are argumentative in nature, and they syntactically achieve a level of ciceronian complexity that does not always find its way into the stories. They also advance a thesis, philosophical or otherwise, for which the novella furnishes the proof, sometimes serious, sometimes ironic. it makes sense that Bembo, who in much of his career advanced arguments in favor of one position or another and elsewhere expressed a predilection for ciceronian prose,22 would find these passages more to his liking. it is also true, unfortunately, that the point a proem makes may be detached from the story that illustrates that point. Any number of stories could exemplify the proem’s claim, which leaves the stories vulnerable to manipulation and substitution. Bembo’s own ambivalence about the content of the Decameron, as well as the textual problems he confronted when dealing with it, may help explain the fact that he did not publish an edition of the work. As noted above, Bembo published his Cose volgari of Petrarch with Aldo in 1501, followed quickly by the Terze rime of Dante in 1502. Bembo had surely been reading the Decameron by this point and no doubt recognized the value of an edition of that work. instead, in 1505 Bembo published the

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose

195

Asolani, which James c. Kriesel has argued contains a number of criticisms of and “corrections” to Boccaccio’s poetics that are consistent with claims advanced in the Prose. When by 1525 he published a Prose della volgar lingua that criticized Boccaccio’s lack of judgment while at the same time conceding the capital importance of the Decameron as a prose model of “buono e . . . leggiadro stile,” good and light style, this was a gesture that made the best of the work’s ambiguous status. in some ways Bembo could claim that the project of the Asolani, as Kriesel describes it, had been a success; before 1530, seven reprints of the 1505 edition had appeared23 a number that exactly matches the number of editions of the Decameron that appeared between 1501 and 1525.24 The chronology of Bembo’s publishing activities had implications for his endorsement of the Decameron as a prose model. For starters, one might wonder whether Bembo would have advanced a different argument in 1525 if the Asolani had been a wild success and no one was reading the Decameron anymore. The classicizing argument of the Prose is predicated on the claim, advanced by carlo Bembo, that there had been a decline in the quality of italian vernacular literature after Petrarch and Boccaccio. Bembo himself had attempted to reverse that trend with the Asolani, but its controversial reception appears to have been tied to its recourse to Boccaccio as a model.25 With the Asolani Bembo undertook two moves: first, to leap back over the quattrocento prose models, thus negating their validity, and second, to offer a positive alternative, the vernacular Boccaccio, to a trend that he associated with decline. The defense of the Decameron in the Prose suggests that the objections to Boccaccio lay not simply in a dissent from Bembo’s classicism but also in doubts about the value of the Decameron as a prose model, for the very reasons Bembo addressed in the Prose. Here again, dates matter. Bembo first published the Prose in 1525, but, as i mentioned earlier, he set it in 1503, two years before he published the Asolani and hard on the heels of his editions of Petrarch and Dante. This was a convenient way of making an ex post facto statement about the Asolani, namely that it was rooted in the classical models carlo Bembo would endorse in the Prose and was not written in an attempt to supplant either one. in fact, they were models for the Asolani, so there is nothing disingenuous about Bembo’s suggestion here.26 There is nevertheless an air of wistful surrender in this move. When in Book 2 of the Prose carlo Bembo says that “egli può bene avenire che

196

A Boccaccian Renaissance

alcuno viva, il quale miglior poeta sia o migliore oratore che niuno degli antichi, e nondimeno egli non abbia tanto grido e tanta fama raccolta dalle genti, quanto hanno essi” [it can very well happen that someone lives who is a better poet or orator than any of the ancients, and nevertheless he is not as well-known or famous among the people as they are] (53), he may very well be talking about his brother, who in the Asolani played the roles of both poeta and oratore. By returning to Petrarch and Boccaccio, even a wounded Boccaccio, Bembo is admitting that no one in the sixteenth century had yet to reverse the decline he identified with the fifteenth, including himself, and by 1525 he surely understood this to be the case. The retrenchment in classicism, for all its attendant controversy, emerges as the best among a number of imperfect options. so the Decameron was clearly a force to be reckoned with, but by no means was it invulnerable, and its weaknesses were regularly exposed in discussions of the text as the century progressed. certainly Bembo’s own reticence did not help protect it. Bembo appears to have been too busy thinking about his own career, after having paid his dues to Petrarch and Dante, or too flummoxed by the textual history of the Decameron, to give Boccaccio his due. By late in the century, his equivocations were codified, with the Decameron suffering significant revisions in its content at the hands of the Deputati (1573) and Lionardo salviati (1582). While in some ways both the Deputati and salviati labored heroically to protect the Decameron from more draconian ecclesiastical interventions, they were also dealing with a text that came to them already wounded. The historic instability of the text itself, its daring challenges to received notions of sexuality and the sanctity of the church, Bembo’s equivocal attitude toward it, the accusations about Boccaccio’s judgment that Bembo acknowledges—all conspired to render the text vulnerable. indeed, if the story of the assault on the Decameron does nothing else, it teaches an object lesson in the power of calumny. in 1550 Anton Francesco Doni published La libraria, the first alphabetical catalogue (by author’s first name) of italian vernacular literature.27 Most of the entries simply contain lists of titles. The entry for Boccaccio, however, includes an extended appraisal of the author in which Doni recounts that every time he visited certaldo he spent hours staring at Boccaccio’s tombstone: “Mi trasformavo in una statua, e perdevo me stesso” [i was transformed

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose

197

into a statue, and i lost myself ] (21r). He goes on: “Quale stile può esser piú candido, piú piano, piú dolce, piú suave di quello del Boccaccio? Di qual parte del perfetto oratore è egli privo? Qual cosa in qual lingua puo esser piú perfettamente raccontata? che cosa si può dire, nè che manchi, nè che avanzi, nè che fastidisca; anzi che sommamante non diletti nelle sue narrazioni?” [What style can be more clear, more plain, more sweet, more gentle than that of Boccaccio? What part of the perfect orator is he missing? What thing, in what language, can be more perfectly stated? What can be said, that is not lacking, or overmuch, or bothersome, indeed that is not highly pleasing in his narrations?] This is precisely the sort of wholehearted endorsement of Boccaccio that Bembo never offered. There follows the requisite list of works: Cento novelle, Laberinto d’Amore (the Corbaccio), Ameto, Filocolo, La fiammetta, Ninphale, Amorosa visione, Consolatoria a M. Pino de’ Rossi.28 Then comes this statement: “Mi duole che gli sia stato messo addosso una certa storiaccia, dico in quanto allo stil ladro, & ignorante, laquale è tanto sua quanto mia, che non la lessi giamai” [it pains me that a certain ugly story was told about him with regard to his stolen and ignorant style, which is just as much about him as it is about me, which i never read] (20r). Doni’s courageous claim of stylistic discipleship stands in stark contrast to Bembo’s more politic self-positioning. so Bembo’s critique about Boccaccio’s lack of prudence and judgment appears to have morphed into something more toxic by 1550. Doni’s statement commands attention because it records an animosity toward Boccaccio that predates the Decameron’s consignment to the index while at the same time helping explain the text’s sad destiny later in the century. Bembo, and Petrarch before him, undertook to balance the perceived defects of the Decameron with praise for its many other virtues, splitting the baby as it were. By Doni’s time the camps appear to have become fractiously polarized, with Doni participating in a much more spirited defense of much graver attacks against the masterpiece. Bembo’s efforts, equivocal as they were, in the end did not suffice to elevate Boccaccio to the top of the vernacular Parnassus alongside Petrarch. Given cultural circumstances beyond his control, it is not clear that he could have done anything more to protect the Decameron. nevertheless, we do a disservice to the history of Boccaccio’s greatest work if we read the Prose as giving the Decameron its full due.

198

A Boccaccian Renaissance noTes

1. Volume 6 of salerno’s Storia della letteratura italiana, La critica letteraria dal Due al Novecento, ed. Paolo orvieto (Rome: salerno, 2003), contains chapters titled “La critica dantesca nel cinquecento” (by saverio Bellomo) and “Petrarca nel cinquecento” (by Paola Vecchi Galli), but no comparable entry on Boccaccio. on the other hand, volume 2 of Franco Brioschi and costanzo Di Girolamo’s Manuale di letteratura italiana: Storia per Generi e Problemi (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1994), which covers a period running from the sixteenth century through the middle of the eighteenth, does devote fifteen pages to “Forme brevi nel cinquecento,” including the novella, versus forty pages to the lyric tradition of the cinquecento, including Petrarchism. see as well the chapters by Kircher and Richardson in this volume. 2. on the relationship between the Decameron and the Libro del cortegiano, see stephen Kolsky, “The Decameron and Il Libro del Cortegiano: story of a conversation,” Heliotropia 5 (2008), http://www.heliotropia.org. 3. The Asolani were first published in 1505. We also have a draft manuscript of the text, which elisa curti dates to sometime between “gli ultimissimi anni del Quattrocento e la fine del 1502” (“L’Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta e gli Asolani di Pietro Bembo: Alcune osservazioni sulle postille bembesche al codice Ambrosiano D29 inf.,” Studi sul Boccaccio 30 [2002]: 254). 4. see curti, who documents Bembo’s close engagement with the Fiammetta in the draft of the Asolani. see also James c. Kriesel, who argues that Bembo rewrites and corrects in the Asolani the carnal poetics of Boccaccio’s Ameto (“chastening the corpus: Bembo and the Renaissance Reception of Boccaccio,” Italianist 31 [2011]: 367–91). 5. Vittore Branca, Boccaccio medievale (Milan: Rizzoli, 2010), 26–28. 6. Gilson reviews the tradition of volgarizzamenti in his chapter of this volume, and Kircher discusses the trend of translation into Latin. 7. emanuela scarano, in “La critica rinascimentale,” in Storia della critica letteraria in Italia, ed. Giorgio Baroni (Turin: uTeT, 1997), 175–222, makes an important point in this context, noting the novelty of Bembo’s decision to write a dialogue in the vernacular: “La forma dialogica . . . diventerà poi diffusissima nella trattatistica in volgare, ma . . . ora è inusitata e per vari aspetti provocatoria, perché immette l’opera sul ‘volgare’ in una tradizione ‘nobile,’ tipica della letteratura umanistica in lingua latina e riservata ad argomenti di grande rilevanza morale e culturale” [The dialogic form . . . will become very widespread in the vernacular treatise, but . . . now it is unused and for various reasons provocative, because it inserts the “vulgar” work into a “noble” tradition, typical of humanist literature in Latin and reserved for topics of great moral and cultural relevance] (182). 8. Francis Petrarch, Letters of Old Age: Rerum senilium libri I–XVIII, trans. Aldo s. Bernardo, saul Levin, and Reta A. Bernardo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins university Press, 1992), 656.

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose

199

9. For more on humanist biographies of Boccaccio, see Daniels’s chapter in this volume. Daniels points out that both Bruni’s and Manetti’s biographies reflect the rhetorical tradition of Florentine promotion, though their specific attention to Boccaccio remains telling. Kircher discusses a number of quattrocento translations into Latin of single novelle of the Decameron. 10. corrado Bologna, Tradizione e fortuna dei classici italiani, vol. 1: Dalle origini al Tasso (Turin: einaudi, 1993), 361–62. 11. on the dating of the Parsons fragment and other early incunables, see claudio Marazzini, “il frammento che cambia la storia,” Letture 54 (1999): 42–43. 12. on this latter work, see John n. Grant, “Pietro Bembo and Vat. Lat. 3226,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 37 (1988): 211–43. De imitatione was written in response to Pico’s letter on the same subject, penned in Latin, and it makes sense that Bembo would have confronted the issue on the same linguistic ground as Pico. 13. Bembo makes strozzi into a genial fall guy for assuming the antivernacular position. strozzi did, in fact, try his hand at vernacular poetry and, even more importantly, served as a reader in 1504 for Bembo’s draft of the Asolani. on the latter question, see cecil H. clough, “Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani of 1505,” MLN 84 (1969): 27. 14. Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua, ed. Mario Marti (Padua: Liviana, 1967), 8. other editions are available, including two by Dionisotti (Prose della volgar lingua and Prose e rime, published by uTeT in 1931 and 1966, respectively). none of these is perfect, and a new edition would appear to be called for. The third edition of the Prose, published posthumously, contains a number of stoppress interventions, the source of which remains dubious: They may be corrections that Bembo had made but that were missed when the type was first set, or they may represent editorial interventions. For more on this, see my essay “La torrentiniana delle Prose della volgar lingua: un contributo di bibliografia testuale,” Filologia e critica 31 (2006): 177–99. 15. on this topic, see nicoletta Maraschio, “Grafia e ortografia: evoluzione e codificazione,” in Storia della lingua italiana, vol. 1: I luoghi della codificazione, ed. Luca serianni and Pietro Trifone (Turin: einaudi, 1993), 177. 16. Michele Barbi, “sul testo del ‘Decameron,’” in La nuova filologia e l’edizione dei nostri scrittori da Dante al Manzoni (Florence: sansoni, 1973), 39. 17. Maraschio discusses these problems on pp. 175–76 of her essay. For a detailed analysis of the composition of the Aldine Petrarch, see sandra Giarin, “Petrarca e Bembo: L’edizione aldina del ‘canzoniere,’” Studi di filologia italiana 62 (2004): 161–93. For examples of how Renaissance editors addressed textual questions in the Decameron, see Richardson’s chapter in this volume. 18. carlo Vecce, “Bembo, Boccaccio, e due varianti al testo delle Prose,” Aevum 69 (1995): 527. 19. They are Giovanni Villani, recognized for his “istoria fiorentina”; Pietro crescenzo, the Bolognese author of the Liber ruralium commodorum, which

200

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Bembo may have known in the original Latin or in a Tuscan volgarizzamento dating to the trecento; Guido Giudice from Messina, known for a Latin prose version of the Roman de Troie, which Bembo likely knew by way of its volgarizzamento; and Dante. 20. Mario Marti, “Bembo e il petrarchismo italiano del cinquecento,” Belfagor 12 (1957): 449. 21. “È di mestiero nondimeno in queste medesime regole servar modo, e schifare sopra tutto la sazietà, variando alle volte e le voci gravi con alcuna temperata, e le temperate con alcuna leggera, e così allo ’ncontro queste con alcuna di quelle, e quelle con alcuna dell’altre né più né meno” [it is nevertheless the task in these same rules to follow the rule and avoid satiety, varying at times the serious voices with some tempered ones, and the tempered ones with some light ones, and likewise these with some of those, and those with some of the others neither more nor less] (55). in this case the argument leads to a principal criticism of Dante: “ma se pure ciò aviene, dico che da tacere è quel tanto, che sporre non si può acconciamente, più tosto che, sponendolo, macchiarne l’altra scrittura; massimamente dove la necessità non istringa e non isforzi lo scrittore, della qual necessità i poeti, sopra gli altri, sono lontani. e il vostro Dante, Giuliano, quando volle far comperazione degli scabbiosi, meglio avrebbe fatto ad aver del tutto quelle comperazioni taciute, che a scriverle nella maniera che egli fece” [but even if that happens, i say that one should remain silent if one cannot state it cleanly, rather than, in stating it, spoil the other writing; especially where necessity does not require and force the writer, from which necessity the poets, above all, are distant. And your Dante, Giuliano, when he wanted to make a comparison about the sufferers of scabies, would have done better to be silent with all those comparisons than to write them the way he did] (56). 22. Bembo regularly praises cicero along with Virgil in the De imitatione epistle addressed to Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, the former for oratory and the latter for heroic poetry. 23. The 1505 first edition of the Asolani came out in Florence, from the Giunta Press. it reappeared in 1515, twice in Venice and once in Florence; in 1515 in Bologna; in 1517 in Milan; and in 1522 and 1525 in Venice. see clough, “Pietro Bembo’s Gli asolani,” for the inventory. 24. Brian Richardson, “The Textual History of the Decameron,” in Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham, Michael sherberg, and Janet Levarie smarr (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2013), 44–45. 25. in any event, this is scarano’s implication: “D’altra parte lo stesso Bembo circa un decennio prima (1505) aveva pubblicato (e non senza suscitare qualche clamore) gli Asolani, la cui prosa, rigorosamente modellata su quella del Boccaccio, fu a ragione recepita come proposta esemplare e provocatoria di una nuova lingua letteraria” [on the other hand Bembo himself about a decade earlier, in 1505, had published—and not without provoking great clamor—the Asolani, whose prose,

Bembo, Boccaccio, and the Prose

201

rigorously modeled on that of Boccaccio, was rightly received as an exemplary and provocative proposal for a new literary language] (179). Theodore J. cachey likewise notes that “contemporary courtly and humanistic reactions to the 1505 Asolani reveal that the work was not without serious ambiguity as a prose model” (“‘il pane del grano e la saggina’: Pietro Bembo’s 1505 Asolani revisited,” Italianist 12 [1992]: 5); in other words, it appears not to have succeeded in supplanting the Decameron, if that was in fact Bembo’s intention. 26. on the composition of the Asolani, see curti; clough, “Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani ”; and cachey. 27. The book appeared in Venice, published by Giolito Press, and was reissued in 1557 and 1558, along with a Seconda libraria published in 1555. For an analysis of the importance of Doni’s work for the history of the book, see Roger chartier, The Order of Books, trans. Lydia G. cochrane (stanford, cA: stanford university Press, 1994). 28. The entry and list also appear in the 1580 posthumous edition published and edited by Altobello salicato, though with one noteworthy exception: the Cento novelle has disappeared. salicato boasts of certain modifications on its title page: “Aggiuntiui tutti i libri volgari posti in luce da trenta anni in quà, & leuatone fuori tutti gli Autori, & libri prohibiti.” By this time the Decameron would have made it onto the index. indeed, in the 1569 edition of the index the prohibition is made explicit and conditional: “Boccaccij Decades, seu novellaecentum, quandiu expurgatæ non prodierint” [Boccaccio, Decades, or one Hundred stories, until they come out in expurgated form] (B3r).

cHAPTeR 8

“For instruction and benefit” The Renaissance Boccaccio as Model of Language and Life

br ian r ic har ds on

When we assess what was Boccaccian about the Renaissance in italy or how far it reacted against Boccaccio’s influence, we need to consider first the question of how Renaissance readers encountered Boccaccio’s texts. in the great majority of cases this encounter took place through the medium of print. This chapter considers how three kinds of figures who used the printed book to present the vernacular texts of Boccaccio to the contemporary public—editors, grammarians, and lexicographers—played their parts in forming the Renaissance Boccaccio by determining what they saw as the correct language of his texts, by influencing perceptions of it, and, in the case of some editors, by guiding readers’ interpretation of his works.1 The activities of these men were themselves shaped to a large extent by a common factor: the desire to present Boccaccio’s vernacular works as exemplary. An instance that reflects the two main aspects of this exemplarity is a letter to readers that was signed by nicolò Garanta, a bookseller-publisher working in Venice, in an edition of the Decameron printed by Gregorio De Gregori in october 1525. This was the month after the appearance in the same city of the first edition of Pietro Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua, which presented Boccaccio as the major model 202

“For instruction and benefit”

203

for vernacular prose writing (even if his attitude toward the Tuscan author was not unequivocal, as Michael sherberg argues in his chapter in this volume).2 Garanta opens by observing that italian men of letters esteemed the Decameron more highly than any other Tuscan prose “per eleganza et abondevol coppia del dire” [for elegance and abundant wealth of language]. The study of Boccaccio is also seen as a pathway to good composition: “Affermano etiandio gli medesimi [ingegni] la lettura di tanto auttore essere di non poca utilità et ornamento a gli amatori, et assidovi componitori delle soavi dilicatezze di prosa et verso thosco” [The same (minds) also affirm that reading this author is of no small benefit and adornment to those who love and compose the sweet delicacies of Tuscan prose and verse]. Garanta continues: spero che la varietà dell’inventione, l’acuità dell’ingegno, et ultimamente la nativa dolcezza nel comporre del scientiato Boccaccio intiera, et sanza macola perverrà alle mani di qualunque virtuosa, et honorevole persona, la qual per ammaestramento et commodo della vita humana tai novelle in thosca lingua composte con ardentissima affettione legger disidera.3 [i hope that the variety of invention, the sharpness of mind, and lastly the innately sweet writing of the learned Boccaccio will reach, entire and unsullied, the hands of any virtuous and honorable person who wishes to read with the most ardent affection these stories written in Tuscan, for the instruction and benefit of human life.] Garanta, then, felt that Boccaccio’s Decameron was to be admired for its author’s skill but was at the same time a useful work, particularly as a model of Tuscan language and also for the lessons on living that readers can draw from it. Like Garanta, sixteenth-century editors of the Decameron put considerable emphasis on the first of these two kinds of benefit to readers. The Venetian Lodovico Dolce, for instance, dedicating the work to Bembo in 1541, describes the ten days of the work as “non pure a legger piacevolissime, ma necessarie in tutto a chi vuol bene et leggiadramente valersi, sì delle osservationi, come della proprietà et elegantia del puro et gentile sermone Thoscano” [not only most pleasant to read, but utterly

204

A Boccaccian Renaissance

necessary to whoever wishes to make good and graceful use both of the study and of the quality and elegance of pure and noble Tuscan speech].4 The term “osservationi” was used to mean the observation of grammatical rules and the rules themselves, and Dolce later adopted the term as the title of his own grammar, first published in 1550. in a Decameron of 1552 printed in Venice by Gabriele Giolito, the dedicatory letter called Boccaccio’s work “le sue dieci giornate; dalle quali s’impara la regolata lingua toscana” [his ten days, from which one learns Tuscan that adheres to the rules].5 Because the Decameron was seen as a model of Tuscan prose, midcentury Venetian editions of the work were festooned with paratexts designed to help readers use the work in this way. The title page of this edition of 1552 refers to the text as “nuovamente alla sua vera lettione ridotto” [newly restored to its true reading] and lists some of the materials added by Dolce in order to help readers imitate it, including a glossary of difficult words. The competition between editors at this point is illustrated by the even more detailed title page of a rival edition of the same year edited by Girolamo Ruscelli: Here the Decameron has been “nuovamente alla sua intera perfettione, non meno nella scrittura, che nelle parole ridotto” [newly restored to its entire perfection, no less in spelling than in vocabulary], and it is accompanied by explanations, annotations, advice on difficult passages, rules, and adornments of the vernacular, as well as a glossary. editors such as Dolce and Ruscelli, and also (as we shall see) grammarians and lexicographers, all of them intending to have their work published in print, appear to have been responding to an imperative that was at once cultural and commercial: on the one hand, the establishment of a new linguistic orthodoxy, as justified and explained above all by Bembo, and, on the other hand, the demand for models of correct usage on the part of readers who themselves wished to write Tuscan well. There was pressure on all these mediators to present Boccaccio’s language in a form that was consistent with the rules that it was supposed to embody. This could lead to their ironing out perceived anomalies or incorrect usage in order to present Boccaccio’s texts in a way that facilitated both reading and imitating them.6 When these men came to decide on the correct form of Boccaccio’s texts, they faced two principal problems. The first was how to deal with language that did not conform to the standards expected of good

“For instruction and benefit”

205

literary usage in the cinquecento, for instance, because it was rare, archaic, or insufficiently high-sounding to their ears. The second, which arose only if they consulted more than one manuscript or printed text, was that of variant readings: How were they to choose between the alternatives that these sources offered? in both cases, they preferred, with few exceptions (such as Vincenzio Borghini in Florence), to present texts that did not deviate from the norms that they believed the texts should embody. editors might smooth the surface of Boccaccio’s texts just as they would the works of lesser authors. An example is presented by the Corbaccio edited by the Paduan priest Lucio Paolo Rosello around 1525, who introduces arbitrary corrections to his source text, the Florentine edition of 1516, in order to make its forms correspond with what he considers good Tuscan practice.7 in the case of the Decameron, the editor who made the strongest attempts to regularize its language was Dolce. in the dedication to the 1541 edition mentioned earlier, he laments the textual corruption that had afflicted earlier editions of the Decameron, which had adopted more modern forms in place of the genuine old language of Boccaccio. Those responsible for previous printed editions chose arbitrarily, he says, between the variants that had already been created in the manuscript tradition through the ignorance of scribes. Worse, he says, some editors have been guilty of insensitive updating: “Hanno voluto che ’l Boccaccio favelli vie più tosto al modo loro nuovo” [They have wanted Boccaccio to speak rather in their own new way]. As a result, it has come about that the Decameron, “dal quale le regole della volgar grammatica si sono prese, poche o niuna ne i loro libri ve n’habbia servate compiutamente o ve ne servi” [from which the rules of vernacular grammar have been derived, has fully observed and observes few if any of them in their editions].8 similarly, Dolce wrote in a letter to readers in his two editions of 1552, published by Giolito, that no work needed more emendation than the Decameron, first because from it “si cavano le regole e la forma del ben scrivere” [the rules and form of good writing are derived], and second because none of the texts printed so far is readable (his own earlier edition presumably excepted).9 yet here was the rub: ironically, in spite of Dolce’s awareness of the dangers of arbitrary intervention, his own texts contributed to the further corruption of the Decameron because of his misguided insistence that the text should exemplify preconceived norms of fourteenth-century usage.

206

A Boccaccian Renaissance

He told readers of his editions of 1552 that “non è verisimile che egli [il Boccaccio] volesse empir le carte di parole antiche, che sogliono rendere oscurità, o abiette o vili” [it is improbable that Boccaccio wanted to fill his pages with old words, which tend to create obscurity, or ones that are despicable or base], unlike authors of an earlier age, such as Dante. Dolce said that older forms such as “atare” [to help] rather than “aitare,” “fedire” [to wound] rather than “ferire,” or “sanza” [without] rather than “senza” could not be attributed to Boccaccio, just as they are not found in Petrarch. even if these forms were found “nel popolo” [among the common people], Dolce goes on, “non conveniva che il Boccaccio le ricevesse, havendo rispetto alle persone . . . che le novelle raccontano” [it would not have been fitting for Boccaccio to accept them in view of the persons who are telling the tales], since the narrators are of noble birth. Dolce therefore replaced the unacceptable forms with “le più belle e le più comuni” [the most beautiful and the most common ones]. Dolce was also hampered by the preconception that Boccaccio stood in relation to vernacular prose as cicero did to Latin prose, in other words, that he should be an invariably sound guide to correct usage. He argues that the Latin comedians Terence and Plautus may have used the more archaic forms “lachruma” and “scribundi,” rather than “lachrima” and “scribendi,” but cicero did not.10 A different approach, but one that was in its way equally unsatisfactory, was used by another influential editor, Girolamo Ruscelli, in the Decameron already mentioned, printed for Vincenzo Valgrisi in 1552.11 on the face of it, Ruscelli offered a text that was more faithful to Boccaccio’s original, in a reaction against the methods of Dolce. Ruscelli tells readers that he has preserved archaic and non-Petrarchan forms such as boto, boce, amenduni, imbolare, stea, dea, and sanza for a number of reasons (fol. *6r-v). He makes the sound points that it is quite possible for the usage of Boccaccio to have differed from that of Petrarch, that Boccaccio used a variety of linguistic registers, and that the noble members of the brigata were not restricted to using their own language when telling their stories. Against Dolce’s mention of “lachruma” and “scribundi,” Ruscelli points out that “altro non è la novella, che una comedia raccolta in sostanza, et rappresentata da un solo histrione, il qual si vesta la persona di tutti gli altri” [a short story is simply a play summarized and performed by a single actor, who takes on the role of all the others] (fol. *6v).

“For instruction and benefit”

207

However, while Ruscelli’s text is more authentic than Dolce’s, he forces one to read it through the lens of his own judgments of Boccaccio’s language, which show a clear leaning toward Petrarch as a model for imitation. if Ruscelli’s readers were to benefit from studying his text of the Decameron, they also needed advice on when not to imitate its prose. To this end, Ruscelli uses annotations placed in the margins and at the end of each day in order to draw readers’ attention to the differences between Boccaccio’s language and that of both Petrarch and “[il] parlar commune” [the common usage] of his own day (fol. *5r). This latter, Ruscelli implies, constitutes standard usage. Following are some examples of Ruscelli’s judgments on the harshness of Boccaccio’s lexis and syntax or its divergence from modern usage. in each instance, quotation marks enclose passages of the Decameron that Ruscelli is annotating, with the points in question italicized, and these passages are followed by Ruscelli’s commentary, with a translation of it in brackets. “Marsilia . . . già fu di ricchi uomini e di gran mercatanti più copiosa che oggi non si vede; tra’ quali ne fu un chiamato n’Arnald civada . . . , il quale d’una sua donna avea più figliuoli, de’ quali tre n’erano femine” [4.3.8]. il tanto replicar di quale e quali ne’ principii di tutte queste clausole fa qui un tacito dispiacere nell’orecchie di quei che leggono o l’ascoltano.12 [so much repetition of quale and quali at the start of all these clauses gives implicit displeasure to the ears of those reading or listening to it.] “Della qual cosa avvedutosi Restagnone, . . . pensò di potersi ne’ suoi difetti adagiare per lo costoro amore” [4.3.11]. Avverti difetti per bisogni, alquanto duramente posto. [note difetti instead of bisogni, expressed somewhat harshly.] “Padre mio, io non credo che bisogni che io la istoria del mio ardire e della mia sciagura vi racconti” [4.6.38]. Sciagura, et sventura, et disaventura usarono gli antichi, per quello che hoggi così in Toscana come in tutto il resto d’italia diciamo disgratia.

208

A Boccaccian Renaissance

[Sciagura, sventura, and disaventura were used long ago for what nowadays, both in Tuscany and everywhere else in italy, we say disgratia.] “la novella dell’usignolo” [5.5.2]. Usignuolo piacque sempre al Boccaccio di dire. Rosignuolo disse sempre il Petrarca et certamente molto più bello che usignuolo. [Boccaccio always liked to say usignuolo. Petrarch always said rosignuolo, certainly much more beautiful than usignuolo.] “La precedente novella mi tira a dovere similmente ragionar d’un geloso, estimando che ciò che si fa loro dalla lor donna . . . esser ben fatto” [7.5.3]. Questo incomportabil vitio che ha il Boc. di dare la congiuntione che allo infinito . . . non fu avvertito dal Bembo, che oltre che è vitio senza scusa, l’havrebbe almen ricordato come proprio modo o forma di dire.13 [This intolerable fault that Boccaccio has of putting the conjunction che before the infinitive was not noted by Bembo. Apart from its being an inexcusable fault, he would at least have mentioned it as a particular expression or form of speech.] Ruscelli accepts that old, harsh terms can be used occasionally; nevertheless, the effect of his annotations is that Boccaccio’s text does not stand on its own and that its perceived shortcomings as a model are highlighted. Ruscelli treats variant readings with a similar approach. in his Decameron he tends to prefer the evidence of “modern” texts (that is, printed editions), and he dismisses as implausible the unfamiliar forms found in “old” texts, which may be manuscripts or simply the earlier printed editions, as in these annotations: “quanti nobili habitari . . . rimaser voti” [1 intr. 48]. “Quanti nobili habituri” trovo io in tutti i testi moderni, et per certo molto mi maraviglio onde tal cosa habbia havuto origine; habituro nome non è voce nè Toscana, nè Lombarda, nè spagnuola, nè anco Arabica, o Pappagallesca.

“For instruction and benefit”

209

[i find “quanti nobili habituri” in all the modern texts, and i am certainly much amazed about where this came from. The noun habituro is not a word that is Tuscan, Lombard, spanish, or even Arabic or parrot language.] “e fatto prima sembiante d’avere la ninetta messa in un sacco e doverla quella notte stessa farla in mare mazzerare” [4.3.28]. Mazzerare non macerare come ben dice il diligentissimo Alunno hanno qui molti testi antichi, ma a me non piace.14 [Mazzerare [to kill by drowning], not macerare, as the most diligent Alunno says, is found here in many old texts, but i do not like it.] “qual cosa la fortuna fu favorevole e lor produsse in un piccolo seno di mare” [5.1.41]. Perdusse hanno qui i testi antichi, che non mi piace in alcun modo. [The old texts have perdusse here, which i do not like at all.] However, all of the forms rejected in these examples are found in the Berlin manuscript written in Boccaccio’s own hand.15 Ruscelli’s glossary of difficult terms, appended to this edition, contains entries for forms that he considers errors but are in fact genuine. one is for “aguale” [now], in a ballata (2 concl., 14), which Ruscelli says is a misprint for “equale,” “uguale,” or “iguale.” Another concerns “meccere” in 3.3.50; this, he claims (partly repeating his sarcastic comments on habituro), is a fantasy word, “nè Volgare, nè Latina, nè greca, nè Araba, nè ancor Pappagallesca” [not vernacular, Latin, Greek, Arabic, or even parrot language]. Ruscelli continues his criticisms of Boccaccio’s language in comparison with Petrarch’s, writing, for example, that Boccaccio often used “amendune” and “amenduni” [both], while Petrarch never used these harsh terms. Ruscelli does, however, correctly note that “accupate,” listed in Alberto Acarisio’s Vocabolario of 1543, is an erroneous reading (fol. a3r). The editorial strategies of Dolce and Ruscelli defined how the Decameron was encountered by many readers from the 1540s into the early seventeenth century. Most editions of the work published between the second decade of the century and the 1550s fall into one of two sequences.

210

A Boccaccian Renaissance

The first is Venetian in origin, starting with nicolò Delfino’s edition of 1516, which led to further Venetian editions of 1522, 1535, and 1541 and culminated in Dolce’s two editions of 1552, which also took some readings from the Florentine edition of 1527 and from Giolito’s edition of 1546. Dolce’s text was not used by later editors, but its publication by the house of Giolito would have lent it authority among the reading public. The second sequence stemmed from the Florentine edition of 1527 and led, via the editions of Antonio Brucioli (1538 and 1542) and Francesco sansovino (1546) and via editions printed by Giolito in quarto (1548 and 1550) and in duodecimo (1550), to Ruscelli’s edition of 1552. This last text proved more influential in the long term, since it was followed by a second edition printed in 1554 and 1555, then a third edition of 1557, and became, in turn, the basis of the text censored by Luigi Groto and printed in 1588, 1590, and 1612.16 Variants in the Decameron were sometimes debated, too, in the grammars and dictionaries of the cinquecento, and these discussions could similarly be shaped by a preference for regularity and the avoidance of exceptional usage. Giovan Francesco Fortunio favored readings that helped Boccaccio’s language fit the rules set out in his grammar, the Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua (1516). For example, he argued that, when texts of the Decameron had lui and lei used as subject pronouns rather than object pronouns, such readings must have resulted from errors made by scribes or printers.17 Bembo did not suggest emendations to the Decameron in his Prose della volgar lingua, and he maintained that the Decameron was always stylistically impeccable even in the places where the author lacked good judgment with regard to his content.18 However, he sometimes implied that he had reservations about Boccaccio’s use of forms that were archaic or had become associated with the lower classes.19 Bembo seemed to avoid the problem of identifying a single reliable source text by correcting a printed text, probably Delfino’s, with readings from an old manuscript, as carlo Vecce has commented.20 Those who compiled dictionaries and glossaries that incorporated Boccaccio’s usage would also sometimes be faced by a choice between variant readings. earlier we saw Ruscelli’s mention of the Ferrarese lexicographer Francesco Alunno apropos of the rare form mazzerare. in an entry from his Ricchezze della lingua volgare sopra il Boccaccio (first edition,

“For instruction and benefit”

211

1543), Alunno uses personal taste as the basis of his choice of a reading in Decameron 9.5.11, one of the stories about calandrino. under the lemma imbarbugliare (fol. L4r) he notes that some texts have “s’imbarbigliò” while others have “s’imbardò” (both meaning “he was confused [by love]”), but “più mi quadra il primo” [i like the first more]. However, the Berlin autograph manuscript has one of the forms that Alunno rejects, “s’imbardò.” When Alunno registers alternative forms in his major dictionary, La fabrica del mondo, nella quale si contengono tutte le voci di Dante, del Petrarca, del Boccaccio, et d’altri buoni autori (Venice: nicolò Bascarini, 1548), he often expresses no preference, as when he cites, under secondare [to follow, fol. kk2r], an example of “secondasse” from Decameron 7.7.2, but adds that in some texts one reads “seguissi.” This is evidently a case of substitution of a simpler synonym. Alunno prefers another lectio facilior in his entry for stuzzicare [to touch, fol. ii3r]; he cites an instance from Decameron 2.7.89, but adds that “modern” texts have “solazzare” [to give pleasure], “che più mi piace” [which i like more]. Again, the Berlin autograph manuscript has the unusual form that Alunno favors less, “stuzzicare.” We saw at the outset, in the letter by nicolò Garanta, an allusion to a subsidiary but nevertheless significant factor that could affect the presentation of Boccaccio’s works: the desire to read them for the insight into human life that they could impart. Boccaccio himself had of course drawn attention to the role of the Decameron as a source of both pleasure (“diletto”) and useful advice (“utile consiglio”) for women readers in his Proemio, 14. some of his rubrics preceding stories imply judgments on the characters: “il folle amore del re di Francia” [the mad love of the king of France, 1.5], “la malvagia ipocresia de’ religiosi” [the wicked hypocrisy of the clergy, 1.6], and so on; and the narrators can comment on the behavior of the characters in their tales. The Florentine humanist Matteo Palmieri, writing in the 1430s, regretted that Boccaccio’s vernacular works were full of “tanta lascivia et dissoluti exempli d’amore” [so much lewdness and dissolute examples of love] but conceded that they also offered “cose morali et precepti di ben vivere” [moral matters and precepts of living well].21 in the sixteenth century, some editors continued to suggest that Boccaccio’s works should be read with an eye to the precepts that could be gleaned from them. Around 1516 a law graduate from Padua, castorio Laurario, brought out two editions of the Corbaccio, each preceded by a prologue.22 Both

212

A Boccaccian Renaissance

prologues defend Boccaccio from accusations of misogyny, but in the first Laurario also sets out to emphasize the worth of the work’s moral teachings on male–female relationships. He himself had found reading the Corbaccio helpful in his youth “doppo qualche amorosa esperienza” [after some experiences of love]. He describes the work as healthy reading for all young men, since it is cosa veramente singulare, et egregia et a ingegni sul fior delli verdi anni salutifera et di ciò per poter del cieco figluolo di citherea gli accuti et penetrevoli strali rintuzati renderli, et le focose suoe saette estinguere, le quali alle più fiate arrechano grandissima cagione a cattivelli giovenetti pocco scaltri de incorrer in noiosa miseria et vergognosa ruina et sovente ancho in grandissimi perigli de la propria vita loro. (1516 edition, fols. A1v–A2r) [a truly singular and outstanding work, and beneficial to minds in the full bloom of youth, by which they can blunt the sharp and penetrating darts of the blind son of Venus and extinguish his fiery arrows, which are most often a major cause of wretched and unwary youths’ suffering painful misery and shameful ruin and often also running into very grave danger of their own life.] God gave women to men as companions, Laurario argues, and we (he is evidently addressing a male readership at this point) must not love them excessively: Havendo el sommo iddio datani la donna per compagna quale è parte de l’ossa nostre acciò in essa ordinatamente et non fuor del debito stile delettarsi dobbiamo et acciò a noi ancho soggetta servendo in qualunche nostre necessitati agevolemente haggiani a soccorrere. (fol. A3r) [Almighty God having given woman to us as a companion, as part of our bones, so that we must delight in her in an orderly way and not beyond what is fitting, and so that, also serving us as our subject in any of our needs, she can easily support us.]

“For instruction and benefit”

213

Laurario distinguishes between “l’amore ordinato di donna” [orderly love of women] and “[la] rea et sfrenata lascivia” [culpable and unbridled lust]. in this respect, he says, Petrarch in his Canzoniere was a fine example, since he never went beyond “li detti doi gradi del vedere solamente et ragionare” [the two stages already mentioned, of just looking (at Laura) and talking (to her)]. The third stage in a relationship, “che è del tochar o basciar subitamente, non si dice esser più amore ma lascivia” [which is touching or kissing straight away, is called no longer love but lust], and it is permitted only in wedlock (fols. A3v–A4r). now addressing married and unmarried women readers, Laurario advises them never to go beyond the first two stages if they are to avoid the kind of critique that Boccaccio makes in this work: Per tanto, nobilissime matrone et leggiadre giovene che ’l pregio d’honestate nel cor fisso havete, scaltre di ciò esser vogliate et guardinghe, et sopra tutto con honestate amare, gli detti doi gradi per niuno modo trapassando se non volete dar cagione di simel invettive anche di voi far ad altri comporre qual ha fatto il nostro poeta da certaldo. (fol. A4r) [Therefore, most noble ladies and fair maidens who have the quality of honorableness fixed in your heart, be wary and watchful about this, and above all love with honorableness, in no way going beyond the two levels mentioned unless you wish to give cause to make others write similar invectives about you, too, as did our poet of certaldo.] Laurario’s concluding advice to his readers is to save their souls by keeping their love within bounds. Another work presented as a lesson on love was the Fiammetta. The edition printed in 1542 by Gabriele Giolito has a dedication, signed by him, addressed to the ladies of casale Monferrato, near his home town of Trino in Piedmont. The Fiammetta, he argues in the dedication, is the prose work of Boccaccio’s that offers the greatest consolation and usefulness to women. since the work contains the sighs and tears of a young woman abandoned by her lover, “chi non comprende cotesto essere a solo

214

A Boccaccian Renaissance

essempio, et ammaestramento di voi?” [who does not understand that it was written solely as an example and lesson for you?]. The “ammaestramento,” or lesson (the term that, as we saw, was also used in nicolò Garanta’s letter of 1525), is not to despise all men but to love cautiously, and the Fiammetta provides a negative model of how women should not love, as did the widow in the Corbaccio in the eyes of castorio Laurario. in the same period, Francesco sansovino promoted a reading of the Decameron for the moral guidance that it could impart, by adding at the head of each story a brief summary of the precept or precepts that it illustrated. These allegorie, as they were later termed, were introduced in his edition of 1546 and were repeated in later editions printed by the firm of Giolito, such as the two editions of 1552, sometimes in a form expanded (presumably) by Dolce.23 For instance, the story of Landolfo Rufolo (2.4) is said in the 1546 edition to show “a quanti pericoli può incorrer l’huomo per desiderio d’arricchire” [how many dangers one can encounter through a desire for wealth], which is developed in the 1552 editions as “a quanti pericoli può condur l’huomo la soverchia cura di arricchire; et la pietosa benignità di Dio” [into how many dangers an excessive preoccupation with wealth can lead one; and God’s merciful kindness]. Readers were encouraged to seek a moral that sometimes had a misogynistic slant, stressing the frailty and the self-seeking nature of women. The adventures of Masetto da Lamporecchio in a convent (3.1) exemplify, in the 1546 edition, “quanto sia difficil cosa a serbare in tutti i luoghi la virginità” [how difficult it is to preserve one’s virginity in all places], and, then in the 1552 edition, with specific reference to women, “quanto sia difficil cosa alle donne il serbare non pure ne’ luoghi profani, ma ancho ne’ monasteri, la virginità” [how difficult it is for women to preserve their virginity not merely in profane places, but even in monasteries]. “La fragilità delle donne, et la sciocchezza d’alcuni mariti; i quali lasciano le mogli sole” [the frailty of women, and the foolishness of some husbands who leave their wives on their own] is the moral drawn from the tale of Zima and Francesco Vergellesi (3.5). The hermit Rustico’s encounter with the beautiful young Alibech (3.10) contains lessons about the control of sexual desire but also a warning about the naïveté of women: “nel che si dimostra, quanto difficil cosa sia a poter vincere li stimoli della carne; et quanto facile all’incontro sotto ombra di religione ingannare una semplice et sciocca femina” [in which it is shown how

“For instruction and benefit”

215

difficult it is to overcome the urges of the flesh, and on the other hand how easy it is, under the pretense of religion, to deceive a simple and foolish woman]. For sansovino, the story of the priest of Varlungo and monna Belcolore (8.2) contains the “allegory” that “non si dee osservar promessa a donna, la quale per cagione di guadagno si conduce a compiacere a gli amanti” [one does not have to keep a promise to a woman who, for motives of gain, is led to gratify her lovers]. A new challenge that editors of the Decameron had to face in the second half of the cinquecento was that posed by censorship. According to the index of Prohibited Books published in 1559, the Decameron could no longer be printed “cum intollerabilibus erroribus” [with intolerable errors]. The errors in question were not corruptions of the text but rather unacceptable allusions to the clergy and religion. The index of 1564 banned the Decameron “quamdiu expurgatae ab iis, quibus res Patres commiserunt, non prodierint” [until they have come forth purged by those to whom the Fathers [appointed to draft the index] entrusted the matter].24 editors consequently offered alternative Decamerons, or at least alternatives to the Decameron. Readers were presented with two new options: either a set of one hundred stories that included as many of Boccaccio’s as possible or censored editions of all, or almost all, the original stories. in both cases, editors could bring out what they considered to be the teaching embedded in Boccaccio’s stories. in 1559 Girolamo Ruscelli announced a project for what he termed “un mio nuovo libro di cento novelle.” it would avoid the defects that, he implied, contemporaries perceived in the Decameron, such as its frightening opening narration of the plague, stories that had incurred the displeasure of popes, digressions in which the author vents his personal feelings, and “qualche durezza in alcuni luoghi nello stile, et nelle voci” [some harshness of style and vocabulary in some places]. The stories would be told in a modern and joyous context, a wedding in Milan attended by Philip ii of spain, and the frame narrative would also be updated: “si fan recitare, o cantare, componimenti nuovi, et eccellenti, di tutti i più famosi de’ tempi nostri” [it includes spoken or sung performances of new and excellent compositions of all the most renowned contemporary authors].25 This plan came to nothing. in 1566, however, Francesco sansovino published a collection that preserved thirty-one stories by Boccaccio that did not require censorship while making up

216

A Boccaccian Renaissance

the total of one hundred with stories from other sources: Cento novelle scelte da’ più nobili scrittori della lingua volgare di Francesco Sansovino, nelle quali piacevoli et aspri casi d’amore, et altri notabili avenimenti si leggono (Venice: [Francesco sansovino]).26 in a later edition of 1571, sansovino added a moral before each story. For example, in his Decameron of 1546 he had seen the tale of Andreuccio (2.5) as showing man’s need for caution and illustrating (in a rather positive way) the shrewdness of whores; the moral in 1571, where the same story opens the collection, takes the focus away from human actions: nel che si dimostra, quanto all’huomo, che va per il mondo, fa di bisogno esser cauto, et lo ingegno et l’astutia delle meretrici. (1546) [Which shows that the man who travels the world needs to be cautious, and the intelligence and cunning of whores.] nel che si dimostra che lo huomo debbe contentarsi del suo stato, percioché le più volte suole avvenire che volendosi megliorar si peggiora, riuscendo al fine, una cosa per l’altra. (1571) [Which shows that man must content himself with his state, because attempts to improve it usually make it worse, leading to the opposite result.] in the 1571 edition of this ersatz Decameron, sansovino added a Discorso sul Decamerone (fols. ††1r–†††4r). Here he discusses quite briefly Boccaccio’s style (“Qualità dello stile”) and has much more to say about what he sees as the moral purpose of the work. He recalls that Boccaccio himself stated the aim of the Decameron as “giovare dilettando” [to be of benefit while giving pleasure] (fol. ††2v). More specifically, sansovino argues that Boccaccio set out “ragionare ordinatamente di quasi tutti gli affetti humani” [to deal systematically with almost all human feelings] (fol. ††3v), in which category he included themes such as religion, fortune, love, eloquence, liberty, and magnanimity. Boccaccio also assisted readers by showing the operation of vices and virtues (fol. †††2r). This interpretation of the Decameron has some similarity to Lorenzo de’ Medici’s praise, nearly a century earlier, for the range and diversity of the human

“For instruction and benefit”

217

situations described in the work,27 but sansovino goes further by stressing the moral advantages that can be derived from reading Boccaccio. The two censored Decamerons that followed the censored Florentine edition of 1573 took further the tendency to use Boccaccio’s work as a source of lessons for life: the version of the Florentine scholar Lionardo salviati, which appeared twice in 1582, and that of the Venetian poet and playwright Luigi Groto, first printed in 1588. Both editors altered some plots in order to punish characters perceived as wicked or to make them repent, while salviati made particular use of marginal glosses in order to offer morally correct interpretations of the stories.28 By now, with the help of editors and others, the Decameron was sufficiently suggestive of moral instruction that a priest of Fano, Francesco Dionigi, could compose a work titled Il Decamerone spirituale (Venice: Heirs of Giovanni Varisco, 1594). This complement to the popular Petrarca spirituale of Girolamo Malipiero, which had first appeared in 1536, contains one hundred “ragionamenti” [discourses], rather than stories, pronounced by ten devout youths and is described on its title page as an “opera non men bella, ch’utile, e proffittevole per coloro, che christianamente volendo vivere, desiderano di caminare per la via della salute” [A work no less beautiful than useful and beneficial to those who, wishing to live in a christian fashion, desire to walk in the path of salvation].29 While Dionigi was proposing an alternative to Boccaccio’s Decameron, he would surely not have borrowed the title and imitated the structure of the original if readers had not been accustomed to looking to this for “ammaestramento” as well as for “diletto.” Most learned persons and members of the general reading public in the italian Renaissance shared a desire for a reassuring, authoritative Boccaccio, one who would reinforce current ideas of correctness. nonFlorentine cultural mediators who presented the vernacular Boccaccio to readers tended to base their judgments about the form of his texts on the preconception that these texts should embody morphological, syntactic, and lexical regularity similar to that found in Petrarch’s verse. The paratexts of editors guided readers’ perceptions of how Boccaccio’s works could and should be used as sources of lessons for language and, to a lesser extent, for life. Thus canonicity had the potential to cause distortion. The status that had been accorded to Boccaccio, the trecento author, paradoxically tended to compromise the authenticity of the Boccaccio that Renaissance readers encountered in the printed book.

218

A Boccaccian Renaissance A PPEN DI X : LIS T OF SI X T EEN T H- CEN T U RY E D I T I O N S O F T H E D E C A M E R O N C I T E D, I N C H RO N O L O G I C A L O R D E R

Venice: Gregorio De Gregori, 1516 Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio and Andrea Torresani, 1522 Venice: Gregorio De Gregori, 1525 Florence: Heirs of Filippo Giunta, 1527 Venice: Bernardino Vitali, 1535 Venice: Bartolomeo Zanetti for Giovanni Giolito, 1538 Venice: Francesco Bindoni and Maffeo Pasini, 1541 Venice: Gabriele Giolito, 1542 Venice: Gabriele Giolito, 1546 Venice: Gabriele Giolito, 1548 Venice: Gabriele Giolito, 1550, in quarto Venice: Gabriele Giolito, 1550, in duodecimo Venice: Gabriele Giolito, 1552, in quarto Venice: Gabriele Giolito, 1552, in duodecimo Venice: Giovanni Griffio for Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1552 Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1554 Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1555 Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi and Baldassarre costantini, 1557 Florence: Filippo and iacopo Giunta and brothers, 1573 Venice: Filippo and iacopo Giunta and brothers, 1582 Florence: Filippo and iacopo Giunta and brothers, 1582 Venice: Fabio and Agostino Zoppini and onofrio Farri, 1588 Venice: Fabio and Agostino Zoppini and onofrio Farri, 1590 Venice: Pietro Farri, 1612 noTes

1. surveys of the work of Boccaccio’s editors include Mirella Ferrari, “Dal Boccaccio illustrato al Boccaccio censurato,” in Boccaccio in Europe, ed. Gilbert Tournoy (Louvain: Louvain university Press, 1977), 111–33; corrado Bologna, “Tradizione testuale e fortuna dei classici,” in Letteratura italiana, ed. A. Asor Rosa, vol. 6 (Turin: einaudi, 1986), 445–928 (669–80); Paolo Trovato, Con ogni diligenza cor-

“For instruction and benefit”

219

retto: La stampa e le revisioni editoriali dei testi letterari italiani (1470–1570) (Bologna: il Mulino, 1991); Brian Richardson, “editing Boccaccio in the cinquecento,” Italian Studies 45 (1990): 13–31, and Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600 (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1994); Marco Pacioni, “il paratesto nelle edizioni rinascimentali italiane del Decameron,” in Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio e il paratesto: Le edizioni rinascimentali delle “tre corone,” ed. Marco santoro (Rome: edizioni dell’Ateneo, 2006), 77–98. 2. The colophon reads: “impresse in Vinegia: Per Giovan Tacuino, nel mese di settembre del 1525.” see ornella castellani Pollidori, “sulla data di pubblicazione delle Prose della volgar lingua,” Archivio glottologico italiano 61 (1976): 101–7. 3. Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Decamerone (Venice: Gregorio De Gregori, 1525), fol. +8v. The full text is given in neil Harris, “nicolò Garanta editore a Venezia 1525–30,” La Bibliofilìa 97 (1995): 99–148 (116). 4. Venice: Francesco Bindoni and Maffeo Pasini, 1541, fol. *2v. The text is the same in the issue of the same year printed for curzio navò and brothers. 5. 1552 edition in quarto, fol. *2v. 6. see also Brian Richardson, “Dal manoscritto alla stampa: testi canonici e regole del volgare,” in Dal manoscritto al web: Canali e modalità di trasmissione dell’italiano, ed. enrico Garavelli and elina suomela-Härmä (Florence: cesati, 2014), 29–41, and, on the similar role of Bembo’s comments on the usage of Petrarch, see Antonio sorella, “La norma di Bembo e l’autorità di Petrarca,” in Il Petrarchismo: Un modello di poesia per l’Europa, 2 vols. (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006), vol. 2, ed. Floriana calitti and Roberto Gigliucci, 81–97. 7. Brian Richardson, “An editor of Vernacular Texts in sixteenth-century Venice: Lucio Paolo Rosello,” in Book Production and Letters in the Western European Renaissance, ed. Anna Laura Lepschy, John Took, and Dennis e. Rhodes (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1986), 246–78. 8. Dolce’s letter is cited in Trovato, Con ogni diligenza corretto, 217. 9. edition in quarto, fol. *3r–v; edition in duodecimo, fol. *4v. 10. edition in quarto, fol. *4r–v; edition in duodecimo, fols. *5v–*6v. 11. see especially the dedicatory letter and the letter to readers, fols. *2r–*6v, also found in Girolamo Ruscelli, Dediche e avvisi ai lettori, ed. Antonella iacono and Paolo Marini (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2011), 6–22. 12. Ruscelli is evidently referring to the practice of reading the Decameron aloud. References to section numbers in the text are based on the edition of Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1976). 13. Here Ruscelli takes the opportunity to offer a criticism of the Prose della volgar lingua of Bembo, with whom Dolce had allied himself. Dolce comments in his Osservationi on Boccaccio’s frequent nonobservance of a “rule” in the case of the repetition of che and the use of che + the infinitive: see Danilo Poggiogalli, La sintassi nelle grammatiche del Cinquecento (Florence: Accademia della crusca, 1999), 266–67.

220

A Boccaccian Renaissance

14. on Alunno, see below. in Le ricchezze della lingua volgare he defines mazzerare as “suffocare” (1543 edition, fol. n5v) and in La fabrica del mondo as “annegare, et suffocare nell’acqua” (1548 edition, fol. z4r). 15. Berlin, staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Ms Hamilton 90. Vincenzio Borghini’s comments in his copy of the 1557 edition of Ruscelli’s Decameron, now in Florence, Biblioteca nazionale centrale, Pal. (11). c.10.6.19, highlight Ruscelli’s inconsistency and his ignorance of trecento Florentine. see chiara Gizzi, “Girolamo Ruscelli editore del Decameron: Polemiche editoriali e linguistiche,” Studi sul Boccaccio 31 (2003): 327–48 (336–46). 16. see Trovato, Con ogni diligenza corretto, 87, 165–67, 184, 216–18, 221, 225–27, and 247–51; Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy, 60–61, 86, 98–100, 110–14, and 143–44. 17. Giovan Francesco Fortunio, Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua, ed. Brian Richardson (Rome and Padua: Antenore, 2001), 45. 18. Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua, in Prose e rime, ed. carlo Dionisotti, 2nd ed. (Turin: uTeT, 1966), 71–309 (2.19, p. 175). 19. For examples, see Book 3, chapters 3 (“podésta”), 6 (plurals in -ora), 8 (“molti meno”), 34 (“discerneo” and past absolute forms such as “dette”), 38 (future forms such as “risapraggio”), and 77 (“gnaffe”). 20. carlo Vecce, “Bembo, Boccaccio, e due varianti al testo delle Prose,” Aevum 69 (1995): 521–31 (528–29), and see Michael sherberg’s chapter in this volume. 21. Matteo Palmieri, Vita civile, ed. Gino Belloni (Florence: sansoni, 1982), 6. 22. Il Corbaccio, ovvero laberinto d’amore (Venice: Alessandro Paganini, s.d.), copied in Labirinto d’amore nomato il Corbaccio (Bologna: Francesco Griffo, 1516) (prologue on fols. A1v–A4v), then Laberinto amoroso detto Corbaccio col prologo et anthidoto laurario (Venice: Bernardino Benagli, n.d.) (prologue on fols. +2r–+3r). on Laurario’s defense of Boccaccio’s language, see Brian Richardson, “Le edizioni del Corbaccio curate da castorio Laurario,” La Bibliofilìa 94 (1992): 165–69. 23. on sansovino’s interpretation of the Decameron, see also christina Roaf, “Francesco sansovino e le sue Lettere sopra le diece giornate del Decamerone,” Quaderni di retorica e poetica 1 (1985): 91–98 (95–96). 24. J. M. de Bujanda, Index de Rome, 1557, 1559, 1564 (sherbrooke: centre d’études de la Renaissance, 1990), 281, 384, 827. 25. see Girolamo Ruscelli’s letter to readers in his Del modo di comporre in versi nella lingua italiana (Venice: Giovanni Battista and Melchior sessa, 1559), fols. a8r–c3r (b8r–c1v), reprinted in his Dediche, 201–16 (212–14), and in his Lettere, ed. chiara Gizzi and Paolo Procaccioli (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2010), lxxxix–xc. 26. The 1561 and 1562 editions of sansovino’s Cento novelle scelte contained no stories from the Decameron, while the 1563 edition included one, 9.1. see Martyna urbaniak, “Tra Doni e sansovino: La novella in volgare nel cinquecento,” in

“For instruction and benefit”

221

Dissonanze concordi: Temi, questioni e personaggi intorno ad Anton Francesco Doni, ed. Giovanna Rizzarelli (Bologna: il Mulino, 2013), 295–326 (305–6). 27. Lorenzo praised the Decameron for “la diversità della materia, ora grave, ora mediocre e ora bassa, e contenente tutte le perturbazioni che agli uomini possono accadere, d’amore e odio, timore e speranza, tante nuove astuzie e ingegni, e avendo a exprimere tutte le nature e passioni degli uomini che si trovono al mondo” [the diversity of its subject matter, now serious, now middling, now low, and containing all the problems that men can encounter, in love and hatred, fear and hope, so many original instances of cunning and intelligence, and having to express every nature and passion of men throughout the world]. Comento de’ miei sonetti, ed. Tiziano Zanato (Florence: olschki, 1991), 148. 28. salviati’s Decameron was by far the most influential version of the work produced in the late Renaissance, having been printed in eight further editions in Venice up to 1638. on salviati’s censorship, see especially P. M. Brown, “Aims and Methods of the second ‘Rassettatura’ of the Decameron,” Studi secenteschi 8 (1967): 3–41; Raul Mordenti, “Le due censure: La collazione dei testi del Decameron ‘rassettati’ da Vincenzio Borghini e Lionardo salviati,” in Le Pouvoir et la plume: Incitation, contrôle et répression dans l’Italie du XVIe siècle (Paris: université de la sorbonne nouvelle, 1982), 253–73. on Groto’s edition, see Jacqueline Tschiesche, “il rifacimento del Decamerone di Luigi Groto,” in Luigi Groto e il suo tempo: Atti del Convegno di studi, Adria, 27–29 aprile 1984, ed. Giorgio Brunello and Antonio Lodo, 2 vols. (Rovigo: Minelliana, 1987), vol. 1, 237–71. 29. see Paolo cherchi, “Il Decamerone spirituale di Francesco Dionigi da Fano,” in L’onestade e l’onesto raccontare del “Decameron” (Fiesole: cadmo, 2004), 183–91.

cHAPTeR 9

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae Italian Comedy Receives Boccaccio’s Decameron (1486–1533)

r on al d l. m art ine z

The cinquecento formula for commedia erudita [learned comedy] that marries the narrative content of Boccaccio’s Centonovelle with the comic structures of Plautus and Terence might seem to have reached a first bloom of maturity by 1509 with Ariosto’s prose I Suppositi.1 Though indeed pervasive in Ariosto’s second comedy, Boccaccio’s presence is inexplicit, unlike in the case of niccolò Grasso’s Eutichia of 1513, which names Martellino (Dec. 2.1) and Frate Alberto (Dec. 4.1) in its prologue.2 And unlike in Jacopo nardi’s Amicizia and Due fratelli rivali of a few years later, Ariosto in his play also avoids realizing a single novella—a practice on the way out.3 Although Angela casella discerns some nineteen borrowings from Boccaccio in I suppositi,4 only some ten are significant in terms of plot and character.5 Five of them color in the vices of cleandro, Ariosto’s principal comic butt, whose name is a metathesis for calandro—that is, for Boccaccio’s calandrino—by recalling the avarice of erminio Grimaldi (Dec. 1.8.5 vs. Supp. 1.2, p. 205, and 2.3, p. 219); the jealousy of catella (3.6 vs. 1.2, p. 207); the rusticity and rankness of the judge from the Marche, niccola di san Lepidio (8.5.5.20 vs. 2.3, p. 219); the vanity and pedantry of Maestro simone (8.9 vs. 1.2, p. 202); and the geriatric stinginess and folly 222

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

223

of Ricciardo da chinzica (2.10 vs. 1.2. p. 207), perhaps the chief exemplar. The prize for the principal Decameronian stimulus to Ariosto’s plot goes to the story of Beatrice and Ludovico/Anichino (Dec. 7.7). in that novella, the substitution of a servant for a master anticipates the principal plot device of Ariosto’s comedy. At the same time, as Ariosto announces in his prologue, erostrato’s substitution by his servant Dulippo as a student in Ferrara is modeled on similar exchanges found in Plautus’s Captivi and in Terence’s Eunuchus; in Plautus, the servant Tindarus takes the place of his master Philocrates.6 not only does Ariosto contaminate classical and vernacular sources; he elegantly finds sources that are themselves parallel.7 Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, with his play Calandra,8 first performed in urbino in 1513 and repeated at Rome in 1514 and 1515, the first great theatrical success of commedia erudita was quick to assimilate the lesson offered by I suppositi of multiple Decameronian contaminations with Latin comedy.9 With respect to Ariosto’s play, Calandra more than doubles the draw on Boccaccio’s masterwork, but the proportions are roughly similar: some dozen of the more than twenty substantial borrowings document the follies of calandro (Cal. 2.198 quotes Dec. 8.3.15, “più de millanta, che tutta notte canta” [more than a milling, that spend all night trilling]), with Bibbiena taking details from three of the four calandrino stories, notably from that of calandrino’s enamorment (Dec. 9.5.37 and 63 vs. Cal. 2.94 and 3.189), but also rounding out his calandro by mining the foolishness of maestro simone, Frate Puccio, Ferondo, Arriguccio, compar Pietro, and Guccio imbratta.10 of the other significant borrowings, half a dozen illustrate love’s power and three the harsh predicament of women in love.11 With so many passages of Boccaccio comfortably in play, not counting purely linguistic echoes, which would more than double the tally, we are at least in the same league as Bibbiena’s friend Pietro Bembo, who refers to some eighty of Boccaccio’s novelle in his Prose, published a dozen years later (1525) but representing a project long underway with Bembo’s 1501 edition of Dante, the Asolani of 1505, and the Stanze of 1507.12 From the prologue to Calandra, affirming polemically that one’s native tongue should be prized and affirmed (Calandra, prol. 2)—a gesture that recalls Boccaccio’s esteem of his own sweet tongue in concluding the Decameron (concl. 27)—it seems clear that Bibbiena is keen to exemplify Boccaccio’s prose as the industry standard for drama as well.

224

A Boccaccian Renaissance

indeed, Bibbiena’s recognition of Boccaccio as fundamental for the drama seems to precede Bembo’s canonization of his prose. Bibbiena had in fact assayed the assimilation of Boccaccio into Latin dramatic canons some two decades earlier, in 1494, in a letter to Piero de’ Medici relating the carnal rendezvous (“non ci è altro sotto che fottizio” [there’s nothing to it but screwing]) of a certain caterina da Gonzaga and Ferrante, Duke of calabria, when on a military campaign.13 The account begins with a call to attention (“Attendete e se potete, astenetevi dalle risa” [Pay attention, and if you can, refrain from laughter]) and ends with Et vos lectores valete e plaudite [And you, readers, applaud, and be well], liminal or framing phrases routine in Latin, specifically Plautine, comedy. With what is likely an echo of Boccaccio’s Licisca when she describes how in the case of sicofante’s wife “Messer Mazza entrasse in Monte nero . . . pacificamente e con gran piacer di quei d’entro” [Master Mace entered Black Hill  . . . peacefully, with the great pleasure of those within] (Dec. 6.intro. 8), Bibbiena relates how the pair “consumò el santo matrimonio, con grandissima dolcezza dell’una parte e dell’altra” [consummated the holy marriage, with great sweetness felt on either part]. it is no surprise, then, when in closing he quips that the dalliance “mi pare proprio una di quelle cento” [seems exactly like one of the Hundred Tales]. Beyond this early experiment, in the passe-partout comedy prologue of uncertain date that was once thought to be the genuine prologue to Calandra, Bibbiena seems to implicitly theorize the vernacular comic playwright as voyeur and reporter, who can, by using Boiardo’s “anel di Angelica,” the ring conferring invisibility, enter domestic spaces and observe the private lives of husbands and wives—thus realizing, in a sense, the traditional Latin formula for the content of comedy, “imitatio vitae, speculum consuetudinis, & imago veritatis” [the imitation of life, the mirror of custom, and the image of truth], which Donatus attributed to cicero.14 The first thought of the speaker of the prologue, however, is to “andarmene invisible alle casse di certi pignoroni avaracci . . . e fare un ripulisti di tal sorte che non rimanesse loro un marcio quattrino” [take myself, invisible, to the cash-boxes of certain stingy, avaricious types . . . and give them such a cleaning that they’d not be left with a single farthing]. it is difficult not to recognize here calandrino’s fantasy of making himself invisible with the heliotrope stone and garnishing florins from the money-changers’ tables (Dec. 8.3.28–29). indeed, the prologue

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

225

speaker’s subsequent ability to see into bedrooms brings with it a sheaf of further Decameronian echoes, confirming that the several husband-andwife debates in the prologue assimilate Boccaccio’s plots and language.15 Although the prologue, apparently intended for private performances, had no significant circulation, it is striking for its treatment of Boccaccio’s novelle as an archive of comic matter and for its identification with a Decameronian character who recurred as a stock allusion in plays and novelle throughout the cinquecento. With respect to Boccaccian imitation, Bibbiena’s impact on the playwriting of niccolò Machiavelli seems decisive.16 Machiavelli’s conclusion of his letter of 25 February 1514 to Francesco Vettori with the formulaic “È egli meglio fare e pentere che stare e pentersi” [it is better to act and repent rather than not act and regret it] from Boccaccio’s novella of Zima (3.5.30)17 may reflect the fact that Bibbiena had scooped the Florentine secretary in claiming it for the text of Calandra, performed that same year in Rome (Calandra 3.7). Machiavelli, who we know was admiring Ariosto’s Orlando furioso in 1517 even as he sketched out his Asino d’oro,18 with its imitation in its first capitolo of Boccaccio’s “proprietary” tale of Filippo Balducci,19 may also have been encouraged to consider the Decameron as source material for his future comedy by the Florentine Giunta edition of 1516, which in the front matter resurrected Boccaccio as a speaking character,20 promising corrected versions of his works,21 and also included the vulgate version of the Florentine novella Il grasso legnaiuolo, with its protodramatic distribution of dialogue,22 along with the novella of Bianco Alfani, which alludes to the “pregnant” calandrino, 23 and that of Bonaccorso di Lapo, in which Boccaccio appears as a living character.24 What is distinctive about Machiavelli’s exploitation of some six Boccaccian novelle in Mandragola is their rigorous relevance—one wants to say their verità effettiva [effectual truth]—at crucial junctures in the play’s action; the inception of the favola and callimaco’s decision to travel from Paris to Florence to attempt the seduction of Lucrezia, echo—as well as Livy’s account of Tarquin and Lucretia—the beginnings of the stories of Lodovico and Beatrice (Ariosto’s source for I suppositi, as we saw) and of Bernabò and Ambrogiuolo (Dec. 2.9). Frate Timoteo’s demolition of Lucrezia’s reluctance to yield her body to a stranger, “perché la volonta è quella che pecca, non el corpo” [because it is the will that sins, not the body] (3.11) is modeled after, though it scrambles, the casuistic advice

226

A Boccaccian Renaissance

of the abbot who confirms to Ferondo’s wife that “la santità non diventa minore, per ciò che ella dimora nell’anima e quello che io dimando è peccato del corpo” [sanctity is not lessened because it resides in the soul, and what i am asking is a sin of the body] (Dec. 3.8.25). The successful conclusion of the plot is brought about by callimaco’s bedroom persuasion of Lucrezia with his superior “laying” (giacitura, a word used in Dec. 4.2.32 of Frate Alberto’s coupling with Lisetta) and by his blackmailing of her, on Ligurio’s advice, with the threat of scandal—“con sua grande infamia tua nimica” [she will be, with great scandal, your enemy] (4.2)—just as Ricciardo Minutolo does catella (Dec. 3.6.44–45).25 of course it took some time for things to be this good, and they were rarely as good again. in the balance of this chapter i review a few of the early attempts to incorporate Boccaccio into vernacular drama, both experiments that seemed to lead to dead ends and those destined to be more fully realized in the successes of Ariosto, Bibbiena, Machiavelli, and their successors among the commediografi [playwrights] of the cinquecento. or, in other terms, i offer a thumbnail prehistory of the formula that Bibbiena’s 1494 letter might appear to herald. As Timothy Kircher shows in his chapter in this volume,26 even humanists who reflexively preferred Boccaccio’s Latin to his vernacular works and his earnestness to his game could exploit the possibilities of Boccaccio’s intersubjective dialogue and sharp characterizations—qualities especially native to drama—in order to enliven Latin dialogues and discourses on subjects of high seriousness. i leave aside here any full consideration of the dramatic possibilities inherent in the Decameron itself, relying on nino Borsellino’s summation of “il Decameron stesso come una specie di teatro laico e profano travestito nella forma della novella” [The Decameron itself as a kind of lay and profane theater disguised in the form of the novella], the theatrical aspects of which include the gardens of the frame tale and the brigata of narrator-actors, anticipating the theaters, actors, and spectators of sixteenth-century performances. To quote Borsellino, the Decameron is the “gran zibaldone teatrale” [great theatrical miscellany] in which all the instances of Quintilian’s criteria for the comic—vices of character, comic situations, verbal wit, and amusing gestures [vitia, res, dicta, gestus]—can be found.27 identifying the protodramatic possibilities of the Decameron itself is suggestive, but it is arguable that Boccaccio also significantly affected

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

227

subsequent dramatic production through his own reception and transmission of actual plays. Boccaccio copied into his Miscellanea Laurenziana the elegiac comedies Alda, Geta, and Comedia Lydiae; from this last he fashioned the novella of Pirro, Lidia, and nicostrato (Dec. 7.9);28 from Geta he took the lapidation of calandrino (8.3.47–48); and, as Ferruccio Bertini suggests, from Alda (lines 466–510) he drew the zestful phallophilia of Alibech during her sojourn with Rustico in 3.10. For Daniela Goldin, Alda also suggested Alatiel’s extraordinary beauty and compliant naïveté.29 Thus four stories in the Decameron variously depend on Latin elegiac comedies—a genre Boccaccio was instrumental in transmitting in italy.30 Though unlikely to have been actually staged, the plays were nevertheless treated as full-fledged comedies in the accessus preceding them, including having five characters, as postulated of the genre in Horace’s Ars Poetica.31 Boccaccio’s adaptations were decisions to assimilate what he knew of drama into the Decameron, and much of what he adapted proved useful to successors, so it was in a sense Boccaccio himself who, by adapting plays into his novelle, authorized the reverse procedure of translating his works to the stage. As Picone observed, one of the significant consequences for the Decameron of medieval dramatic literature is Boccaccio’s depiction of the servants of the brigata.32 Although scenes depicting the lives of servants came to Boccaccio most directly from elegiac comedies, the most classical of the dramatic features in the Decameron is the cohort of servants: Miside and Tindaro echo names from Latin palliata (Tindaro from Plautus’s Captivi; Miside from the Misis of Terence’s Andria), while the garrulous Licisca, as Pier Massimo Forni pointed out, probably takes her name from Juvenal’s reference to claudius’s wife Messalina’s prostituting herself as Lycisca.33 The appeal to Juvenal may reflect the status of satire as a genre related to drama, as it was discussed in Horace’s Ars poetica (lines 220–38). Without confidence that some Latin comedy possessed satirical, thus moralizing, intent, Boccaccio would likely not have excepted Plautus and Terence from his condemnation of licentious drama in the Genealogie (14.19.21). Despite Borsellino’s claim to the contrary, however, the brigata’s servants are much more than just a catalogue of names. The debate between Tindaro and Licisca regarding sicofante’s wife on her wedding night (Dec. 6.intro.7–10), marks the appropriation of servants and other subaltern

228

A Boccaccian Renaissance

groups to the comic register of the collection; although it is true that, as Borsellino notes, “non possono far commedia con loro padroni” (47–48), they can act out comic scenes for their masters, and, in Licisca’s case, a servant furnishes to Dioneo the idea for the subject of the seventh day: in a larger sense, Licisca’s interruption tips the whole collection toward the logic of the beffa, instances of which numerically dominate the stories of days 7–9. not only does elissa’s threat to curb Licisca’s verbal excess with a beating (scopata) recall the constant punishment of servants in Latin comedy; at a deeper level, as a comic parody of sacred marriages like the nuptials of cupid and Psyche in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, allegorized by Boccaccio in his Genealogie (5.12–20), and adumbrated in the story of Gualtieri and Griselda, the episode is a mise en abîme of the whole work. it is thus no accident that, as Francesco Bruni underscores,34 the Day 6 introduction is sandwiched between 5.10 and 6.1, both dependent on Apuleius’s novel. Boccaccio’s “low” parody of Apuleius’s most serious and important tale sits between a pair of knock-offs from the same book— an effective “marriage” of narrative sources that was to prove a model for later playwrights.35 one of the most fertile Boccaccian texts for Renaissance comic matter concerns the pair Guccio imbratta and nuta in Boccaccio’s tale of Fra cipolla, a story that, since set in Boccaccio’s home town of certaldo, might be regarded as a Boccaccian signature. Francesco Bruni notes that the anointment of the pair with kitchen grease echoes elegiac comedy, including the Alda and the Geta, whose eponymous hero sports a “greasy beard,”36 and favors the kitchen, just as Guccio imbratta gravitates there seeking the charms of La nuta.37 But Boccaccio also took descriptive details about servants and their uninhibited activities from the Latin novel: as Bruni recalls, Apuleius’s six modifiers parsed in rhyming groups describing the adulterous wife in the tale Boccaccio rendered as the Perugian tale of Pietro di Vinciolo, Decameron 5.10, are transformed by Boccaccio’s Fra cipolla for triple-named Guccio imbratta, Porco, or Balena: “egli è tardo, sugliardo, e bugiardo; negligente disubidente e maldicente; trascutato, smemorato e scostumato” [He is sluggish, dirty, and a liar; negligent, disobedient, and foul-mouthed; careless, forgetful, and ill-mannered].38 The comic possibilities of the kitchen are dutifully exploited, in a Boccaccian vein, in early humanist comedies in Latin. The comic topicality of servants and cooks, in this case a companion of Guccio imbratta,

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

229

Lippo Toppo (Dec. 6.10.15), was transferred as Lippus Toppus to an early humanist Latin comedy, Paulus (c. 1390), by the humanist professor (and editor of Petrarch’s Africa), Pier Paolo Vergerio, who also included a procuress named nicolosa, like the strumpet who bedazzles calandrino in Decameron 9.5.39 enea silvio Piccolomini’s Chrysis, written about 1444, includes a scene closely modeled on a kitchen scene in Plautus’s Aulularia (2.8.398–402) that activates the Latin comedy topos of the lightfingered cook. irritated that the crane he has roasted is getting cold, the cook Artrax helps himself to a drumstick, citing the desperate claim made by Boccaccio’s chichibio in Decameron Vi.4.10: “Facile hoc genus avis dicam monopedium / que semper in pratis uno constitit pede” [i can easily say that this kind of bird is one-legged / since in the field they always stand on one leg].40 Although Chrysis scarcely circulated, the “contamination” of Plautus and Boccaccio, done ostentatiously in this scene as an evident hommage to Boccaccio, anticipates what would be a highly productive strategy for commedia erudita. in the wake of the Princeps of Plautus 1472 and that of Terence—with Donatus’s commentary—in 1476, the rebirth of a classicizing vernacular drama may be said to have begun with the performance of Menechini in Ferrara in 1486. The version of Menechini in terza rima that has survived is documented as performed at the este-sforza wedding in 1491; according to its modern editors, the translator could have been Battista Guarino, youngest son and successor as a professor in the Bolognese studium [school] of the celebrated humanist and pedagogue Guarino Veronese, who had long cultivated Terence and Plautus in Ferrara.41 Whether or not it is Guarino’s version, a certain level of vernacular erudition comes through: with a technique familiar from Florentine sacre rappresentazioni [sacred plays], half-lines from Dante and Petrarch pop up here and there to finish off terzine; the character of the cook protests that he is no “animal nutrito in bosco,” echoing the first Petrarchan sestina (Rvf 22.1, 18). Boccaccio’s influence emerges in the gastronomic vocabulary of the parasite Peniculo. conjuring up a dinner savory with fatty bits of the pig, Peniculo imagines himself poised like a vulture above its prey: “la schena / d’un buon cinghiale . . . morbedi da cavarne buon construto: / che come il nibio stia sopra piolando / e solo a quel odor mi allegro tuto” [the back of a good boar . . . tender enough to render out good cooking fat so that, like the kite chirping over it, only with that

230

A Boccaccian Renaissance

odor am i wholly cheered].42 The scene recalls the response of Boccaccio’s Guccio imbratta to the kitchen maid nuta, whom Boccaccio describes as sweaty, greasy, and smoky: “non altramenti che si gitti l’avoltoio alla carogna . . . la si calò” [not otherwise than the vulture seizes its carrion . . . he descended upon her] (Dec. 6.10.21). Guarino’s use of Boccaccio to update Plautus’s text, in which the reference to a vulture merely describes Menaechmus’s sharp appetite, is consistent with his desire to “ridurre la cosa alla moderna” [bring off the thing in the modern guise] in his translations of Plautus’s Asinaria and Curculio, modifications that he felt it necessary to defend in his letter of 1479 to ercole d’este.43 The translator’s updating also affects that same Petrarch-quoting cook who comes to prepare a meal for Menechino of epidanno and the courtesan erozia. in the critical first misprision of the play, the cook, meeting the syracusan brother, not the native one from epidamnus, claims to know the wrong Menechino and is savagely pilloried for the mistake. Plautus’s original has the mockery turn on wittily transforming the cook’s typical name Cylindrus (“rolling pin”) into “coriander,” Coriandrus. Guarino, if it is he, opts instead for “Per chilindro e calandra non ti voglio” [i don’t want you as cilindrus or as calandra], and Tissoni Benvenuti comments: “non si può negare la possibilità di una suggestione del calandrino boccaccesco” [one can’t rule out a suggestion of Boccaccio’s calandrino].44 There may be a good reason for Guarino’s association of calandrino and la nuta in this passage, for as Francesco Bruni observes,45 la nuta, “tutta sudata, unta e affumicata” [all sweaty, greasy, and smoky] (Dec. 6.10.21), shares an assonant and isosyllabic list of modifiers with the hot and bothered calandrino after he has beaten his wife, Tessa, in the novella of the heliotrope: “calandrino tutto sudato, rosso, e affannato” [calandrino all sweaty, flushed, and breathless] (Dec. 8.3.53). Two of the novelle that most inspired subsequent dramatic adaptation are here allusively joined in a founding text of Ferrarese vernacular theater that was frequently restaged into the cinquecento. What stimulated an allusion to calandrino, if that is what it is, onstage in the cortile nuovo of the ducal palace of Ferrara in January of 1486? The first edition of sabbadino degli Arienti’s collection of novelle, the Porretane, dedicated to the “illustrissimum et inclytum Herculem Estensem Ferariae Ducem” [illustrious and renowned Hercules of este Duke of Ferrara], was published in Bologna in 1483. Novella 24 includes mention of Zoppo

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

231

pictore and his companions as worthy table companions for Boccaccio’s calandrino-mocking Bruno and Buffalmacco, “dell’insensato calandrino degni schernitori” [worthy scorners of brainless calandrino].46 Probably just as important, nine editions of the Decameron entered print between 1470 and 1484, one of them in 1472 at Mantua, closely linked culturally to Ferrara.47 in the standard history of how plays like the Suppositi and Calandra came to be, the title “first regular italian comedy” is assigned to a play probably written by a teenager—the author calls himself an adoloscente in his prologue, linking him to the typical young and well-born protagonist, the adulescens, of Latin comedy—Il Formicone,48 first performed in Mantua in 1503.49 The author’s name, the play’s title, and the dramatis personae have much to tell us and suggest that the young author had a substantial bookshelf of quattrocento humanist and vernacular literature, presumably assimilated in the celebrated Mantuan school of Pietro Marcheselli and subsequently Francesco Vigilio. The young author’s evident nom de plume, Publio Philippo Mantovano, trumpets classical ambitions: it suggests Publius Terentius Afer (the very first words of Donatus’s life of Terence, which begins the 1477 Treviso edition) or Publius Virgilius Maro Mantuanus (the first words of the vita vergilii by suetonius/ Donatus, published at Rome in 1469 by Andreas de Buxis), while the play’s subject, explicitly announced in the prologue, is taken directly from a short novella in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses of Lucius (9.17–21). Filetero, the name of the adulterous lover, arguably reflects the simplification of Apuleius’s Philesitherus to Philotero in Boiardo’s Apulegio volgare, circulating since about 1480, while the name of Barbaro’s concubine and Filetero’s lover, Polifila—who remains unnamed in the Latin novel—can hardly fail to recall the publishing sensation of 1499, Francesco colonna’s Hypnerotomachia poliphili, despite the application there of the name to the male protagonist, Poliphilus, etymologically destined to be Polia’s lover; but colonna’s book provides an alternative etymology of Poliphilus—“much loving,” or perhaps “lover of many”—which suits the female lead in Mantovano’s play.50 Because it was designed to recall Terence’s Phormio, as Alessandro d’Ancona suggested, or indeed Formione, the form used in the prologue to the vernacular translation sometimes attributed to Ariosto,51 the title Formicone continues the classical allusions but also introduces a variation, because Terence’s Phormio, though the chief

232

A Boccaccian Renaissance

agent in unraveling the plot, is not the typical clever servant but rather a parasite. in Mantovano’s play, the eponym returns to the servant, whose name translates Myrmex as “ant,” the Greek name of the slave in the play’s source story.52 Formicone’s entomological name is subject to verbal play when the young lover Filotero seeks him out and calls him Forbegone and Orbegone, suggesting the voicing of the velar consonant to mark a shift from a Tuscan-sounding Formicone to a Lombardized pronunciation of the name.53 This was perhaps Mantovano’s way of sampling local speech and was plausibly authorized by Boccaccio’s excursions into regional idiom with his Venetians Lisetta (Dec. 4.2.12) and chichibio. Formicone begins as a faithful servant, a Latin comedy type like Palaestrio in Plautus’s Miles gloriosus, but when pressured by his girlfriend, sirisca, to obtain the five ducats necessary to redeem her from being sold to a foreign merchant, he betrays his master, takes the money, and admits Filotero to Polifila’s bed. Thus Mantovano takes a hackneyed charactertype of Latin comedy, the young man of good family besotted with a courtesan or music girl, desperate for money to secure her, and transfers him to the servants’ quarters. such a class-shifting expedient has its ancient model in Plautus’s Persa, in which the romantic intrigue is between the slave Toxilus and the supposed Persian girl, Lemnisilenis. However, in doubling the love interest to include the servants, Mantovano may also be applying Licisca’s lesson from Boccaccio’s frame story, perhaps invoked by the rhyming name sirisca. The play’s precisely calibrated shared debt to both Latin comedy and Apuleian novella emerges in the prologue, where the audience is invited to pay attention: “or alongate gli orecchi tanto che gli asini di Arcadia superiate” [extend your ears so much that you exceed the asses of Arcadia]. The invitation combines an allusion to “Arcadian asses” (asinos Arcadicos) in Plautus’s Asinaria (2.2.335)—performed in Ferrara in 1501 in a vernacular version possibly by Battista Guarino54—with Lucius’s somewhat ironic thanks, immediately before relating the novella in question, for the elongated ears that enable him to hear distant and scattered sounds easily and equip him to witness the adulteries and scandals of Book 9. 55 Boccaccio has a place in this picture because the source of the fable treated in Mantovano’s comedy is sections 17–21 of Apuleius’s ninth book, between sections 22 and 26, which furnished the model for the Perugian tale of Pietro di Vinciolo and his wife (Dec. 5.10), and sections 5–7, which

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

233

provided the tale of Peronella (Dec. 7.2). Like the reference to Lucius’s long ears, the story of Barbaro and Myrmex, Mantovano’s source, falls athwart the two, so that in a sense Mantovano rectifies Boccaccio’s omission and “completes” a suite of three tales about illicit couplings. Whereas in Apuleius it is Barbaro’s wife who yields to Philesitherus, Mantovano replaces adultery—a subject problematic even for Roman comedy—with mere concubinage and fornication. Thus Mantovano’s play also confirms that the ancient Apuleius and the modern Boccaccio were fellow travelers on the road of the novella as it makes its way to the stage. But there are specifically Boccaccian borrowings as well, and not only lexical ones:56 Formicone’s reproach of the household maidservants close to the beginning of the play (Act 1.3)57 reworks a page from Boccaccio’s tale of Masetto da Lamporecchio, where nuto, the convent’s previous gardener, explains to Masetto that he chucked the job because the nuns wouldn’t let him work: io . . . andava alcuna volta al bosco per le legne, attigneva acqua e faceva cotali altri servigetti; . . . e parmi ch’ell’ abbiano il diavolo in corpo, che non si può far cosa niuna a lor modo. Anzi, quand’io lavorava alcuna volta l’orto, l’una diceva: Pon qui questo; e l’altra: Pon qui quello, e l’altra mi toglieva la zappa di mano e dicea: Questo non sta bene. [i’d . . . go sometimes to the woods for firewood; i’d draw water and do this little service and that; . . . and it seems to me they have the devil in them, because you can’t do a single thing the way they want. not just that: When i would be working in the garden, one would say, “Put this here,” the other, “Put that there,” and another would take the hoe from my hand and say, “This isn’t right”] (emphases mine). The Boccaccian provenance of Formicone’s diatribe, as it moves from fetching water or firewood to feeling resentment over repetitive, contradictory commands, is unmistakable (Dec. 3.1.9): et tutto il giorno mi affatico per loro, o in cavar acqua, o in portar legne, o nettar le camere, o ordinar i letto. Voi sapete ben dire “Formicone fa così; Formicone sta qui; Formicone va in là; Formicone va in qua.”

234

A Boccaccian Renaissance

[every day i take pains for them, whether in getting water, or carrying firewood, or cleaning the rooms, or making the beds. you all know well how to say: “Formicone do it this way”; “Formicone stay here”; “Formicone, go over there”; “Formicone come over here” (emphases mine).58 evidently well connected in the cultural life of Mantua and Ferrara, Mantovano likely came to his Apuleian expertise through channels associated both with Boccaccio and with the drama. Matteo Maria Boiardo’s vernacular version of Apuleius’s novel, Apulegio volgare, published in 1518 but circulating as early as 1479, drew both on the Apulieus princeps of 1469 and on Boccaccio’s Apuleian novelle (Dec. 5.10, 7.2); the text was thus a “contamination,” as Fumagalli calls it, adopting the traditional term for Latin comedy plots with more than one source.59 The book inspired several ambitious works created for the Mantuan and Ferrarese courts.60 Mantovano would likely have recognized Apuleius’s influence on Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato (written 1484–94), where the novella of Doristella and Teodoro (Oi 2.26.22–53)—note the name Teodoro, from Boccaccio’s seventh novella of the fifth day—adapts the same tale from Apuleius used in the Formicone.61 Boiardo’s novella designs are intricate, but it is worth mentioning that Doristella’s tale is a pendant to Fiordilisa’s story of Prasildo and Tisbina—an adaptation of Decameron 10.5 and the fourth questione d’amore [love-problem] from the Filocolo—in the first part of the chivalric romance (Oi 1.12.3–90).62 Both novelle have starting points at once Boccaccian and Apuleian, as they each begin with a speaker (sisters Fiordelisa and Doristella) offering a narrative to shorten and lighten the long road ahead, as at the beginning of Apuleius’s novel (Met. 1.2) and in the Madonna oretta story in the Decameron (6.1.7), which, as usher showed, is itself reliant on Apuleius.63 What is more, soon after Doristella concludes her Apuleian tale, she is reunited with her sister Fiordilisa, kidnapped as a child by Fugiforca in a plot device Boiardo adapted from the kidnapping of Tyndarus by the servant stalagmus in Plautus’s Captivi,64 a play Boiardo knew well since he likely saw (if he did not author) the vernacular Captivi played by Duke ercole’s courtier-actors in Pavia in 1493.65 As Villoresi shows, Boiardo further contaminates the Apuleius-derived plot with elements from Captivi in the first thirty-five octaves of Part 2, canto 27, including the

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

235

comic recognition scene, which is possible thanks to a birthmark under the nipple of Fiordilisa’s right breast. To complicate matters further, in Boiardo’s romance Fiordilisa’s predicaments as a captive parallel the kidnapping of Fiordilisa’s lover and future husband Brandimarte as a child by the servant Bardino, who shoulders the role of the slave stalagmus in an even more elaborate imitation of Plautus’s Captivi that Boiardo, in a tour de force of rimaneggiamento [reworking], had developed with extraordinary ingenuity in the second book (Oi 2.12.12–2.13.45). Thus the most important narrative poem of the Ferrarese quattrocento had, by 1494 at the latest, established the contamination of fabulae [plots] from Latin comedy with both Apuleian and Boccaccian novelle. young Mantovano had close at hand the precedents needed to conceive of Apuleius and Boccaccio as literary brothers under the skin, just as Doralice and Fiordilisa, and their stories, are sisters: novelle, sorelle. But declaring the Formicone the first “regular” italian comedy—and, we have seen, an early adapter of Boccaccio’s novelle—overlooks the claim of Li sei contenti, by Galeotto del carretto, of uncertain date and never known to have been performed, but whose composition is placed by Maria Luisa Doglio’s edition as early as 1499 or 1500. Just as del carretto’s Sofonisba of 1502 has been overshadowed in literary manuals by Trissino’s play of 1515, Li Sei contenti, in which three assorted couples find sexual satisfaction but only one with an original spouse, is possibly prior to young Mantovano’s short play in its attempt to join novella material from Boccaccio and Apuleius to a template from Latin comedy.66 The play has five acts (Doglio divides the acts into scenes, but these are not found in the manuscript) and an unmistakably Plautine prologue, but no classicizing names. niccolò Franco’s preface of 1531 for Del carretto’s descendant Alberto, reads the play, not entirely convincingly, as an implicit satire on the insatiable lust for power of tyrants, including prelates of the church.67 But perhaps it is the sharpness of the implied satire, and the play’s staging of a near-castration with sharp implements, that has discouraged more enthusiastic reception of the piece, which has been deemed “weak” (fiacca) by Padoan,68 though “vivace e licenziosa” [lively and bawdy] by Roberto Ricciardi in his entry on del carretto in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani.69 if the Sei contenti is within a few years of the Formicone, its reliance on the pairing of Apuleius—which del carretto, as the translator of Books

236

A Boccaccian Renaissance

4 and 5 of the Metamorphoses for his Nozze di Psiche e Cupidine, surely knew well—and Boccaccio’s collection is especially striking; as we saw with regard to Formicone, the pairing is not without Mantuan precedents. in the play, the mischief-making servant Brunetta, recalling the name of chichibio’s peckish girlfriend,70 observes to her mistress, iulia, that an opportunity to get even with her husband, Mastallone, who has been conducting an affair with the chambermaid cristina, has presented itself because the servant Graziolo has fallen in love with iulia, his mistress. Brunetta’s phrase for getting even, “pan per focaccia” [bread for cake],71 echoes the old woman go-between in Boccaccio’s Apuleian tale of Pietro di Vinciolo, who counsels her younger sisters to make much of time: “Tu farai molto bene a rendere al marito tuo pan per focaccia, sì che l’anima tua non abbia in vecchiezza che rimproverare alle carni” [you’d do very well to render to your husband bread instead of cake, so that in old age your soul will have nothing with which to reproach your flesh] (Dec. 5.10.19). The phrase returns in Decameron 8.8.30: “Madonna, voi m’avete renduto pan per focaccia, e questo disse ridendo” [My lady, you’ve rendered me bread for cake, and said this while laughing], the novella of sienese pals Zeppa and spinelloccio in which they agree to routinely exchange wives, which was itself an immediate stimulus to del carretto’s comedy and a template for stories such as Masuccio’s Novellino 36 and comedies such as Lorenzo di Filippo strozzi’s Commedia in versi.72 Del carretto’s attentive assimilation of the Boccaccio novella is confirmed by the scene of iulia and Graziuolo disporting themselves that the servant crocetto sees “through a crack in the door” (“per una fissura dell’uscio”), after which iulia rises and goes to her mirror to “readjust her headdress and brush off her clothes” (“a racconciarsi il capo e spazzarsi la vesta”): 73 this echoes how, in Boccaccio’s tale, Zeppa’s wife, when discovered by her husband after her bout with spinelloccio, “non s’era compiuta di raccioncare i veli in capo” [had not finished readjusting her veils on her head] (Dec. 8.8.10). The Boccaccian-Apuleian tandem is even more suggestive in light of iulia’s relations with her philandering husband, the suggestively named Mastallone. Reacting to Brunetta’s remark about Mastallone “covering” both his wife and the housemaid cristina, iulia wonders, “sarei mai una cavalla da essere coperta da un stallone?” [Am i a mare, apt to be covered by a stallion?], and Brunetta hastily patches up her faux pas, saying, “che le cavalle sono roba da frati, non dico che siate cavalla, ma una

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

237

giovene graziosa” [Mares are friars’ business; i don’t say you are a mare, but a lovely girl].74 Brunetta’s reference to Decameron 9.10 pointedly inverts the magic words Boccaccio gives to the lustful Donno Gianni as he attempts to transform compar Pietro’s wife, in what is Boccaccio’s closest evocation of the original metamorphosis of Lucius into an ass by the servant girl Photis for the sake of sexual exploits (Met. 3.23–24): “e questa sia bella coda di cavalla” [Let this be a beautiful mare’s tail] (Dec. 9.10.18), as well as his earlier boast: “Fo questa cavalla diventare una bella zitella” [i make this mare become a beautiful lass] (Dec. 9.10.11).75 Thus, of the three Boccaccian novelle on which del carretto chiefly drew, two are linked to episodes from Apuleius and the traces of his influence on Boccaccio’s text. And though Mastallone’s offer to have himself castrated as penance for his affair with the servant girl cristina might seem to echo Antonio Barzizza’s fifteenth-century humanist Latin comedy Cauteraria (c. 1425), where the jealous husband Brachus is threatened with the same surgical procedure, it should be recalled that Apuleius’s Lucius also risks castration, designed to curb his rutting and fatten him up in the bargain (Met. 7.2). Although the ultimate source of this theatrical trope is the threat of castration leveled against the braggart Pyrgopolynices in Plautus’s Miles gloriosus because he pursues what he thinks is an adulterous liaison (4.9–5.1, lines 1388–1415), Apuleius’s persisting importance for Mantuan literary culture argues in favor of his influence here as well.76 Turning, finally, to one of the presumably dead branches of Decameronian adaptation, the play based on a single novella, Padoan remarked that the drammi mescidati, plays in terza rima, ottave, and other verse forms, related to the sacra rappresentazione in structure, derive most directly from versified novelle and cantari. But Michela Parma records no cantare of the story of Giletta di narbona (Dec. 3.9)—indeed the play i am about to discuss is the only entry for that novella in Parma’s admittedly incomplete catalogue of novelle spicciolate or related adaptations deriving from the Decameron.77 nor does the play’s use of ottava rima and epistles in terza rima spring primarily from the sacra rappresentazione, as generally assumed, for the play in question was arguably midwifed by a purely literary, rather than theatrical, genre: in the case of Verginia, it is the tradition of humanist renditions of Boccaccio’s novelle that provides both the background and the spur to a dramatic adaptation of Boccaccio.

238

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Written by Bernardo Accolti, known as the unico Aretino, Verginia dramatizes the story of a physician’s daughter who, by curing the King of France of a fistula, earns the reluctant hand of Bertrand, count of Roussillon; the plot is familiar to readers of english since it is that of shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. The play was written and performed for the 17 January 1494 wedding, in siena, of Antonio spannocchi, scion of a family of sienese bankers who were important tax collectors for the papacy—a position Antonio spannocchi and his brothers retained after the 1492 election of the Borgia pope Alexander Vi. Accolti himself, often in exile from Florence, was at the time a papal abbreviator in Rome.78 As we know, in the course of the play Verginia, daughter to a doctor, after lengthy peregrinations fulfills the seemingly impossible conditions for recovering her snobbish husband, Alessandro, the young prince of salerno: the ring from his finger and a child of his body. in Act V she is finally accepted by her prince after a rhetorically brilliant plea concluding with flurries of anaphora and the ostentation of twin babes in arms, her legitimate offspring by Alessandro. Accolti’s Verginia is exemplary— the King himself qualifies her as “bella & virtuosa” [beautiful and virtuous] (9v), and the play would be hagiographical except that she is not a saint but, as if in anticipation of Machiavelli’s Lucrezia, “atta a governare un regno” [able to govern a kingdom] (which she does), and finally a prolific mother. classical comedy offered only small hints to Accolti. The only conventional comic character is Ruffo, whose complaints about beatings with rods give him a Plautine pedigree. A disloyal servant and a lecherous parasite as well, he blackmails his master to extract shows of deference and better food (29v). His sarcastic impudence both with his master and toward women (he is a fierce misogynist) enlivens the dialogue. The prince, it is true, is a bit like the besotted adulescens of comedy who relies on go-betweens in soliciting sexual favors; but Gostanza, Verginia’s collaborator in the decisive bed trick, is no procuress, and she resists prostituting her daughter camilla, which the Plautine cleareta from Plautus’s Asinaria, for example, would have done instantly out of professional obligation. Accolti’s decision to dramatize a virtuous woman who wins back her reluctant husband through daring, tenacity, and sheer eloquence is motivated rather by the sterling exemplarity of the Boccaccian Ghismonda and Griselda. in the middle and late quattrocento Boccaccio’s strongest

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

239

female characters enjoyed something of a craze through both Latin and vernacular rewritings, in verse and in prose, of the tales in which they figure—from Petrarch’s Latin Griselda to Bruni’s Fabula Tancredi and Beroaldo’s version of the same novella of Ghismonda and Guiscardo, also known as de duobus amantibus—to name but a few of the versions.79 in addition to considerable manuscript circulation, sometimes paired with the italian vernacular tale of seleucus, Antiochus, and stratonike, drawn from Greek (Appian) and Latin (Valerius Maximus) sources, Bruni’s Fabula Tancredi had been printed four times by 1493, while Beroaldo’s Latin version of Decameron 4.1 in elegiac couplets, heavily influenced by Bruni’s, was published in Bologna in 1488 (along with two other novelle). closer to home, Francesco Accolti, Bernardo’s uncle, had in 1442 written an italian terza rima version of the last part of the novella of Ghismonda, relying on Boccaccio and on his fellow citizen Bruni.80 As far as Griselda is concerned, Petrarch’s de insigni obedientia et fide Griseldis had appeared in seven transalpine editions by 1475 and a Toulouse edition in 1490.81 even the inclusion in Accolti’s play of letters (capitoli in terza rima) between Verginia and her prince responds to a fashion for epistolary exchanges within novelle, such as those between lovers euryalus and Lucretia in Aeneas silvius’s Historia de duobus amantibus (ten letters, five each), available to Accolti in a flood of editions including a 1493 illustrated Paris edition82 or in the radical rewriting in the 1480s, in italian verse and prose, of the Historia—one of several—by the Medici poet Alessandro Braccesi, giving the tale a happy ending and adding to the prose letters exchanged in the original eleven sonnets two epigrams and a capitolo in terza rima.83 Accolti’s Verginia is Boccaccio’s Ghismonda reversed: Tancredi’s daughter descends in rank to connect with her servant Guiscardo, a virtuous lover who, though low-born, is gentile [noble in manner], as is just possibly an extrapolation of duecento Tuscan lyric tradition,84 while Verginia—to whom Gostanza refers as both a donna pietosa [lady full of pity] and a cor gentil [noble heart] (32r)—as the daughter of a doctor exercising a profession, dangerously aspires to rise in rank by winning a prince. Where the humbly born Griselda patiently obeys Gualtieri as he apparently commands the murder of her children, Verginia obeys her prince in Act iii by decamping from salerno but proclaims: “spero vincer col tempo e patientia” (24v).85

240

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Accolti’s treatment of his source tale from the Decameron is consistent with the motives that led in the first place to the translations and adaptations of the Ghismonda and Griselda tales. in a gesture that resonated through the remainder of the quattrocento, Leonardo Bruni declared himself, in presenting his novella of Tancredi in a prefatory letter to Bindaccio Ricasoli (1437), to have been persuaded to its translation by Petrarch’s Latin version of the Griselda story: “Recepi tamen me id esse facturum ea maxime suasione inductus, quod Franciscum Petrarcham, virum clarissimum, aliam eiusdem libri fabulam, marchionis videlicet Monsferrati, in latinum vertisse cognoveram” [i accepted the idea that i would do it, persuaded most by the fact that i knew the most renowned Francis Petrarch had translated into Latin another fable from that same book, that of the Marquise of Montferrat].86 For his part, in translating Decameron 10.10, Petrarch had been moved to excerpt what he had found in the Decameron to be more serious in content (gravia), in contrast to the bulk of the book, which consisted of light matters (levia). The contrast of seriousness and levity, implicit in Petrarch’s choice, conditioned subsequent translators. Kircher shows in his essay how Bruni and, after him, Gianozzo Manetti, through juxtapositions of Bruni’s Fabula Tancredi with his newly composed classicizing tale of seleucus and Antiochus, offered a “prophylactic humanism against the force of the Decameron’s eroticism.”87 still, the very juxtaposition of the two stories was itself not un-Decameronian. As has been often observed,88 Bruni’s pairing of the “comic” tale of seleucus’s generous treatment of his son Antiochus with the tragic tale of Tancredi’s cruelty to his daughter reiterates Boccaccio’s juxtaposition of the tale of Ghismonda with the tale that immediately follows, the mostly, if not entirely, hilarious story of Frate Alberto (Dec. 4.2).89 Accolti’s play, including both Verginia’s period of bitter exile and her final triumph, thus echoes a structural feature of the Decameron, the marked shift between the Filostrato-commanded tragedies of Day 4 and the Fiammetta-ruled Day 5, when lovers’ travails find happy endings.90 it is as if Accolti, moving in the other direction in the pages of his Decameron, backtracked from the tragic 4.1 (Tancredi and Ghismonda) to his source in 3.9 (Giletta di narbona), with its final felicitous conclusion. Accolti was surely also fully aware that the story of the physician’s daughter Giletta anticipates the medical and physiological topics treated in the following Day 4. indeed, it is no accident that Accolti has his Verginia—her father’s name, let it be

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

241

noted, was Hippocrates (3r)—set her sights on the prince of salerno, as the first and last stories of Boccaccio’s Day 4 take place in that city, long the site of a celebrated school of medicine.91 it is not unfair to say that the Decameron and its quattrocento legacy helped furnish text, context, and tragicomic structure to Accolti’s play. Verginia may be in part autobiographical, as the piece carries the name of the author’s natural daughter, whom he was eventually prosperous enough to marry off with a dowry. often in exile from Florence, like the exiled and pilgrim Verginia, Accolti was also a tenacious social climber who, as readers of castiglione’s Cortegiano well know, ostentatiously adored, not necessarily merely theatrically, elisabetta Gonzaga, duchess of urbino.92 Having prospered from his literary fame, Accolti purchased the feudal holding of nepi. its subsequent confiscation by Pope Paul iii Farnese effectively killed the improviser and playwright. Although the practice of adapting an entire play from a single Decameronian novella had a strictly limited legacy ahead of it, Accolti’s Verginia did not fail of a kind of posterity. As outlined by Louise clubb and Robert Black, Accolti’s heroine was the immediate stimulus for the character Galaciella in the Parthenio of 1516 by Pollastra (Giovanni Lapoli), and thus an important point of transition to the subgenre of commedia erudita that privileged Boccaccio’s more romantic and far-flung novelle for its plots, especially those featuring female pilgrims (e.g., Bargagli’s La pellegrina of 1564). Verginia is thus one of the forerunners of the program of comic drama initiated in 1532 by the intronati of siena.93 With that inauguration, and with Ariosto’s death in the following year, the pioneering (and innovative) phase of italian vernacular comedy based on Boccaccio might be said to have been largely over and its “classical” consolidation begun.94 noTes

1. For the text, see Ludovico Ariosto, Tutte le Opere, vol. 4: Commedie, ed. Angela casella, Gabriella Ronchi, and elena Varasi (Mondadori: Milan, 1964). References and pagination are from this edition. 2. see niccolò Grasso, Eutichia, ed. Luigina stefani (Messina-Firenze: D’Anna, 1984), 54. Eutichia was played at urbino along with Bibbiena’s Calandra during carnival in 1513 (see note 9).

242

A Boccaccian Renaissance

3. Amicitia (a version of Dec. 10.8) and Due felici rivali (a version of Dec. 5.8), edited in Luigina stefani, Tre commedie fiorentine del primo 500 (Amicitia, Due felici rivali di Iacopo Nardi; iustitia di Eufrosino Bonini) (Ferrara-Roma: Gabriele corbo, 1986). space limitations forbid discussion of these plays. 4. Ariosto, Tutte le opere 4: xxi–xxii. 5. Among other parallels, I Suppositi 3.1 (223), alludes to Biondello (Dec. 9.8), and 5.5 (251), echoes Dec. 5.7.34; in both cases recognition by means of a birthmark is involved. 6. see casella’s note, Ariosto, Tutte le opere 4: 1038. For an early cinquecento humanist version of Dec. 7.7, see Donato Pirovano, “Due novelle del Boccaccio (6.9, 7.7) tradotte in latino da Francesco Pandolfini,” Giornale storico della Letteratura italiana 175, 1998: 556–76; it was unlikely to have been known to Ariosto. 7. I Suppositi, prologue: “e vi confessa l’autore avere in questo e Plauto e Terenzio seguitato, de li quali l’un fece cherea per Doro, e l’altro Filocrate per Tindaro, e Tindaro per Filocrate, l’uno ne lo Eunuco, l’altro ne li Captivi, supponersi” [And the author confesses to you that in this he has followed Plautus and Terence, one of whom substituted cherea for Dorus, and the other Philocrates for Tyndarus, and Tyndarus for Philocrates, the former in the Eunuchus, the other in the Captivi]. 8. A direct borrowing from I Supp: i.iii, “che è di erostrato,” is at Cal. 1.107–11, “che è di santilla mia,” etc. 9. Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, La Calandra, commedia elegantissima per Messer Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, ed. Giorgio Padoan (Padua: Antenore, 1985); all references are to this edition. For the early performances, see Ronald L. Martinez, “etruria Triumphant in Rome: Fables of Medici Rule and Bibbiena’s Calandra,” Renaissance Drama 36–37 (2011): 67–96. 10. simone: Dec. 8.9.3, 12 vs. Cal. 1.178; 3.302; Frate Puccio: 3.4.12–13 vs. Cal 2.210; Ferondo: Dec. 3.8 vs. Cal. 2.201, 3.78; Arriguccio: Dec. 7.8.8, 19–21, 34, 41, and 47 vs. Cal. 5.167–72; compare Pietro: Dec. 9.10, 15, and 20 vs. Cal. 2.125 and 155; and Guccio imbratta: Dec. 6.10.16 vs. Cal. 1.102). 11. Love’s power: Dec. 1.4.15–16 vs. Cal. 3.160; Dec. 10.8.17 vs. Cal. 1.12; Dec. 7.4.3–4, 7.9.3 vs. Cal. 3.188; and Dec. 9.5.14 vs. Cal. 3.155; women’s condition: Dec. 3.5.30, 3.6.33, and 5.10.15 vs. Cal. 3.155. see Giorgio Padoan, introduction to Bibbiena, La Calandra, esp. 29–34. 12. see Dionisotti’s preface in Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua: Gli asolani; Rime; ed. carlo Dionisotti (Turin: unione Tipografico-editrice Torinese, 1966), esp. 17–35. 13. The letter is reprinted in Bibbiena, La Calandra, 192–201. The “caterina” in question was identified by Bibbiena’s biographer G. L. Moncallero as the daughter of Giorgio di novellara and Paola scianteschi della Faggiuola. All translations from Latin and italian are mine. 14. Padoan includes the prologue in Bibbiena, La Calandra, 189–93.

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

243

15. Padoan’s notes (Bibbiena, La Calandra, 191–92), cite Dec. 2.10.41, 3.8.50, 4.10.7, 5.10.56, 6.8.10, and 7.5.10. 16. omitted here is discussion of Machiavelli’s dramaturgical relationship with Lorenzo di Filippo strozzi. For a recent examination, see William J. Landon, Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi and Niccolò Machiavelli: Patron, Client, and the Pistola fatta per la peste / An Epistle Written Concerning the Plague (Toronto: university of Toronto Press, 2013). 17. niccolò Machiavelli, Lettere, ed. Franco Gaeta (Milan: Mursia 1961), 300 n 147; Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, trans. and ed. by James B. Atkinson and David sices (De Kalb: northern illinois university Press, 1996), 281 (Letter 231) and 529 n 7. 18. Machiavelli, Lettere, 383 (170); Machiavelli and His Friends, 318 (254) and 531 nn 6–7. 19. Dell’asino d’oro, 1.28–90, in niccolò Machiavelli, Il teatro e tutti gli scritti letterari, ed. Franco Gaeta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1965): 270–71. 20. He resurfaces as a “mercante di gioie,” with clear reference to Boccaccio’s Andreuccio da Perugia, in Pietro Aretino’s Il filosofo (Venice: Giolito, 1549). 21. Rhiannon Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy, 1340–1520 (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2009), 115–16, 134 n 162. 22. Paola Ventrone, Gli araldi della commedia: Teatro a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Pisa: Pacini editore, 1993), 117–35, renders the dialogues of the Novella del Grasso as dramatic scenes. space limitations forbid discussion of this novella. 23. see Rossella Bessi, “Bonaccorso di Lapo Giovanni: novella o pamphlet?,” in Favole parabole istorie: Le forme della scrittura novellistica dal Medioevo al Rinascimento, Atti del Convegno di Pisa, 26–28 ottobre 1998, ed. Gabriella Albanese, Lucia Battaglia Ricci, and Rossella Bessi (Rome: salerno, 2000), 163–87. The text of Bianco Alfani is in Giuseppe G. Ferrero and Maria Luisa Doglio, eds., Novelle del Quattrocento (Turin: uTeP, 1975), 629–46 (calandrino alluded to on 642), and calandrino is mentioned in the Palatino 200 and Manetti versions of the novella del Grasso but not in the vulgate; see La novella del Grasso legnaiuolo, ed. Paolo Procaccioli (Milan: Garzanti, 1998), 12 (Manetti version) and 70 (Palatino 200). 24. see Daniels, Boccaccio, 116. The date of the composition of Mandragola remains controversial. 25. Mandragola is cited from niccolò Machiavelli, Il teatro e tutti gli scritti letterari, ed. Franco Gaeta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1965). 26. “Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata,” chapter 2. 27. nino Borsellino, Rozzi e intronati: Esperienze e forme del teatro dal Decameron al Candelaio (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974), 17–60 (references in this paragraph from pages 17 and 20). Also noted is the rich theatrical potential of Boccaccio’s calandrino, ciappelletto, and Guccio imbratta (Borsellino, Rozzi, 18–19).

244

A Boccaccian Renaissance

28. Boccacio’s Zibaldone, inclusive of the Latin plays, is studied by Bianca Maria Da Rif in “La miscellanea Laurenziana XXXiii 31,” Studi sul Boccaccio 7 (1973): 59–124; see also Michelangelo Picone, “La Comedia Lidie dallo Zibaldone al Decameron,” in Gli Zibaldoni di Boccaccio: Memoria, scrittura, riscrittura: Atti del Seminario internazione di Firenze-Certaldo (26–28 aprile 1996), ed. Michelangelo Picone and claude cazalé Bérard (Florence: Franco cesati, 1998), 401–14, and Daniela Goldin, “il Boccaccio e la poesia latina francese del Xii secolo,” Studi sul Boccaccio 13 (1981–82): 327–62. 29. Goldin, “il Boccaccio,” 344–45. 30. Ferrucio Bertini claims that Alda is also a source for the Decameronian narrator’s tale (Dec. iV. intro. 12–29), cited in Francesco Bruni, Boccaccio, L’invenzione della letteratura mezzane (Bologna: il mulino, 1990), 321–23; see also Goldin, “il Boccaccio,” 345–47, who cites Alda, verses 138–51. 31. see Rino Avesani, Quattro miscellanee medioevali e umanistiche: Contributo alla tradizione del Geta, degli Auctores octo, dei Libri minores e di altra letteratura scolastica medioevale (Rome: edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1967), 15–16. 32. Picone, “La Comedia,” 406–7. 33. Pier Massimo Forni, Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio’s “Decameron” (Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 12–15 and 131–32. A character named Licisca is inserted into the vernacular Asinaria; see Ferrucio Bertini, “un volgarizzamento rinascimentale dell’Asinaria di Plauto,” in his Plauto e dintorni (Bari: Laterza, 1997), 143–78, esp. 154–55. 34. Bruni, Boccaccio, 382. 35. For Apuleius in Boccaccio, see at least Jonathan usher, “Desultorietà nella novella portante di Madonna oretta (Dec. Vi.1) e altre citazioni apuleiane nel Boccaccio, Studi sul Boccaccio 29 (2001): 67–103, and igor candido, “Apuleio alla fine del Decameron, la novella di Griselda come riscrittura della ‘lepida fabula’ di Amore e Psiche,” Filologia e critica, 32 (2007): 3–17. Regine May, in Apuleius and Drama: The Ass on Stage (oxford: oxford university Press, 2006), 247–48, takes it as given that the cupid and Psyche story is a mise en abîme of the whole novel; see also Julia Haig Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass: A Study in Transmission and Reception (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 2008), 111–18. 36. see Bruni, Boccaccio, 320–26, on the commedia elegiaca [elegiac comedy]; see also 323–25. Picone, in “La Comedia,” 406, concedes that the spurio and spurca of Alda are models for Guccio imbratta and La nuta. 37. Bruni, Boccaccio, 323, cites lines 457–58 of Geta; see also ll 165, 237, and 527–30. Boccaccio’s calandrino lapidated, Dec. 8.3.41, derives from Geta, ll 185–207, in Three Latin Comedies, ed. Keith Bate (Toronto: Pontifical institute of Medieval studies, 1976), 22; see Goldin, “il Boccaccio,” 352. 38. see Bruni, Boccaccio, 381–82, on Apuleius’s tricolon “saeva scaeva, viriosa ebriosa, pervicax pertinax” [wicked and sinister, violent and drunken, stubborn and obstinate].

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

245

39. see Gary R. Grund, trans., Humanist Comedies (cambridge and London: Harvard university Press, 2005), 2–69, esp. 65 (Paulus, line 804). 40. Chrysis 7.357–372, in Grund, Humanist Comedies, 311–12, but he misses the reference, noted in Vito Pandolfi and erminia Artese, ed., Teatro goliardico dell’Umanesimo (Milan: Lerici, 1965), 362. 41. see the preface to Menechini in Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti and Maria Pia Mussini sacchi, eds., Teatro del Quattrocento: Le corti padane (Turin: unione Tipografico-editrice Torinese, 1983), 77–87, esp. 81–82; the attribution is far from certain. For Terence and Plautus in Ferrara in the early quattrocento, see Marco Villoresi, Da Guarino a Boiardo: La cultura teatrale a Ferrara nel Quattrocento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1994), 15–71. 42. Menechini i, vv 253–58, in Benvenuti and sacchi, Teatro, 101. 43. The letter is cited in Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, “commedie classiche in Ferrara nel 1499,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 11 (1888): 176–89, esp. 177–78, and discussed in Villoresi, Da Guarino, 121–24. 44. Menechini 2.116, in Benvenuti and sacchi, 107; Benvenuti’s comment is on the same page. 45. Bruni, Boccaccio, 382 n 29. 46. see Giovanni sabadino degli Arienti, Le porretane, ed. Bruno Basile (Rome: salerno, 1981), 3; calandrino and his friends are mentioned on 196–97. 47. For printed editions of Boccaccio in the late quattrocento, see Daniels, Boccaccio, 101–17. 48. The plot of Formicone: called away on a sea voyage, Barbaro entrusts the care of his concubine Polifila to his servant, Formicone. in a scheme furthered by the parasite Licopino, after Formicone’s own girlfriend sirisca begs to be ransomed from a procurer, Formicone is corrupted with money by Polifila’s lover Filetero and grants him access to Polifila’s bedroom. He barely escapes when Barbaro returns unexpectedly and finds Filetero’s slippers next to Polifila’s bed. As Formicone is led off to a beating, Filetero accuses Formicone of having stolen his slippers in the public baths, Barbaro is appeased, and Formicone escapes harsh treatment. 49. For the possible performance, see stefani in Mantovano, Il formicone, 9–13. Formicone was apparently performed again in Mantua in 1506 and possibly in Ferrara in 1509. There were six printed editions by 1537, and it was included in Zoppino’s 1530 anthology. 50. see Francesco colonna, Hypnerotomachia poliphili (Venice: Aldus, 1499): 83–84: “et come chiamase la tua cara amorosa? io morigeratamente risposi Polia. et ella dixe: o he io arbitraua che il tuo nome indicasse molto amante, Ma quello che io sento al presente, uole dire, Amico di Polia.” colonna’s novel refers some dozen times to the afflictions of either Lucius or Psyche from Apulieus’s novel. 51. see La favola di Orfeo e Aristeo, ed. Guido Mazzoni (Florence: Alfani e Venturi, 1906), ix.

246

A Boccaccian Renaissance

52. A possible proximate source for the latinizing of the name may be Filippo Beroaldo’s commentary on Apuleius’s novel, published in Bologna in 1500 and in Venice in 1504, where Myrmex is glossed as formicinus. see Commentarii a Philippo Beroaldo conditi In asinü aureu[m] Lucii Apuleii (Venice: Bartholomeum de Zanis de portesio, 1504), 171r. 53. stefani, in Mantovano, Il formicone, 21, documents how this bit of business was picked up in later plays, including Ariosto’s Suppositi (2.3) and niccolò de’ Grassi’s Eutichia (1.2). 54. Fabrizio cruciani, clelia Faletti, and Franco Ruffini, “La sperimentazione teatrale negli anni di ercole i,” Teatro e storia 9 (1994): 131–217, esp. 141– 43 and 166–67. 55. Met. 9.15: “At ego, quamquam graviter suscensens errori Photidis, quae me, dum avem fabricat, perfecit asinum, isto tamen vel unico solacio aerumnabilis deformitatis meae recreabar, quod auribus grandissimis praeditus cuncta longule etiam dissita facillime sentiebam” [For my part, though i was sorely vexed with Photis because she had turned me into an ass instead of a bird, nevertheless i still possessed one consolation from my disgraceful transformation, and that was the fact that i had very long ears that permitted me to hear everything, even at a considerable distance]. cited from Lucio Apuleio, Metamorfosi, ed. and trans. F. Roncoroni and nino Marziano (Milan: Garzanti, 2002), 316. 56. Another link to Boccaccio, not discussed here, is the slapstick scene inserted at the end of the comedy between servants Geta and Dromo, harking back to the scene involving the carrying of books in the fourteenth-century verse novella of Geta and Birria, once attributed to Boccaccio because of the reference to Geta and Birria, in the Amorosa visione (XViii, 76–81). 57. Mantovano, Il formicone 1.3, pp. 38–39. 58. Mantovano might have seen or heard the cantare El Bolognese o vero Masetto di Lampolichio ortolano che fingneva essere mutolo che impregno tutte le monache duno munistero in elisabetta Benucci, Roberta Manetti, and Franco Zabagli, eds., Cantari novellistici dal Tre al Cinquecento (Rome: salerno editrice, 2000), 741–65, published in Florence as early as 1500. one possible parallel stands out (stanza 7, ll 4–6): “Fa’ qui, fa’ là! ognuna a comandare; / l’una dice: ‘Fa’ qui, nuto musorno!’ / l’altra dicea: ‘Questo si vuol piantare’” [Do it here, do it there! each one gives commands; / one says: ‘Do it here, sulky nuto!’ / the other was saying: ‘This one needs to be planted’] (Benucci, Manetti, and Zabagli, Cantari, 744). 59. edoardo Fumagalli, in Matteo Maria Boiardo, volgarizzatore dell’ Asino d’oro: contributo allo studio della fortuna di Apuleio nell’umanesimo (Padua: Antenore, 1988), 137–44, cites relevant parallels. For the topic, see Terence, Andria, prologue, 15–16: “disputant / contaminari non decere fabulas”; see also Gaisser, Fortunes, 173–79. 60. According to sabbadino degli Arienti’s De Triumphis religionis of 1493, niccolò da correggio’s fabula Psiches et Cupidinis of 1491 in ottava rima (dedicated

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

247

to isabella d’este Gonzaga; see Gaisser, Fortunes, 185–88) guided the frescoed story of Psyche in the magno salotto of Belriguardo in Ferrara. see De Triumphis religionis, Art and Life at the Court of Ercole I d’Este, ed. W. Gundersheimer (Geneva: Droz, 1972), 64 n 55; the fresco is described at 259–60. see also Gaisser, Fortunes, 188–93. Galeotto del carretto’s Noze di Psiche et Cupidine, also in ottava rima, is dated 1502 (text in Benvenuti and sacchi, Teatro, 611–725; see also Gaisser, Fortunes, 193–95). 61. Gaisser, in Fortunes, 177–80, reads the episode. 62. see Antonio Franceschetti, “La novella nei poemi del Boiardo e dell’Ariosto,” in La novella italiana: Atti del Convegno di Caprarola, 19–24 settembre 1988, ed. stefano Bianchi, 2 vols. (Rome: salerno editrice, 1989), 805–40. 63. see usher, “Desultorietà,” 67–81. 64. see the notes in Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando innamorato, ed. Riccardo Bruscagli, 2 vols. (Turin: einaudi, 1995), vol. 1, 228–48; vol. 2, 980–88. see also Giulio Reichenbach, L’ orlando innamorato di Matteo Maria Boiardo (Florence: La nuova italia, 1936), 48–54, for the Captivi echoes. 65. including Ariosto. For discussion, see Villoresi, Da Guarino, esp. 137–40 and 145–47 and Benvenuti and sacchi, Teatro, 78–81 and 86–87. 66. Two modern editions exist: Galeotto del carretto, Li sei contenti and Sofonisba, ed. Mauda Bregoli-Russo (Madrid: J. Porrúa Turanzas, 1982) and Li sei contenti, ed. Maria Luisa Doglio (Turin: centro studi piemontesi, 1985). Doglio dates the play to 1502, Bregoli-Russo to the third decade, on thematic grounds. The references are to Doglio’s edition. 67. The letter is in Del carretto, Li sei contenti, 3–4. 68. Padoan, L’avventura della commedia rinascimentale (Padua: Francesco Vallardi, 1996), 27 and n 12. The vernacular Asinaria and Sei contenti are virtually contemporary, if del carretto’s play is assigned to 1502; cf. Bertini, “un volgarizzamento,” in Plauto, 153–54. 69. see http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/galeotto-del-carretto_Dizionario -Biografico/. 70. Del carretto, Li sei contenti, 1.2, p. 10; cf. Dec. 6.4.7–9. 71. ibid., 2.2, p. 18; see Doglio, 48 n 10. 72. The outcome of strozzi’s Commedia in versi, in which two ill-assorted couples exchange mates, also recalls Decameron 8.8 (Zeppa and spinnelloccio), although more decorously. 73. see Del carretto, Li sei contenti, 3.3, p. 28, and Doglio’s note on 49. 74. Del carretto, Li sei contenti, 5.1, p. 36, note on p. 51 and note 2 to 5.1; Bregoli-Russo sees it anticipated in 4.9, p. 125. 75. neither Doglio nor Bregoli-Russo registers this parallel. 76. For Barzizza’s play, see Pandolfi and Artese, Teatro goliardico, 446–549. 77. Michela Parma, “Fortuna spicciolata del Decameron fra tre e cinquecento: Tendenze e caratteristiche delle rielaborazion,” Studi sul Boccaccio 2005: 299–364, esp. 236–37.

248

A Boccaccian Renaissance

78. see Lilia Mantovani’s entry, “Accolti, Bernardo, detto l’unico Aretino,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/accolti -bernardo-detto-l-unico-aretino_Dizionario_Biografico/. For the spannocchi family, see Felix Gilbert, The Pope, His Banker, and Venice (cambridge: Harvard university Press, 1991): 69–70. i cite from the 1535 printed edition: Verginia: Comedia di M. Bernardo Accolti Aretino intitolata Verginia, con un capitolo della Madonna, nuovamente corretta, & con somma diligentia ristampata (Venice: Zoppino, 1535). 79. see Federico Poletti, “Fortuna letteraria e figurativa della Ghismonda (Dec. iV.1) fra umanesimo e rinascimento (ia parte),” Studi sul Boccaccio 32 (2005): 101–39, esp. 103 and 117; see also Gabriella Albanese, “Da Petrarca a Piccolomini: codificazione della novella umanistica,” in Favole, 257–308. 80. Poletti, “Fortuna,” 118–23; see also note 29, on Ms. Riccardiano 1095. For Girolamo Benivieni’s version in octave, written in the 1480s and published in 1497, see Poletti, “Fortuna,” 123–24. 81. Gabriella Albanese, “Fortuna umanistica della Griselda,” Quaderni petrarcheschi 9–10 (1992–93): 571–627, esp. 573; Rafaelle Morabito, “La diffusione della storia di Griselda dal XiV al XX secolo,” Studi sul Boccaccio 17 (1988): 237– 86, esp. 241–42 and 246–48; and Parma, “Fortuna spicciolata,” 203–70. 82. For a list of editions, see Albanese, “Da Petrarca,” in Favole, 293–94. The Historia was itself deeply indebted to Boccaccio’s Filocolo, Filostrato, and Fiammetta and to the Decameron (notably iV.1, V.3, and V.10). 83. see natascia Tonelli, “L’Historia di due amanti di Alessandro Braccesi,” in Favole, 337–57, who emphasizes female agency in the writing of epistles and poems, and Mariarosa Masoero, “novella in versi e prosimetro: Riscritture volgari dell’Historia di duobus amantibus del Piccolomini,” in Favole, 317–35. see also Daniela Pietragalla, “novella come romanzo: La Historia de amore Camilli et Emiliae di Francesco Florio,” in Favole, 359–77. 84. see Decameron 1976, 1207–8, and compare euryalus in De duobus amantibus, voicing the idea that only virtue makes for nobility: “Mea sententia nemo est nobilis, nisi virtutis amator”; see Aeneae silvii Piccolominei, De duobus amantibus historia, ed. Joseph i. Devay (Budapest: Typis i. Heisleri, 1903), 42–43. 85. For Virginia’s courageous ambition, see Verginia, 1, 4r: “Vuoi tu volare al ciel sanza haver ale? / a te aver sposo tanto non lice”, and 4v: “chi l’arbor non sal, frutto non coglie.” Griselda’s low birth is emphasized by iacoppo Filippo Foresti in his Supplementum chronicarum (Venice, 1483): “Griseldis autem, femina nullius nobilitate generis insignita sed obedientie et fidei splendore decorata” [Griselda, however, a woman distinguished by no nobility of birth, but splendidly adorned with faith and obedience], cited in Albanese, “Fortuna umanistica,” 609. 86. Martelli, “La tradizione,” in Albanese, Ricci, and Bessi, Favole, 216; Albanese, “Fortuna umanistica,” 603, 613. 87. Kircher, “Boccaccio’s Humanist Brigata,” 41.

De nuptiis comoediae et novellae

249

88. Albanese, “Da Petrarca,” in Albanese, Ricci, and Bessi, Favole, 285–87; Martelli, “La tradizione,” in Favole, 231–32. see David Marsh, “Boccaccio in the Quattrocento: Manetti’s Dialogus in symposio,” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980): 337–50, esp. 339–41. 89. This is a juxtaposition that Giannozzo Manetti made explicit in his subsequent rewriting and discussion of the two tales; see Marsh, “Boccaccio,” esp. 344–49, and Albanese, “Fortuna umanistica,” 604–5. 90. For this pattern in Boccaccio’s collection, see Ronald L. Martinez, “Also Known as Prencipe Galeotto (Decameron),” in Boccaccio, A Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham and Janet smarr (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2013), 23–40, esp. 34–35. 91. For a brief history of the salerno medical school, see Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, ed. Thomas F. Glick, steven ivesen, and Faith Wallis (new york: Routledge, 2005), 452. 92. see Baldassare castiglione, Il cortegiano, ed. Giulio carnazzi (Milan: Rizzoli, 1987), 63–64 (Book i.12). 93. on the line that leads from Verginia to the intronati and Girolamo Bargagli, see Louise George clubb and Robert Black, Romance and Aretine Humanism in Sienese Comedy (Florence: La nuova italia, 1993), 146–48, and nino Borsellino, introduction to La pellegrina, in Commedie del Cinquecento, vol. 1 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962), 143–44. 94. For this phase, see Mario Baratto, La commedia del Cinquecento: Aspetti e problemi (Vicenza: neri Pozza, 1975), 35–153, esp. 138–53.

PART 4 Boccaccio in Renaissance europe

cHAPTeR 10

Boccaccio’s second Life in French Anthoine Le Maçon’s Decameron and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron

m ar c d. s c hac ht er

in a prefatory letter gracing Anthoine Le Maçon’s 1545 French version of the Decameron, the italian jurist emilio Ferretti wrote that, given the difficulty of the undertaking, he had been surprised to find the translation to be a “Boccaccio transsformato, o (per dir’meglio) radoppiato di vita” [Boccaccio transformed, or (to put it better) given redoubled life].1 While this Boccaccio “reborn” is the focus of the present chapter, it is worth underscoring that a study of the Boccaccian Renaissance in France could go in numerous directions.2 There were many Renaissances boccaciennes, whether we take as our point of departure the historical period in question or the later historiography that sought to define it. By way of introduction, then, i will juxtapose the strikingly incongruent perspectives on Boccaccio and the Renaissance found in three claimants to the title inventor of the Renaissance—Frenchmen Jules Michelet and charles Augustin sainteBeuve, as well as their swiss successor Jacob Burckhardt—with a series of sixteenth-century French commonplaces about Boccaccio.3 continuities between the representation of Boccaccio in Renaissance France and in nineteenth-century historiography suggest that his reception should be 253

254

A Boccaccian Renaissance

thought of in the longue durée. Then i will turn to Le Maçon’s Decameron, which was commissioned by Marguerite de navarre and superseded Laurent de Premierfait’s 1414 French rendering, exploring how its participation in the cultivation of the French language by then well underway may have been in part motivated by a particularly juridical concern. My consideration will focus on the book’s paratexts, which make this participation explicit, and on novella 5.10, because it includes a striking revision of the meaning of the original text in what is in general a remarkably accurate translation.4 To conclude, i will briefly turn to Marguerite de navarre’s Heptaméron, suggesting that more remains to be understood about how its meditations on secular judgment but also on human mercy and divine grace drew inspiration from the Decameron. B o c c Ac c i o R e B o R n: ( P R o T o - ) R e n A i s s A n c e M A n , M e D i e VA L o B s TAc L e , V e R n Ac u L A R M u s e , M AGIST ER A MOR IS

According to Jacob Burckhardt, Boccaccio marked an important step toward the emergence of the Renaissance. in “The Discovery of the World and of Man,” a section of his 1860 The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Burckhardt celebrated Boccaccio’s break from the conventions governing then-prevailing modes of representation. He singled out the Fiammetta as having offered a “great and minutely-painted picture of the human soul” and the Ameto as masterfully demonstrating the “capacity to paint in words real or imaginary forms.” But despite his celebration of these vernacular works, Burckhardt also insisted that, like Petrarch, Boccaccio was known in the Renaissance primarily for his Latin writings. Particularly germane to this chapter, he also contended that “but little was known of the ‘Decameron’ north of the Alps” for two centuries after the work’s composition.5 This characterization of Boccaccio is markedly different from that found in the writings of the most important nineteenth-century French theoreticians of the Renaissance. in the opening words of his 1855 Renaissance, the seventh volume of his Histoire de France,6 Jules Michelet decried what he saw as a reductive understanding of the term: For the lover of beauty, the renaissance (with a lower-case “r”) merely referred to artistic

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

255

renewal and the free flight of imagination; for lawyers, it denoted only the ordering of chaotic older customs; and for the erudite, it evoked nothing more than the restoration of ancient study.7 Mutatis mutandis, according to these criteria we might think of Boccaccio—author of the Decameron and of the Genealogia and a key figure in the recovery and dissemination of Apuleius—as an exemplary (proto-)renaissance man in each of these domains. For Michelet, however, the expression properly understood referred to something more ambitious. Anticipating the section title of Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy in which Boccaccio would figure so prominently, Michelet wrote that the Renaissance—with a capital “R” to distinguish it from its vulgar incarnations—was “la découverte du monde, la découverte de l’homme” [the discovery of the world, the discovery of man].8 But whereas for Burckhardt, Boccaccio anticipated great Renaissance discoveries concerning the depiction of man, according to Michelet he was an enemy of an incipient heroic and visionary project, his seductive prose about amorous intrigues a locus amoenus thwarting an epic quest for knowledge. Da Vinci’s Bacchus and his saint John the Baptist depict “le moment de la révélation du vrai dans une intelligence épanouie, le ravissement de la découverte” [the moment of the revelation of truth in a flourishing intellect, the rapture of discovery], but the Mona Lisa painted a different picture: “Vous la croyiez attentive aux récits légers de Boccace” [you’d think she was distracted by Boccaccio’s light tales], this seductive woman with eyes that lead astray like Alcina’s island.9 Michelet also laments that the accomplishments of Dante and Brunelleschi, which he suggests had the potential to launch the Renaissance well before its actual emergence, were instead overlooked by a newly emergent bourgeoisie obsessed by trifles: “on ne goûte que Boccace” [Boccacio alone is in fashion].10 it’s almost as if “compassione degli afflitti” [compassion for the afflicted], to quote from the Decameron’s proem, were the opiate of the middle classes.11 Michelet’s depiction of Boccaccio may have its roots in somewhat contradictory Renaissance French characterizations of his works as simple and likely to appeal to the young or as conveying illicit erotic knowledge. Michel de Montaigne argued in “on the education of children” that aristocratic boys should not be subjected to useless instruction in “dialectic” but rather in the key life lessons of philosophy, which are “plus aisez à concevoir qu’un conte de Boccace” [easier to understand than one of Boccaccio’s tales].12 A few decades later, a gloss of a passage in La Seconde

256

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Sepmaine of Guillaume de salluste Du Bartas in which Boccaccio is mentioned as an important model for the cultivation of vernacular languages observes that “iean Bocace a escrit il y a assez long temps, mais fort gentillement & purement comme son Decameron, sa Flammette, le Philocope, le Labyrinthe, & autres siens liures tant aimez par les enfans du monde, en font preuue” [Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a good while ago, but very graciously and purely, as his Decameron, his Fiammetta, the Filocopo, the Labirinto d’amore, and other books as well, so loved by the children of the world, demonstrate].13 More common, however, were depictions of Boccaccio as a magister amoris.14 in “on some Verses of Virgil,” Montaigne imagined men turning in vain to Amadis of Gaul, Boccaccio, and Aretino for the sort of erotic education that he claimed women were born with.15 Montaigne’s near contemporary Pierre de Brantôme described Boccaccio as “venerable et docte” [venerable and learned] about amorous matters and incorporated many salacious anecdotes drawn from a range of Boccaccio’s writings into his own works.16 earlier in the century, Bonaventure des Périers, who died in 1544, had a character in his posthumously published novella collection, Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis, seek to learn all the tricks of women by reading Boccaccio and the Celestina so as to (try to) avoid being cuckolded17 and in 1537, Marot published a poem in which the Celestina, Boccaccio’s Fiammetta, and Virgil’s second eclogue are sarcastically said to offer “bonne doctrine” [good doctrine] while forbidding nothing in erotic matters (“il n’y a rien de deffendu”).18 A far different perspective is offered by the literary critic charles Augustin sainte-Beuve, whose 1828 Tableau historique et critique de la poésie française et du théâtre français au seizième siècle celebrated the importance of Boccaccio for French letters without any apparent concern for his licentious reputation. After remarking that “devant les lumières de la renaissance” [confronted by the lights of the renaissance] many medieval genres died out or came to be repeated without innovation, sainte-Beuve turned to discuss the Decameron and what he saw as its crucial role in preparing the way for the inventive Gallic novella tradition.19 Whereas Burckhardt would later assert that the Decameron was barely known north of the Alps until the middle of the sixteenth century, sainte-Beuve contended that the Cent nouvelles nouvelles written down at the court of Burgundy in the second half of the fifteenth century was inspired by Boccaccio’s own collection of novellas—though even more daring. He also underscored the importance of the Decameron

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

257

for Marguerite de navarre’s Heptaméron, composed “pour se désennuyer peut-être de ses poésies chrétiennes” [perhaps to relieve herself of the tedium of writing her christian poems], and Bonaventure des Périers’s Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis. sainte-Beuve’s account of the Decameron’s influence culminated with Rabelais, whose books, he wrote, combined elements drawn from erasmus and Boccaccio, among others, to create something new—a high point of the French Renaissance—“qui rappelle tout sans être comparable à rien” [that recalls everything without being comparable to anything].20 While the impact of the Decameron on fifteenth-century French writing may be debated by scholars, its impact in sixteenth-century France is not in question. indeed, Renaissance French authors drawing on elements of the questione della lingua explicitly celebrated Boccaccio as a model for their own cultivation of a “national” literature. in a prefatory epistle to his translation of Horace’s Ars poetica, printed in 1545 (the same year as Le Maçon’s translation of the Decameron), Jacques Peletier highlighted the importance of nurturing one’s mother tongue rather than a “langue peregrine” [foreign language]. After noting that the ancient Romans themselves had assiduously cultivated Latin before it became a mature language, he wrote: J’ai mesmement pour mes auteurs Petrarque et Bocace, deux hommes jadis de grande erudition et savoir, lesquelz ont voulu faire temoignage de leur doctrine en ecrivant en leur Touscan. [in the same vein, i am authorized by Petrarch and Boccaccio, two men from the past of great erudition and knowledge, who wanted to make a testament to their learning by writing in their Tuscan.]21 A verse epistle by Joachim Du Bellay, “A Madame Marguerite d’escrire en sa langue” [To Madame Marguerite, to Write in Her Language], also composed in the 1540s, similarly evoked both Boccaccio and Petrarch as vernacular muses: Quel siecle esteindra ta memoire, o Boccace? et quels durs hyvers Pouront jamais seicher la gloire, Petrarque, de tes lauriers verds?

258

A Boccaccian Renaissance

[What century will extinguish your memory, o Boccaccio? And what rough winters can ever dry the glory, Petrarch, of your green laurels?]22 in these and other works, including Du Bellay’s Defence and Illustration of the French Language, Boccaccio and Petrarch mark a transition from the ancient (Latin) to the modern (vernacular) refining of the maternal tongue.23 This project of linguistic cultivation finds a particularly elaborate discussion in the prefatory material found in Le Maçon’s version of the Decameron, to which i now turn.24 B o c c Ac c i o s P e A K i n G

“ L e c o M M u n L A n G A i G e F R A n c oy s ”

Anthoine le Maçon’s 1545 French version of Boccaccio’s Decameron was one of several translations commissioned by Marguerite de navarre, sister of François i, king of France, and queen of navarre through marriage. Much of Marguerite de navarre’s extensive patronage supported the cultivation of a vernacular literature that could spread a Reformationminded religious message to a wider audience.25 Her own writings, including the Heptaméron, were part of this same project. Le Maçon’s Le Decameron de Messire Jehan Bocace, Florentin, seems to have had a different agenda, one instead closely aligned with the ongoing secular project of enriching the French language through the translation of illustrious models. Le Maçon characterized Boccaccio as just such a model, writing in a prefatory epistle that he “avoit esté (comme j’ay tousjours ouy dire aux plus scavans, l’homme de toute l’italie) qui à paradventure le mieulx escript en sa langue que nul autre feit oncques” [was (as i have always heard said by the most learned men) the man who had perhaps better written in his language than any other had ever done] and indeed that in his writing Boccaccio surpassed both cicero speaking Latin and Demosthenes speaking Greek.26 The printer’s dedicatory epistle explicitly links the work to the project of developing the vernacular, specifically contending that it demonstrated the newly acquired copiousness of the French language:

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

259

La nation Francoyse se peult bien vanter aujourd’hui (seigneurs lecteurs) que la presente traduction du Decameron de Bocace, nous est une tresgrande prueve & tesmoignage certain, de la richesse & abundance de nostre vulgaire Francoys. [The French nation can indeed brag today (lord readers) that the present translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron is a great proof and a definite testament of the richness and the abundance of our vulgar French].27 composed several years before Du Bellay’s 1549 Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse [Defense and Illustration of the French Language], which urged writers to turn from the translation of works in more prestigious languages to their imitation, this letter and the other paratexts prefacing Le Maçon’s Decameron reflect a stage in the project of developing the expressive power of French when vocabulary seems to have been more central than issues of style. The putative lexical poverty of vernacular languages was a common concern addressed by Renaissance translators. For example, cristoforo Landino mentioned it in his dedicatory epistle to his 1476 italian version of Pliny’s Natural History: “non e adunque maraviglia se non ho trovato vocaboli thoscani alle chose non mai state in uso appresso de thoscani” [it is thus not surprising if i have not found Tuscan words for the things that have never been in use among the Tuscans].28 The question of vocabulary may have taken on a certain urgency in France when a 1539 law, known as the ordinance of Villers-cotterêts, established French as the language of official documents in France, augmenting concern about the language’s perceived limits when compared to Latin.29 i will return to the potential implications of this law later. Le Macon’s own dedicatory epistle also raises the question of the adequacy of the French language. He explained that earlier attempts to translate the Decameron into French had been such abject failures that he had agreed with his italian friends that “nostre langue ne fust si riche de termes, & vocables, comme la leur” [our language was not as rich in expressions and words as theirs was].30 Here Le Maçon almost certainly referred to Laurent de Premierfait’s version of the Decameron, though likely in its printed rather than manuscript form. completed in 1414, the Livre appelle Decameron, aultrement surnomme le Prince Galeot [Book

260

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Called Decameron, Otherwise Surnamed the Prince Galahad] was actually a reasonable rendering of the italian, particularly given that—as Premierfait announces in a prefatory note—it was based on a Latin version.31 Premierfait’s translation circulated widely in manuscript until the end of the fifteenth century.32 in 1486, Antoine Vérard published a print edition of the French Decameron. itself quite popular—it would be reissued at least eight times until it was replaced by Le Maçon’s translation— Vérard’s Cameron (as it was also sometimes known) presented a bowdlerized and often moralizing version of Premierfait’s text. For example, Vérard’s censured novella 5.10 gives us a sickly Pierre, whose pursuit of wealth gets in the way of his sex life with his wife until he gets his priorities in order, rather than the man who ignores his wife because he is more interested in boys, found in Boccaccio’s original—and, i might add, in both Premierfait’s and Le Maçon’s translations.33 such revisions were likely responsible for the poor reputation of the translation among the cognoscenti, which, in turn, may have contributed to the Decameron’s reputation for being a challenging work to translate into French, if indeed it had such a reputation. in any event, Le Maçon further explains that Marguerite de navarre overruled his scruples about undertaking the project, insisting to him that il ne faloit point que les Tuscans fussent en telle erreur de croire, que leur Bocace ne peult estre representé en nostre langue, aussi bien qu’il est en la leur, estant la nostre devenue si riche, & copieuse, depuis l’advenant à la couronne du Roy vostre frere, qu’on n’a jamais escript aucune chose en autres langues qui ne puisse bien dire en ceste cy.34 [the Tuscans must not be left in the error of believing that their Boccaccio cannot be represented in our language as well as he is in theirs, our French having become since your brother the king came to the crown so rich and so copious that nothing has been written in other languages than cannot be said well in this one.] The letter thus makes clear once more that Le Maçon’s Decameron translation served to demonstrate the success of a purposeful cultivation of linguistic richness and expressivity.

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

261

This demonstration had certain consequences for the translation. Whereas, for example, Bonaventure des Periers’s rendering of Plato’s Lysis, also commissioned by Marguerite de navarre, was not particularly invested in accuracy and programmatically reworked certain elements of the dialogue to make theological points, Le Maçon’s version of the Decameron is remarkably faithful and often quite literal.35 Let us compare the opening of novella 5.10 in Branca’s edition of Boccacio’s italian with the French found in Vérard’s version of Premierfait’s translation and Le Maçon’s rendering: Branca’s Italian Fu in Perugia, non e ancora molto tempo passato, un ricco uomo chiamato Pietro di Vinciolo, il quale, forse piu per ingannare altrui e diminuire la generale oppinion di lui avuta da tutti i perugini che per vaghezza che egli n’avesse, prese moglie.36

There was in Perugia, not all that long ago, a rich man named Pietro di Vinciolo, who, perhaps more in order to trick others and diminish the general opinion of him held by all the Perugians than for desire that he had to do so, took a wife.

Vérard’s French Pas nya encores long temps que en la cite de perouse fut ung tres riche homme nomme pierre Vinciot qui estoit homme de foible complexion et plus pensant aux biens mondains que aux delectacions damours, mais neantmoins il print une belle ieune fille chaulde et doulcement nourrie en mariage.37

it is not yet long ago in that city of Perugia that there was a very rich man named Pierre Vinciot who was a man of poor constitution and thought more about worldly goods than about the pleasures of love, but nonetheless he took a pretty young hot and lovinglyraised wife in marriage.

Le Maçon’s French il y eut na pas encore long temps à Perouse ung riche homme nommé Pierre de vinciolo, lequel print femme en mariage plus paradventure pour tromper autruy, & diminuer la commune opinion que tous les Perousins avoient eu de luy que pour desir qu’il eust d’estre marié.38

There was still not very long ago in Perugia a rich man named Pierre de Vinciolo who took a women in marriage more perhaps to trick others and diminish the common opinion that all the Perugians had had of him than out of desire he had to be married.

262

A Boccaccian Renaissance

While Vérard’s version departs substantially from the rather subtle opening premise of the italian, Le Maçon has tracked the original quite closely; the key changes are of a stylistic order rather than semantic. i will return to the potential significance of Le Maçon’s revisions later, where we will also consider a rare more substantial intervention in the text that is found at the conclusion to his version of novella 5.10. Le Maçon’s Decameron does not entirely avoid the moralizing trend that often shaped Boccaccio’s reception in the Renaissance, but at least in the 1545 and 1548 editions, the phenomenon is primarily relegated to the prefatory paratextual matter. (Beginning with the 1551 edition, the introductions to individual novellas have included a moralizing tag drawn from the 1546 edition of the italian text edited by Francesco sansovino.)39 The book’s unusually loquacious privilege explains that “lecteurs . . . de bonne volunté puissant y acquerir quelque fruict de bonne ediffication. Mesmement pour congnoistre les moyens de fuyr à vices et suyvre ceulx qui induisent à honneur & vertu” [readers of good will can acquire some fruit of worthwhile edification here, including knowing the means to avoid vices and to follow those that lead to honor and virtue].40 Le Maçon also addresses the moral question in his own epistle, where he adopts a defense explicitly drawn from the very book he has translated, saying, “J’employerai pour moy en cest endroit, ce que Bocace dict au proesme de la quatriesme journée, & à la conclusion de son livre” [i will use as my own on this matter what Boccaccio says in the proem to the fourth day and at the end of his book] before referring the reader to these passages.41 Le Macon concludes the letter by beseeching Marguerite de navarre to gainsay both those who would criticize Boccaccio for wasting his time on a frivolous enterprise (namely, writing the Decameron) and himself for wasting his time on another (namely, translating the book) so that under her protection “nostre Florentin va asseurement commencer à parler le commun langaige Francoys ainsi que vous orrez presentement” [our Florentine will surely begin to speak the common French language, as you will presently hear].42 The reference to “le commun langaige Francoys” is more enigmatic that the evocation of the cultivation of the French language found in the printer’s letter; in order to tease out its implications, i would like now to return to Ferretti’s letter.

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

263

B o c c Ac c i o “ c o n T Ro A L A L e G G e D e L A n AT u R A”

Ferretti’s prefatory epistle functions both to authorize Le Maçon’s translation and to provide an apology for the Decameron. He notes that the Decameron is a very difficult text to translate, particularly because of the range of words used in it. The book’s large vocabulary reflects the “copia di vocabuli” [verbal richness] of the Tuscan tongue, which he explains has been increased by “la iurisdittione et i giudicii” [legal bureaucracy and judges] who “ingrassano le lingue” [fatten up languages].43 in other words, because the Florentines are a particularly litigious people, their language has become particularly copious. nonetheless, he says, despite the challenging vocabulary, Le Maçon managed to accurately translate the full range of expressions found in the Decameron. Ferretti thus corroborates the claim made at the end of Le Maçon’s own letter. We might consider Ferretti’s claim that the practice of law in Florence led to an increase in the vocabulary of Tuscan in relationship to the ordinance of Villers-cotterêts, a set of royal proclamations issued by Marguerite de navarre’s brother, François i. These are best known for having ordered that all juridical documents in France be recorded in the “langage maternel francois” [maternal French tongue]. The article containing that decree is preceded, however, by another that asserts the importance of making sure that judicial rulings are easily understood and unambiguous: et affin quil ny ayt cause de doubter sur lintelligence desdictz arrestz nous voulons et ordonnons quilz soient faictz et escriptz si clairement quil ny ayt ne puisse avoir aucunement ambiguite ou incertitude ne lieu a en demander interpretation.44 [And in order that there will be no reason to have any doubt about the meaning of the aforementioned judgments, We desire and command that they be made and written so clearly that there is and can be no ambiguity or uncertainty nor reason to ask for an interpretation of them.] in order to fulfil this dual charge—to write in the maternal tongue and do so with exceeding clarity—French required an adequate vocabulary.

264

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Ferretti’s assertion that legal conflict was indirectly responsible for the Decameron’s verbal richness and his insistence that Le Maçon’s translation is consistently accurate may therefore serve to imply that French was indeed ready for this challenge. Moreover, translating the Decameron into French in 1545 was not precisely about the cultivation of a literary language that Du Bellay would advocate just a few years later. As for the Decameron itself, Ferretti goes to some length to suggest that it is indeed a useful work devoted to both pleasing and instructing. unlike Michelet, who saw Boccaccio’s writings as a distracting locus amoenus, Ferretti emphasizes that Boccaccio “rimosse da quella congregatione tutti i giochi che possono aiutarci a consumare il tempo che di altro frutto non ci rempia” [removed from that group all the games that can help us while away the time without, however, offering us any other fruit].45 Ferretti also contends that under the veil of entertaining stories Boccaccio demonstrated the instability of fortune and taught about the various customs of different regions and noble families. Furthermore, remarking that tales are no place for moral philosophy, he added that in the frame narrative Boccaccio included learned and useful material. Perhaps thinking of descriptions of the Decameron as a manual for erotic trickery, he also defended its honor by expressing doubt that Boccaccio could have named this “sanctissimo libro” [most holy book] “Prencepe Galeotto” [Prince Galahad].46 Ferretti does, however, acknowledge two shortcomings of the work, one addressing content and the other addressing style. unsurprisingly, he notes that he would have preferred that the book be less scurrilous and more religious. His stylistic concern is more unexpected. After praising Boccaccio for his skill in ordering the elements of a story and lamenting his own inability to do so, he writes, “ne mi offendono in lui quelle clausule che finiscono quasi sempre in verbi, contro a la legge de la natura, & a le purgate penne di hoggi” [nor do his sentences, which almost always end in verbs, against the law of nature and the purged pens of today, offend me]. Remarkably, while Le Maçon champions Boccaccio as the greatest of italian writers, Ferretti characterizes Boccaccio’s italian as literally unnatural (if not offensively so!). That Ferretti should question Boccaccio’s prose style is not in and of itself startling, as its relevance for sixteenth-century literary italian was a hotly debated topic in works such as Pietro Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua (1525) and Baldassare castiglione’s Il cortegiano

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

265

(1528). so far as i have been able to determine, however, Boccaccio’s propensity for ending sentences with verbs was not highlighted in this debate let alone described as being against the laws of nature.47 Glyn norton, who has offered the most sustained discussion of Ferretti’s letter, understands the complaint about Boccaccio’s unnatural prose to be about the degree to which the language of the Decameron is overly “literary,” too mannered and artificial, because it follows the Latin prose tradition of the cursus. He contrasts Boccaccio’s ornate prose with Marguerite de navarre’s embrace of a plain style.48 i would submit that norton’s explanation of Ferretti’s concern is not entirely accurate. Cursus is related to prosody rather than the position of the verb.49 Furthermore, the suggestion that what Ferretti is objecting to is the overly artistic dimension of Boccaccio’s prose seems to read Ferretti’s critique through the lens of Marguerite de navarre’s prologue to the Heptaméron, in which she announces that the project of creating a French Decameron proposed by Henri, the dauphin of France, would exclude “ceux qui avaient étudié et étaient gens de lettres” [those who have studied and were men of letters] because the dauphin “ne voulait que leur art y fût mélé” [did not want their art to be mixed in].50 i would submit that the problem is not specifically the use of cursus or more generally that Boccaccio’s italian is too artistic; rather, the issue is that his prose is too Latinate, that it’s not the common or natural tongue. Why lodge this particular complaint? i can offer at least a provisional explanation. There may be a tension between the project of demonstrating the verbal richness of a language through the accurate translation of a challenging text and that of faithfully translating a work famous for its scurrilous content. By emphasizing that there is something unnatural in Boccaccio’s prose, Ferretti allows Le Maçon to “correct” the work at a stylistic level even as he faithfully translates its content at the level of the word. To go beyond this suggestion is to enter further into the realm of speculation. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the French military invasions of italy had failed but ironically also contributed to a much more successful italian cultural migration into France. one of the consequences of this phenomenon was a reactionary backlash in which italians were said to have effeminized the French court and the French language, and indeed to have brought a host of vices into France, including sodomy.51 in one concise omnibus complaint from the second half

266

A Boccaccian Renaissance

of the century, we find that italians are believed responsible for bringing to France “l’Atheisme, la sodomie, la perfidie, la cruauté, les usures, & autres semblables vices” [Atheism, sodomy, perfidy, cruelty, usury, and other such vices].52 But this anti-italian rhetoric, including the link with sodomy, was already present earlier in the century. As Gary Ferguson has shown, it figures in Marguerite de navarre’s Heptaméron, a work whose composition overlapped the realization of Le Maçon’s translation.53 Furthermore, it is worth recalling that sodomy is frequently identified as a sin against nature. indeed, this very association is made in the Decameron’s 50th novella when, considering a way to fulfill her own sexual needs, which have been neglected by her boy-loving husband, the tale’s would-be adulterous wife says to herself: “io offenderò le leggi sole, dove egli offende le leggi et la natura” [i will offend the law alone, whereas he will offend the law and nature].54 Might Ferretti’s complaint about the action being at the ends of sentences insinuate that there is something sodomitical about Boccaccio’s prose? i raise this question without being sure of the answer or indeed of its potential implications; perhaps further research will clarify the ramifications of Ferretti’s critique.55 What seems clear, in any case, is that the identification of something against the law of nature in Bocaccio’s prose adds weight to Ferretti’s proclamation that Le Maçon’s translation of the Decameron “lo ha ridotto in lingua vostra natural” [has brought it into your natural language]. yes, Le Maçon’s Decameron is a translation, but it is even better than the original because more natural and perhaps free from the taint of the italian. B o c c Ac c i o “ R i D o T T o i n L i n G uA Vo s T R A n AT u R A L”

A look at one instance in which Le Maçon’s translation makes an uncharacteristic departure from the italian will allow me to add an additional dimension to the hypothesis that the French Decameron responds in part to anxieties about italian influence and about the adequacy of French as a language of legal record. We already saw that Le Maçon accurately translated the opening of novella 5.10, but the same cannot be said of the novella’s conclusion, where we find perhaps the most elaborate intentional revision of the meaning of the original in the entire book. Let me briefly recapitulate the relevant elements of the plot. Pietro marries a lusty

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

267

woman to hide his preference for boys and almost never has sex with her. one day, the wife arranges for an encounter with a particularly attractive young man when her husband is off dining with a neighbor. He returns unexpectedly, however, and discovers the youth. The wife is at first terrified of the consequences of this discovery, but then . . . Here i turn to Boccaccio’s italian and Le Maçon’s French, which i have translated quite closely into english to facilitate stylistic as well as lexical comparison: Branca’s Italian La donna levata sú, udendo il marito contento, prestamente fatta rimetter la tavola, fece venir la cena la quale apparecchiata avea, e insieme col suo cattivo marito e col giovane lietamente cenò. Dopo la cena quello che Pietro si divisasse a sodisfacimento di tutti e tre m’è uscito di mente; so io ben cotanto, che la mattina vegnente infino in su la Piazza fu il giovane, non assai certo qual piú stato si fosse la notte o moglie o marito, accompagnato.56

The woman having gotten up, hearing that her husband was happy, quickly having had the table reset, had the dinner she had prepared brought, and together with her wicked husband and the boy happily she ate. After the dinner what Pietro arranged to the satisfaction of all three has escaped my memory; i know for sure however that when morning came all the way into the central square was the boy, not very certain whether he had more been during the night wife or husband, accompanied.

Le Maçon’s French La femme s’estant leuee & voyant son mary appaisé, feit soudainement remettre la nappe, & apporter le soupper, qu’elle avoit faict apprester, & souppa joyeusement avec le meschant & mal heureux mary, & avec le jeune gars. Apres souper de vous dire ce que le mary feit pour le contentement de tous trois, je l’ay oublié, bien me souvient il que le lendemain au matin on ne sceut dire bonnement en la place de Perouse lequel avoit toute celle nuict esté mieulx accompaigné, ou le mary ou la femme.57

The woman having gotten up and seeing her husband appeased, quickly had the tablecloth reset and the dinner which she had had prepared brought, and joyously she ate with the wicked and unhappy husband and with the young boy. After dinner, to tell you what the husband did for the satisfaction of all three, i’ve forgotten it; but i do indeed remember that the next day in the morning nobody could say very well in the central square of Perugia who had all that night been better accompanied, the husband or the wife.

268

A Boccaccian Renaissance

A host of minor changes have been made in the translation: “hearing” has become “seeing”; in a characteristic doubling of adjectives, the “wicked husband” has become “wicked and unhappy”; and, as in the passage from the opening of novella 5.10 addressed earlier, verbs have been moved from the ends of phrases and sentences, thereby rendering the language less Latinate and presumably more natural. The most significant changes occur in the convoluted sentence describing the morning-after scene. At the level of style, Le Maçon has simplified the syntax, for example, by separating “esté” and “accompaigné” by a single adverb rather than by the lengthy clause found in the corresponding italian. At the level of content, Le Maçon has changed the perception of the night’s confusion so that it is no longer scandalously focalized in the person of the confused boy—a confusion, i might add, shared by the reader of the italian text, who is obliged to sort through the complicated syntax.58 instead, it is a nonspecific “on” in the public square that cannot figure out whether the husband or the wife had been better accompanied during the night. This conclusion recalls the opening of the story, in which Pierre got married precisely to try to control his bad reputation.59 in the French version, the morning after makes it clear that this attempt will not be successful. if, as proposed earlier, Le Maçon’s translation served in part to demonstrate that French was a mature legal language, it may have been expedient to adjust this particular difficulty in Boccaccio’s italian and shift the confusion from the complicated syntax, which was part of the novella’s original commitment to a poetics of accommodation, to the spectators in the town square, thereby conspicuously evoking a scene of potential judgment effectively eschewed in the original italian. B o c c Ac c i o “ T R A n s s F o R M AT o ”

in these final pages,60 i will briefly consider how a transformed Decameron could be said to be renascent within Marguerite de navarre’s Heptaméron. The relationship between these novella collections has been much studied, with particular emphasis given to framing devices, including the two texts’ accounts of their own genesis and the gendered dynamics between the storytellers.61 While there has been some debate about how many novella plots Marguerite de navarre might have borrowed from

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

269

Boccaccio, the consensus is that the number is very limited. There has, however, not yet been a comprehensive study of less substantial textual borrowings and what they might tell us about Marguerite de navarre’s engagement with or repurposing of the earlier novella collection. My remarks in this section will focus on three passages in the Decameron that seem to reappear in the Heptaméron, illuminating different dimensions of Marguerite de navarre’s contribution to the Boccaccian Renaissance. one, evocative of Boccaccio’s reputation as a magister amoris, brings to the fore the ludic dimension in each text. The other two, with which i will conclude, deal with the question of judgment addressed at length earlier, but now foregrounding a religious concern. At the conclusion to novella 5.10, Dioneo suggests to his female interlocutors that they should keep in mind the wrongs done them until they can return the favor “acciò che quale asino dà in parete tal riceva” [so that what the ass gives the wall he gets back].62 This aphorism serves Dioneo’s erotic enterprise by encouraging women to participate in extramarital sex as their husbands do while also recalling the tale’s Apuleian origins and perhaps even encouraging the reader to think about how Boccaccio has refashioned the narrative found in The Golden Ass.63 The sentence is translated by Le Maçon with a widely attested expression: “rendre chou pour chou” [to give cabbage for cabbage].64 While this translation maintains the implication of even exchange found in the original, the idiom effaces the Apuleian reference and perhaps reinforces Le Maçon’s more ominous conclusion to the novella by recalling the biblical expression “an eye for an eye.” it also serves as an analogy for Le Maçon’s aim in translating the Decameron: to offer equivalency, to provide “a cabbage for a cabbage.” such was not Marguerite de navarre’s goal in writing the Heptaméron, as a similar expression found at the end of nouvelle i.3 suggests. After recounting a tale of adultery that, like Dioneo’s, ends happily for all involved, the narrator saffredent says to the female storytellers, “Voilà, mesdames, une histoire que volontiers je vous montre ici pour exemple afin que, quand vos maris vous donnent des cornes de chevreuils, vous leur en donnez de cerf ” [There you have it, my ladies, a story that i willingly offer you as an example so that when your husbands give you the horns of a roe deer, you give him those of a red deer].65 i would submit that this quip is likely inspired by Dioneo’s remark at the end of his story about Pietro, where it, too, serves to encourage a woman’s vengeful but

270

A Boccaccian Renaissance

also pleasurable adulterous behavior. saffredent’s clever point depends on the fact that roe deer have much smaller horns than do most deer, and in particular than red deer, the probable translation for “cerf.” if indeed this passage is meant to recall Dioneo’s statement, Marguerite de navarre has here abandoned the parity found both in Boccaccio’s italian and in Le Maçon’s French. Moreover, the wisecrack receives a barbed rejoinder in the Heptaméron from the character ennasuite: saffredent, je suis toute assurée que si vous aimez autant qu’autrefois vous avez fait, vous endureriez cornes aussi grandes qu’un chêne pour en rendre une à votre fantasie; mais maintenant que les cheveux vous blanchissent, il est temps de donner trêve à vos désirs. [saffredent, i am entirely convinced that if you loved as much as you used to do in the past, you would suffer horns as big as an oak if you could give the same according to your pleasure; but now that your hair is going grey, it is time to give your desires a rest.]66 The potential allusion to Boccaccio may function as a self-conscious trace of Marguerite de navarre’s recourse to the Decameron’s narrative strategies as she developed her own collection, even as the remark, now encapsulated within the more sustained dialogic structure of the Heptaméron’s frame narrative, sparks a retort exemplary of the work’s protofeminist sensibility. My second example involves a literal translation of the italian original. in the first tale of the Heptaméron, Marguerite de navarre’s narrator, simontaut, recounts the apparently true story of a malicious lawyer and his wicked wife. His avowed intent is to demonstrate that women are the root of men’s suffering (since he currently suffers at the hands of an uncooperative beloved among the female storytellers), which leads him to highlight the wife’s culpability, thereby inaugurating the text’s ongoing critical meditation on exemplarity.67 in the present context, however, i want to focus on the husband. Among his crimes was the attempted murder by means of sorcery of “madame la duchesse d’Alençon, soeur du roi” [my lady the duchess of Alençon, sister of the king], in other words, of Marguerite de navarre herself. simontaut describes several “images de cire” [wax figurines] that are used in this black magic ritual.68 it cannot

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

271

be a coincidence that Boccaccio’s Panfilo, who narrates the first novella of the Decameron, refers to the “imagini dalla cera” (i.1.87)—or wax figurines—that are made by the devout seeking divine intervention through the intercession of the recently deceased and curiously sanctified ser cepparello.69 That the Heptaméron’s repurposing of the wax figures constitutes a critical evangelical commentary on votive offerings and the solicitation of saints’ intercession is strongly suggested by the reworking in the Heptaméron’s second novella—narrated by oisille, the storytellers’ spiritual leader, and to which i will briefly return in a moment—of a passage found near the outset of the Decameron’s first. While both narrators emphasize that salvation is dependent on grace, Panfilo also evokes the intercession of saints and the importance of living according to God’s precepts, while oisille foregrounds God’s will in choosing the elect.70 The appearance of the wax dolls in the first novella of each of the collections also invites a more general comparison of these two stories. Both are concerned with issues of judgment, but in radically different ways. in the Decameron, the novella serves as an example of the power of God. While Panfilo notes that ser cepparello is likely damned, in a characteristically Boccaccian gesture also seen in the story of Pietro di Vinciolo, he refuses to make any definite claim regarding God’s judgment. The miracle, however, is that the blaspheming, hypocritical, sodomitical ser cepparello’s deathbed deceit, which results in his popular sanctification and thus seems to have hoodwinked believers, serves, in fact, to increase faith. The opening novella of the Heptaméron concludes with a different scene of judgment and of mercy. After the husband and the sorcerer are captured and condemned to death, the character representing the historical Marguerite de navarre intervenes, with the result that the criminals are instead sentenced to life in prison, where they “eurent loisir de reconnaître la gravité de leurs péchés” [had the leisure to recognize the seriousness of their sins].71 This conclusion, therefore, emphasizes both the successful application of secular justice and the queen’s clemency, while perhaps also hinting at the possibility of repentance, if not necessarily salvation. (The wife, who escapes the authorities, continues to sin and is said to die a miserable death.) The very different conclusion of the first story of the Decameron, however, is not entirely absent from the Heptaméron; i would contend that it is transposed to the conclusion of the second novella in the queen’s collection, where a woman

272

A Boccaccian Renaissance

of low status who dies trying to avoid being raped becomes a martyr to chastity, an exemplar of virtue, and a reminder of the perpetual need to remain humble—but, in keeping with the work’s evangelical convictions, not even an ersatz saint. i suggested earlier that Anthoine Le Maçon’s generally extremely accurate rendering of the Decameron was not directly linked to the evangelical mission guiding most of Marguerite de navarre’s patronage, being instead primarily associated with the contemporary project of cultivating the French language through translation. i further argued that the work’s concern with demonstrating the expressive potential of French may have been linked in part to the ordinance of Villers-cotterêts, which confirmed French as the language of legal record for the legal bureaucracy in France while also emphasizing the need for precision in legal language. could it be that Le Maçon’s translation lacked religious direction because the undertaking would also serve to inform the evangelical project of the Heptaméron, whose contours i have only just begun to trace here? At the same time, the concern for secular judgment i foregrounded in my discussion of the French Decameron’s fiftieth novella, effectively absent from the collection’s opening tale, also seems present in the first novella of the Heptaméron, where Marguerite de navarre’s own status as a powerful figure in the world of men is also highlighted. These reflections on a few instances of translation, juxtaposition, displacement, and transformation suggest some of the rich material Marguerite de navarre found in the Decameron as she set about writing what we now know as one of the canonical works of the French Renaissance. noTes

i would like to thank the participants at the Boccaccian Renaissance conference, and in particular the volume’s editors, for numerous helpful questions and suggestions. 1. Giovanni Boccaccio, Le Decameron, trans. Anthoine Le Maçon (Paris: estienne Roffet, 1545), sig. ã4r. unless otherwise noted, translations are mine. 2. For an idea of the richness of Boccaccio’s reception beyond the Alps, see Lionello sozzi, Boccaccio in Francia nel Cinquecento (Florence: olschki, 1971), and simonetta Mazzoni Peruzzi, ed., Boccaccio e le letterature romanze tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Florence: Alinea, 2006).

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

273

3. some relevant bibliography: Lucien Febvre, “comment Jules Michelet inventa la Renaissance,” in Studi in onore di Guido Luzzatto, vol. 3 (Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1950), 1–14; e. H. Gombrich, Ideals and Idols: Essays on Values in History and in Art (oxford: Phaedon, 1979), 24–59; Barrie Bullen, “The source and Development of the idea of the Renaissance in early nineteenth-century French criticism,” The Modern Language Review 76 (1981): 311–22; and François Rigolot, “sainte-Beuve’s invention of the French Renaissance,” in The Renaissance in the Nineteenth Century, ed. yannick Portebois and nicholas Terpstra (ontario: centre for Reformation and Renaissance studies, 2003), 11–22. 4. in the course of my research for this chapter, i discovered that some copies of the princeps of Le Maçon’s translation have been carefully corrected, including by pasting slips of paper with the preferred rendering over the faulty version. A recent article has also suggested that the complex paratextual matter in the first edition of the translation itself evolved during the print run of the book. see Alessandro Bertolino, “Traduire de l’italien pour ‘illustrer’ le français ? La préface au ‘Decameron’ (1545) d’Antoine le Maçon et ses enjeux,” Studi francesi 59, no. 2 (2015): 270–88. i hope to return to both of these phenomena in the future. 5. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. s.G.c. Middlemore, 8th ed. (new york: Macmillan, 1921), 315, 344, and 205. 6. Jules Michelet, Renaissance, vol. 7 of Histoire de France (Paris: chamerot, 1855). 7. The casual figurative use of the expression “renaissance” was recognized by one lexicographer as early as 1675. Dominique Bouhours explained that the word renaissance could be used both “au bon” [literally] to refer to spiritual resurrection—this and related meanings can be traced back to old French—and “au figuré” [figuratively], for example, to refer to “la renaissance des beaux arts” [the renaissance of the fine arts]. see his Remarques nouvelles sur la langue françoise (Paris: chez sebastien Mabre-cramoisy, 1675), s.v. “renaissance.” 8. Michelet, Renaissance, ii. 9. ibid., xci. 10. ibid., cxxii. 11. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca (Turin: einaudi, 1992), proemio 2. 12. Michel de Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey (Paris: PuF, 1965), i.26.163. Here i follow the common convention, in which references to Montaigne’s Essais indicate the book, chapter, and page numbers. 13. Guillaume de salluste Du Bartas, La seconde sepmaine (Rouen: R. dv Petit Val, 1616), 483 and 494. 14. on this aspect of Boccaccio’s reception in France, see François Avril and Florence callu, eds., Boccace en France: De l’humanisme à l’érotisme (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1975). 15. Montaigne, Essais, iii.5.857.

274

A Boccaccian Renaissance

16. Pierre de Bourdeille seigneur de Brantôme, Recueil des dames, poésies, et tombeaux, ed. Étienne Vaucheret, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 445. 17. Bonaventure Des Périers, Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis, ed. Krystyna Kasprzyk (Paris: société des textes français modernes, 1980), 68. 18. clément Marot, Oeuvres poétiques complètes, ed. Gérard Défaux (Paris: Bordas, 1993), 89. This dimension of Boccaccio’s Renaissance reception was not limited to France. Heinrich cornelius Agrippa asserted in the chapter “De arte lenonia” [on the Art of Pandering] of his De incertitudine & vanitate scientiarum & artium that numerous recent famous writers, including Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, wrote lascivious works but that “ioannes Bocatius superatis omnibus, lenonum palmam sibi lucratus est, in ijs maxime libris quos centum novellarum intitulauit, cujus exempla et traditiones nihil aliud sunt quam callidissima lenociniorum stratagemata” [Having vanquished them all, Giovanni Boccaccio won for himself the palm of the pimps, especially in those books that he entitled One Hundred Novellas, whose examples and teachings are nothing other than the most spirited strategies of the panderers]. see De incertitudine & vanitate scientiarum & artium ([cologne]: Apud eucharium Agrippinatem, 1531), sig. n5r. on this passage and a related observation found in Agrippa’s letters, see sozzi, Boccaccio in Francia nel Cinquecento, 10. 19. charles Augustin sainte-Beuve, Tableau historique et critique de la poésie française et du théâtre français au seizième siècle (Paris: A. sautelet et cie, 1828), 336. 20. ibid., 338–39. 21. Horace, L’art poëtique, trans. Jacques Peletier (Paris: M. de Vascosan, 1545), 4. 22. Joachim du Bellay, Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Daniel Aris and Françoise Joukovsky, vol. 2 (Paris: Bordas, 1993), 143. 23. see La deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse & L’Olive (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2007), 109 and 176. subsequent examples include Du Bartas, La seconde sepmaine, 483 and 494, and Louis Le Roy, De la vicissitude, ou, Variete des choses en l’vniuers (Paris: chez Pierre L’Huilier, 1575), 22–23. 24. A monumental project of translating Petrarch’s vernacular works that was published a decade after Le Maçon’s French Decameron was not so framed. see Toutes les oeuvres vulgaires de François Pétrarquet, trans. Vasquin Philieul (Avignon: impr. de B. Bonhomme, 1555). 25. see, in particular, Barbara stephenson, The Power and Patronage of Marguerite de Navarre (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004); carrol Thysell, The Pleasure of Discernment: Marguerite de Navarre as Theologian (oxford: oxford university Press, 2000); and Jonathan A. Reid, King’s Sister-Queen of Dissent: Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549) and Her Evangelical Network, 2 vols. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009).

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

275

26. Boccaccio, Le Decameron, 1545, sig. ã2r. note that the closing parenthesis in the cited passage should come after “scavans” rather than “l’italie”; this error was corrected in the 1548 edition of the text (Paris: estienne Roffet), sig. ã2r. 27. Boccaccio, Le Decameron, 1545, sig. ã2v. 28. Pliny, Historia naturale, trans. cristoforo Landino (Venice: opus nicolai iansonis Gallici, 1476), sig. a4v. 29. see Marian Rothstein, “Printing, Translation, and the Paradigm shift of 1540,” in Charting Change in France around 1540 (selinsgrove, PA: susquehanna university Press, 2006), 141–85. 30. Boccaccio, Le Decameron, 1545, sig. ã2r. 31. no copy of the intermediary Latin version, prepared by a collaborator, the Franciscan Antonio d’Arezzo, has been identified. on the genesis of Premierfait’s version of the Decameron, see Giuseppe Di stefano, “il Decameron da Boccaccio a Laurent de Premierfait,” Studi sul Boccaccio 29 (2001): 105–36, as well as Di stefano’s edition of Premierfait’s translation (Montreal: Éditions ceRes, 1999). 32. For a concise list of early French translations of Boccaccio’s works, see Patricia Gathercole, “The French Translators of Boccaccio,” Italica 46, no. 3 (1969): 300–309. 33. see Gary Ferguson, Queer (Re)Readings in the French Renaissance: Homosexuality, Gender, Culture (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 71–74. 34. Boccaccio, Le Decameron, 1545, sig. ã2r. 35. on Des Périers’s Lysis translation, see Marc schachter, “Translating Friendship in the circle of Marguerite de navarre: Des Periers’ Lysis and De Rozières’ Toxaris,” in Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France, ed. Rebecca Wilkin and Lewis seifert (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), 99–118. 36. Boccaccio, Decameron, 1992, 5.10.6–7. 37. Giovanni Boccaccio, Des cent Nouvelles, trans. Premierfait/Vérard (Paris: Pour Antoine Vérard, 1499), fol. 74r. 38. Boccaccio, Le Decameron, 1545, 139r. 39. For example, novella 5.10 includes the following moral in the sansovino edition: “nel che si riprende la malvagità delle mogli impudiche, & dannasi la sodomia” [in which the wickedness of shameless wives is rebuked and sodomy condemned]. in the 1551 edition of La Maçon’s translation, this becomes: “Reprenant la malice des femmes impudiques, & reprouvant la sodomie” [Rebuking the wickedness of shameless wives and condemning sodomy]. see Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Decamerone, ed. Francesco sansovino (Venice: Appresso Gabriel Giolito, 1546), and Giovanni Boccaccio, Le Decaméron de M. Jean Bocace Florentin, trans. Antoine le Maçon (Lyon: Rouille, 1551). Without recognizing their source, Mireille Huchon has suggested that the morals in the 1551 French edition may have been added at the suggestion of Marguerite de navarre, who died in late 1549. see her “Le projet de l’Heptaméron entre le Cameron et le Decameron,” in Les

276

A Boccaccian Renaissance

visages et les voix de Marguerite de Navarre, ed. Marcel Tetel (Paris: Klincksieck, 1995), 36 n 36. This essay offers perspicacious remarks about how Marguerite de navarre’s evolving Heptaméron project was inspired by organizational principles governing the framing of tales in different versions of the Decameron. 40. Boccaccio, Le Decameron, 1545, fol. ã1v. 41. ibid., sig. ã2v. 42. ibid., sig. ã2v. 43. ibid., sig. ã4r. While “iurisdittione” can normally be translated “jurisdiction,” here it seems to mean something like “legal bureaucracy” or perhaps “legal jargon.” i’d like to thank Albert Ascoli, Mauro senatore, and cristiano Ragni, who discussed the potential translations of this use of “iurisdittione” with me. 44. Ordonnances royaux sur le faict de la justice (Paris: impr. par n. couteau pour Galliot Du Pré et Jehan André, 1539), articles 110 and 111. 45. Boccaccio, Le Decameron, 1545, sig, ã3r. 46. ibid., sig. ã2v. 47. i would welcome correction on this matter. Bertolino, in “Traduire de l’italien pour ‘illustrer’ le français,” briefly discusses Boccaccio’s use of a Latin prose style, including a tendency to end sentences with verbs, and refers the reader to Vittore Branca, Linee di una storia della critica al “Decameron” (Milan: società anonima editrice Dante Alighieri, 1939), which, however, does not seem to specifically address the question of sentences ending with verbs, unless i have managed to miss the relevant passage. 48. Glyn norton, “The emilio Ferretti Letter, a critical Preface for Marguerite de navarre,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1974): 287–300. 49. Terence Turnburg, “Prose styles and cursus,” in Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, ed. F.A.c. Mantello and A. G. Rigg (Washington, Dc: catholic university of America Press, 1996), 111–21. For examples of cursus in Boccaccio—none ending in verbs—see Branca’s brief discussion in Boccaccio, Decameron, 1992, xxiv. 50. Marguerite de navarre, Heptaméron, ed. simone de Reyff (Paris: Flammarion, 1982), 48. 51. For an overview, see Henry Heller, Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth-Century France (Toronto: university of Toronto Press, 2003). 52. innocent Gentillet, Discours sur les Moyens de bien Gouverner un Royaume ([Geneva]: [François estienne], 1577), 409. 53. Gary Ferguson, “Péchés capitaux et ‘vices italiens’: L’avarice et ses complices dans l’Heptaméron de Marguerite de navarre,” Seizième siècle 4 (2008): 73–87. 54. Boccaccio, Decameron, 1992, 5.10.13. 55. There is a reasonable body of secondary literature exploring links between putatively unnatural uses of language and sodomy, particularly in medieval literature. see, for example, Valerie Allen, “Alan of Lille on the Little Bits That

Boccaccio’s second Life in French

277

Make a Difference,” in Sexuality, Sociality, and Cosmology in Medieval Literary Texts, ed. Jennifer n. Brown and Marla segol (new york: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 33–54, as well as her extensive relevant bibliography. For an argument that links sodomy and linguistic impropriety in Dante, see André Pézard, Dante sous la pluie de feu (Enfer, chant XV) (Paris: Vrin, 1950). 56. Boccaccio, Decameron, 1992, 5.10.59–64. 57. Boccaccio, Le Decameron, 1545, fol. 141v. 58. on the textual history of the sentence in the Decameron and its implications for novella 5.10, see Martin eisner and Marc schachter, “Libido sciendi: Apuleius, Boccaccio, and the study of the History of sexuality,” Periodical of the Modern Language Association 124, no. 3 (2009): 825–27. 59. see Ferguson, Queer (Re)Readings, 74. 60. in the section heading, i use the spelling of “transsformato” found in Ferretti’s prefatory epistle. 61. For a perspicacious overview and extensive earlier bibliography, see P. B. Diffley, “From Translation to imitation and Beyond: A Reassessment of Boccaccio’s Role in Marguerite de navarre’s ‘Heptaméron,’” Modern Language Review 90, no. 2 (1995): 345–62. on the prologue, see susan noakes, “The Heptaméron Prologue and the ‘Anxiety of influence,’” Studi sul Boccaccio 20 (1991): 267–77, and Gisèle Mathieu-castellani, “‘Dedans ce beau pré le long de la Rivière du gave. . . .’ Le récit cadre du prologue et le programme narratif,” in Lire l’Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre, ed. Dominique Bertrand (clemont-Ferrand, FR: Presses universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2005), 12–25. see also elizabeth Wright, “Marguerite Reads Giovanni: Gender and narration in the Heptaméron and the Decameron,” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 15, no. 1 (1991): 21–36. 62. Boccaccio, Decameron, 1992, i.10.64. 63. see eisner and schachter, “Libido sciendi,” 828. 64. Boccaccio, Le Decameron, 1545, 141v. see Randle cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: Adam islip, 1611), s.v. chou. 65. Marguerite de navarre, Heptaméron, 65. 66. ibid., 65. 67. indeed, simontaut’s complaint about an uncooperative object of affection prefacing the first novella of the Heptaméron—and motivating his choice of which story to tell—should be compared with the Boccaccian narrator’s remarks about unrequited love in the proem to the Decameron. 68. ibid., 54. 69. Le Maçon translates the italian as “ymaiges de cire” (fol. 13v), exactly the wording found in the Heptaméron, but the expression is too well attested in French and too obvious a rendering of the italian to let us know whether Marguerite de navarre might have found it in the italian or the French version. 70. Panfilo speaks of a “spezial grazia. . . . La quale a noi e in noi non è da credere che per alcun nostro merito discenda, ma dalla sua propria benignità

278

A Boccaccian Renaissance

mossa e da’ prieghi di coloro impetrata che, sí come noi siamo, furon mortali, e bene i suoi piaceri mentre furono in vita seguendo ora con Lui eterni son divenuti e beati” [special grace . . . which descends to us and in us, not for any merit of ours, it must be understood, but rather moved by God’s own goodness and beseeched by the prayers of those who, as we now are, were once mortal, and who, when alive, followed his wishes faithfully and now are with Him, having become immortal and blessed] (i.1.4), whereas oisille insists that “Parquoi se faut humilier, car les grâces de Dieu ne se donnent point aux hommes pour leurs noblesses et richesses, mais selon qu’il plaît à sa bonté: qui n’est point accepteur de personnes, lequel élit ce qu’il veut, car ce qu’il a élu l’honore de ses vertus” [For this reason, we must humble ourselves, since the graces of God are not given to man on account of their noble titles or wealth but rather according to His pleasure, He Who is not an inspector of people, but rather elects whomever He please, for those He has elected He honours with His own virtues] (59). For a similar formulation that provides some context for the argument that God “is not an inspector of people,” see the conclusion of John calvin’s forty-ninth sermon on Job, in which calvin criticizes on theological grounds those who claim that “s’il eslit ceux que bon luy semble, il est accepteur de personnes” [if he elects those it pleases him to, then he is an inspector of people]. see Sermons de M. Jean Calvin sur le livre de Job (Geneva: imprimerie de François Perrin, 1569), 248. 71. Marguerite de navarre, Heptaméron, 56.

cHAPTeR 11

Boccaccio in the spanish Renaissance Juan de Flores’s Grimalte y Gradisa

ig n ac io navar r e t e

The surviving manuscripts, translations, and printed editions of Boccaccio’s work demonstrate his ubiquitous presence in the spanish Renaissance and the appreciation of many aspects of the highly heterogeneous canon of his work. Among these works, one with a particularly large presence in spain is the Fiammetta, which was translated, printed, and became the model for a number of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century works, including Juan de Flores’s Grimalte y Gradisa, which incorporates Boccaccio’s characters in a complex double plot. During the course of this novel, not only do both of Flores’s eponymous characters read Boccaccio’s work but they also see themselves variously as both Fiammetta and Panfilo. Boccaccio’s characters also appear in Flores’s novel, and at times they, too, identify with their spanish readers. The complex web of intertextual relationships can be taken as an index of how it is not only love, but also reading, that can constitute a character as a subjective protagonist. Manuscripts of Boccaccio’s works, in Latin and in italian, survive in several collections on the iberian Peninsula. Most frequently these are of De casibus, De mulieribus claris, De genealogia, the Corbaccio, the Fiammetta, and selected stories from the Decameron, often in Latin translation. 279

280

A Boccaccian Renaissance

eight of Boccaccio’s works from prior to 1500 also survive in catalan and castilian translations; these include the collections of historical biographies gathered in De casibus and De mulieribus claris. The former was translated into castilian by Pero López de Ayala (1332–1407), who was a poet, chancellor to several castilian monarchs in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and a royal historian. Also translated were two manuals of ancient knowledge, De genealogia and De montibus. A fragment of the former, in catalan, survives in several libraries, and the castilian version by Martín de Ávila (who died before 1449), dedicated to the prominent fifteenth-century statesman and poet iñigo López de Mendoza, First Marqués of santillana (1398–1458), is also in several libraries. A unique manuscript of De montibus, also dedicated to santillana, survives. Romances and other vernacular texts were also favored, and works known to have been translated include the Corbaccio (into catalan), the Ameto (into castilian; santillana owned a manuscript of the translation); Teseida (into castilian), and Fiammetta (into both catalan and castilian; the catholic Queen, isabel i of castile [1451–1504, who reigned 1474–1504], owned a copy, although we cannot ascertain if it is one of the several manuscripts known today). There are also six surviving manuscripts of the most famous frame-tale collection of all, the Decameron (once again translated into both catalan and castilian; one of the castilian manuscripts was once owned by isabel i).1 in addition to the manuscripts, four of Boccaccio’s works in translation also survive as books printed prior to 1500: the two historical works, the Decameron, and Fiammetta. The Decameron translation can be found in a printed book from 1496 that is today in the Royal Library in Brussels; it contains ninety-nine of the original stories plus one apocryphal one, and from it derive a number of reprints made during the sixteenth century. When this Decameron was printed, it was only the third translation published in europe, following versions in Germany and in France. The Fiammetta also has an interesting history. The catalan version survives in three manuscripts, all in Barcelona libraries, and the castilian version survives in two fifteenth-century manuscripts that are in the escorial library; this same castilian translation was also printed in salamanca in 1497 by the anonymous printer of nebrija’s 1492 spanish grammar. This is generally thought to have been Antonio nebrija (1441?–1522) himself, a former student at the spanish college in Bologna, professor at

Boccaccio in the spanish Renaissance

281

the university of salamanca, and author of the first spanish grammar (1492), who hid his role as a printer because it was incompatible with his university professorship.2 nebrija was devoted to the improvement of the vernacular, and that he printed the work suggests that he saw its primary value in its possible function as a rhetorical model for love letters and speeches, along the lines of ovid’s Heroides, rather than in its function as a love story. nebrija is also thought to have printed, for the same reasons, a translation of Piccolomini’s De duobus amantibus the previous year. nebrija was not a fine printer, and both books are in a Gothic typeface that was already antiquated by then, in contrast to the 1512 edition of Duobus amantibus made by the highly successful seville printer cromberger, one clearly marketed as a love story. Literary historians frequently cite both Fiammetta and Duobus amantibus as models for the spanish genre of sentimental novels written in the late fifteenth century, which culminated in the masterpiece Celestina of 1499.3 The double role of Fiammetta as a rhetorical model and as a sexy love story is duplicated in its imitation, Grimalte y Gradisa, written in the late fifteenth century by the royal chronicler Juan de Flores (c. 1455– c. 1525). one of several historians patronized by the catholic monarchs Ferdinand and isabel, Juan de Flores was also the author of several socalled sentimental novels, including Grisel y Mirabella, which was based on a story from the Decameron and subsequently attained european-wide popularity, and Grimalte y Gradisa, which had somewhat less success, although it was translated into French by no lesser poet than Maurice scève.4 Whether the works collectively known as sentimental novels constitute an actual genre is a topic that has been debated since the nineteenth century, but the term generally encompassed a series of works written in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that feature a tragic love story related in a narrative that includes rhetorical set pieces such as speeches and letters, and also metafictional devices such as a narrator who becomes involved in the action.5 Grimalte y Gradisa exhibits all of these characteristics. The narrator, Grimalte, loves Gradisa, but she does not love him in return, so he gives her a copy of Boccaccio’s Fiammetta so that she might better know how much he suffers. The book has the opposite of its intended effect, however, as it only confirms Gradisa’s view that men should not be trusted; eventually, however, she agrees to reciprocate Grimalte’s desire if he succeeds in reconciling Fiammetta and

282

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Panfilo. This sends Grimalte on a journey to find the two lovers and then act as their go-between. Panfilo and Fiammetta do eventually meet and even make love, but he refuses to return to her, and she dies, either from love-sickness or from suicide. Grimalte must now return to Gradisa and report his failure with the lovers, which leads to her definitive rejection of his advances. He then decides to punish Panfilo but learns that the latter has fled to the desert in repentance for his treatment of Fiammetta. Grimalte joins him there, and they live out their lives together. The opening of the novel acknowledges the relationship to Boccaccio’s work: comiença un breve tractado compuesto por Johan de Flores, el cual por la siguiente obra mudó su nombre en Grimalte, la invençión del cual es sobre la Fiometa. Porque alguno de los que esto leyeren por ventura no habrán visto su famosa scriptura, me parecerá bien declararla en suma. Pues assi es, que esta señora fue una de las que en beldat y valer a las otras ecedía. (89)6 [Here begins the brief treatise composed by Juan de Flores, who for this work that follows changed his name to Grimalte, the invention of which is based on the Fiammetta. As some of those who read perhaps will not have seen that famous book, it seems to me good to summarize it. This was a lady who surpassed others in beauty and valor.] This brief but dense introduction sets the appropriate tone for the rest of the work. From the beginning, it presents two important problems. The first involves the sense in which the author, Juan de Flores, has taken on the appellation of Grimalte for the purpose of the narration. insistence on the historicity of the story is a common feature of the sentimental novels, which often oscillate between fantastic and contemporary, real-life settings and characters.7 Taking on a false name could create the fiction that this first-person narrative is in fact an autobiographical one, with names changed in order to preserve decorum or perhaps the reputations of the real-life models. Flores wants the reader to consider the possibility that this is a roman à clef, although he immediately subverts that reading by also explaining that the act of self-fictionalization as a character

Boccaccio in the spanish Renaissance

283

in the novel itself has a precedent in Boccaccio’s fictionalizing himself as Fiammetta.8 courtly love narratives typically focused on unreciprocated male desire; by instead writing a novel in which the principal desire is a woman’s, Boccaccio indeed transposed himself to her. Biographically, he is neither Panfilo, a Florentine who seduces and abandons a married woman in naples (although Boccaccio was a Florentine who traveled to naples in his youth), nor is he a neapolitan woman who was seduced by a man (although Boccaccio may have fallen in love while in naples). yet in composing that story primarily from her point of view, in rhetorically elaborating the presentation of her emotions, and in pretending that she is the author of a book intended for female readers, Boccaccio transformed himself into her character much as ovid transformed himself into Dido, Phaedra, Ariadne, and other heroines in order to write the Heroides. This is what all authors of fiction must do, particularly when writing emotionally laden texts such as these. Thus, by invoking Boccaccio as a model for taking on Grimalte’s name, Juan de Flores undermines the suggestion that he does so in the spirit of a roman à clef. The invocation of Boccaccio’s novel, however, is made even more ambiguous by the phrase “la invençión . . . es sobre,” which could mean that the entire novel is composed on the basis of the Fiammetta, which is certainly true, and indeed the narrator does proceed to a narrative summary of the earlier work for the benefit of those who may not have read it. Invençión sobre is not, however, a common phrase in medieval or Renaissance spanish. The Latin invenire super can be used in the context of classical imitation theory, which would then merely suggest that Boccaccio’s novel is the canonical model for a spanish imitation. But in the vernacular the process of invençión sobre recalls the common practice in contemporary poetry of writing poetic glosses, poems based on earlier poems that would coincide in rhyme-sounds or other devices, such as employing each line of the predecessor poem as the final line of a stanza.9 Many such glosses can be found in the Cancionero general, an anthology published in 1511 that contained poetry from the courts of Henry iV (1425–1474, who reigned 1454–1474) and isabel i of castile. in that sense, Grimalte y Gradisa becomes a gloss or continuation of Boccaccio’s novel, in rhetorical terms an amplification.10 Just as a poetic gloss appropriates the verbal texture of the preceding poem, so Grimalte can be considered a calque of the story begun in Fiammetta, as it appropriates the earlier story’s plot and

284

A Boccaccian Renaissance

rhetoric not only in the communications between Fiammetta and Panfilo but in those between Grimalte and Gradisa as well. A further problem is that the antecedent of the phrase “la invençión del cual” is ambivalent: Does it refer to “el breve tractado,” so that the entire book is based on Fiammetta, or does it refer to the process of Juan de Flores’s taking on the name Grimalte? As we shall see, a complex and dynamic relationship between readings and appropriations of Boccaccio’s work pervades Flores’s novel. it is not only authors, however, but readers, too, who must fictionalize themselves as they vicariously experience the subjective emotions of the characters in a novel. it is in this sense that we can find the fullest meaning of invençión sobre in Juan de Flores’s novel. The characters in his work repeatedly fictionalize themselves as characters from Boccaccio’s, sometimes even contending for a particular role or identity. This is so from the very premise of the story: Grimalte so strongly reads himself as Fiammetta, in sharing her experience of unrequited love, that he disregards the gender differences and Fiammetta’s own insistence that the book be a warning to women and instead presents it to Gradisa as a way of communicating his emotions.11 But it is more than just a question of disregarding gender, for here he proffers a totally subjective reading that appropriates Fiammetta’s situation to himself, disregarding the specific social setting of Boccaccio’s novel. By implication, to him Gradisa is Panfilo, the resistant object of desire. Gradisa, on the other hand, also identifies with Fiammetta: “Las agenas tristezas tanto la apassionaron que ella no menos llagada que aquella otra se sentía” [The other’s suffering so inflamed her that she felt no less wounded] (90–91), and she reads the book as a warning to women about what may happen to them if they reciprocate male desire. To her, Grimalte is Panfilo: “soy cierta que seréis a mí un Pánfilo a Fiometa” [i am certain you would be to me as was Panfilo to Fiammetta] (93), not as an object of desire but as a threat to her sanity, her social standing, and her physical integrity. These initial subjective identifications of both readers with Fiammetta, however, and the projection of the other as Panfilo, are not static. When Gradisa sets for Grimalte the task of reconciling Fiammetta and Panfilo, the identifications acquire new dimensions, and a careful reading of the novel reveals a constant restructuring of assumed desire. As Fiammetta’s agent, the go-between Grimalte shares her desire for Panfilo,

Boccaccio in the spanish Renaissance

285

hoping that the two will be reconciled so that he, too, will obtain his reward, for his vicarious sharing in Fiammetta’s pleasure would be doubled by the expected pleasure to be gained from Gradisa. But does the latter share his desire for Fiammetta’s fulfillment, or is she setting him up for failure? she does not present Grimalte’s mission as an impossible task but rather declares that she seeks to help Fiammetta: “Parésceme ser tiempo de aver menester tercero que sus amores conforme, y bien quisiera ser yo aquella tercera” [it seems to me time that she had the help of a gobetween to bring about her love affair, and i myself would like to be that go-between] (94).12 indeed, so insistent is she on an exact report of Fiammetta’s and Panfilo’s affair that a reader could suspect she shares their sexual desire; she wants a written account of the progress of the affair and, seemingly without irony, bids Grimalte, “no vos fatigue pena de mi presencia absentaros, que con la esperança del gualardón cualesquiere trabajos vos deven ser deleites” [Let not the pain of absence from me wear you out, for the hope of the reward is such that any travails should give you pleasure] (96). Grimalte, however, rejects Gradisa’s optimistic figuration of herself as Fiammetta and even accuses her of misreading Boccaccio’s novel: “Devíades pensar si bien su istoria leístes” [you should consider whether you read her story correctly] (97). As he sees it, Fiammetta very easily gave in to Panfilo’s entreaties, thus ensuring his eventual disdain. The point for us is not the sexual politics of familiarity breeding contempt but rather the struggle over who is the correct reader and who, therefore, has priority in figuring him- or herself as Fiammetta. Grimalte rejects Gradisa’s appropriation of Fiammetta because she resists love, but in criticizing the ease with which she was seduced by Panfilo, Grimalte threatens his own interpretation of the novel, in which she is, like him, a victim of unrequited love. nonetheless, seeing no alternative, he sets out in search of Fiammetta and finally encounters her in a wilderness where she has been searching for Panfilo. This is only the first of several moments in the novel in which the various characters take on the role of seekers, and it also presents a new, symbolic location for Fiammetta, different from the urban naples of Boccaccio’s novel and the abstract but courtly environment that Grimalte and Gradisa inhabit.13 in their shared identities as seekers, Fiammetta and Grimalte are briefly doubles of one another, but when he is overwhelmed by her beauty and offers to do her service, he

286

A Boccaccian Renaissance

seems to have turned into the suitor that Panfilo once was, and indeed she briefly mistakes him for her former lover. clearly, if both Gradisa and Grimalte compete to be the legitimate heirs of Fiammetta, both also desire her and in a way thus become Panfilos. When Grimalte explains to Fiammetta his actual identity and the story of his quest, a new set of identifications develops: Fiammetta, hearing of Gradisa’s virtues, both through Grimalte’s praise of her and through her wisdom in setting him on this quest, comes to identify with her spanish reader. This plays out in two ways. on the one hand, it doubles in her the desire to find and be reconciled with Panfilo, for now two sets of loves depend on her success: “yo fasta aquí un cuidado de recobrar a mi Pánfilo tenía, y agora con dos me veo: uno aquél, y otro, en servicio de tan valerosa dama” [until now i had but one cause for recovering Panfilo, but now i have two: the first one and the service of such a worthy lady] (113). But she also identifies with Gradisa’s resistance to Grimalte and wishes that she, too, had taken the same tack with Panfilo so that now it would be he suffering her pains and wandering the world in search of her, much as Grimalte is. By listening to his story, Fiammetta becomes, in effect, a reader of Grimalte y Gradisa and fictionalizes herself as one of the characters in that story. That is, just as she, Fiammetta, had been a model for Gradisa, now Gradisa is her model, even though the identification with Gradisa includes an element of desire that unites Fiammetta with Grimalte at the same time. After their meeting, Grimalte and Fiammetta continue their journey together in search of Panfilo, eventually arriving in Florence, his native city. Pretending to be pilgrims, they lodge at a convent, and Grimalte finally undertakes his role as a go-between, carrying letters between the former lovers. This part of the story involves the most traditional form of inventar sobre, as Juan de Flores more closely imitates Boccaccio and his novel in the letters exchanged. Thus Fiammetta, as ever, reproaches Panfilo for his infidelity but professes her continuing love for him, while he claims he left her out of concern for the honor that she was so flagrantly risking. As Grimalte plays his role of go-between, he increasingly identifies with Fiammetta, not just because of the reward that a successful mission would bring him but also because he develops an admiration for Panfilo bordering on attraction:

Boccaccio in the spanish Renaissance

287

y después que el suave comer fue traído, como por Pánfilo fue visto, con aquexados ruegos sobraron sus porfías a mi vergüença, de manera que, yo forçado, les tuve compañía. y a la fin que la preciosa mesa fue alçada, Pánfilo, tomándome por la mano, a una segreta cámara suya se retraxo, donde de mi venida me pregunta. el cual, puede quien me oye ser cierto que jamás una persona de tan gentil parescer no nasció, que cierto, las ansias de Fiometa con las gracias de Pánfilo tenían muy legítimas causas a sus desseos. (133) [After the refined dinner was brought out and looked over by Panfilo, his plaintive appeals overcame my shame, such that i was forced to join them. And after the precious table was cleared, Panfilo, taking me by the hand, took me to a secret chamber where he questioned me about my arrival. Anyone who hears this can be sure that there was never born anyone of such gentle appearance and for certain, Fiammetta’s yearning for Panfilo’s graces were a very legitimate cause of her desire.] Grimalte’s identification with Fiammetta grows even stronger, for as he explains to Panfilo that he is in Florence because of Gradisa’s command, his desire for Panfilo fuses with that for Gradisa, and he identifies the two united in their resistance to love. But Panfilo rejects the notion that he is immune to love, instead explaining that love is unstable and desires what is unattainable. if Grimalte had succeeded in his suit for Gradisa, he would now be cured of her, just as Panfilo was cured by Fiammetta’s surrender. nonetheless, Panfilo accompanies Grimalte back to the convent where Fiammetta is lodged, and they go into a private room together, accompanied only by Grimalte. There he watches them make love: Parescía que el mesmo Dios de los amores los enseñava. . . . Los apretados labios de Fiometa ovieron vengança del passado tiempo, creyendo en aquel momento cobrar enteros plazeres, y peleando la vieja congoxa con la nueva alegría, ambos en uno de tal manera combatieron, que sobrado gozo la derribó cuasi muerta en el suelo. (143)

288

A Boccaccian Renaissance

[it seemed that the very God of love gave them lessons. . . . Fiammetta’s locked lips took vengeance on all the time that had passed, believing in that moment that they exacted an entirety of pleasure, and just as the old sorrows contended with the new-found joys, so too in the same manner the pair joined in one battled, such that a surfeit of pleasure left her almost dead upon the ground.] in effect, there are three lovers in the tryst, Grimalte participating by indulging in a fantasy that envisions the same outcome with Gradisa: “yo . . . contento me hazía el mirarlos, que tanto vencido estava en dulçor de sus amores, trayendo a la memoria los míos, que los amores dellos me davan sentible pena” [i . . . was pleased to watch them, for i was so overwhelmed by the sweetness of their love, that bringing to mind my own, their love gave me palpable pain] (143). But afterward Panfilo bids Fiammetta to remember her honor and to return to her husband. This is followed by a direct exchange of speeches between Fiammetta and Panfilo, during which Grimalte makes very few interventions other than to express how moved he is by Fiammetta’s passion; when he tries to console her afterward, he seems to identify with Panfilo as he, too, reminds her that she can always return to her husband and speculates that Panfilo is to be pitied, as he must undoubtedly be in love with someone else. Grimalte’s attempts at consolation are predictably ineffective, and Fiammetta dies shortly thereafter, forcing him to contemplate a return to Gradisa, to whom he must report his failure. in his mind Fiammetta’s death anticipates his own: “Plañiré mi muerta vida fasta que el fin de dolores me haga tu compañero” [i will lament my dead life until the end of my affliction unites me with you] (181), and he tears at his face with his nails, bathing his garments in blood, and performs other acts of ritual mourning. Then, after burying Fiammetta and erecting her tomb, he challenges Panfilo to ritual combat, declaring that it is more proper for men than for women to die of love.14 But Panfilo, now repentant, rejects the challenge on the grounds that, in light of his earlier conduct, he is more deserving of a slow death than of the quick one that Grimalte would inflict and that he will flee to the desert to do penance. Both men now suffer from unrequited love, and through this exchange and their insistence on self-punishment, Panfilo and Grimalte vie for the right to be most fully Fiammetta’s heir.

Boccaccio in the spanish Renaissance

289

But first Grimalte must return to spain and report to Gradisa; he attempts to convince her that his efforts on Fiammetta’s behalf should earn him some reward, but to Gradisa he has only succeeded in proving Fiammetta’s point, that men cannot be trusted. confirmed in her own reading of Boccaccio’s novel, she dismisses Grimalte, who then vows to join Panfilo in the performance of penance. Just as he once wandered the earth in search of Fiammetta before finding her in the wilderness, so must he now seek out Panfilo before finding him in a cave in Asia, in such a dehumanized state that hunting dogs mistake him for prey. Grimalte joins Panfilo in this life. The first night he is disturbed when they witness scenes of Fiammetta’s infernal torments; later Panfilo explains that these visions occur every third night. Thus, joined to her in suffering, Grimalte and Panfilo finally succeed in figuring themselves as Fiammetta, inventing themselves upon her and most fully appropriating her model, just as Juan de Flores has done with Boccaccio’s novel. conspicuous by her absence, Gradisa, having learned Fiammetta’s lesson, is excluded from the company of suffering lovers. Granting that Flores reads Fiammetta through a lens that includes ovid’s Heroides and Piccolomini’s De duobus amantibus, what are the lessons he learns from Boccaccio? The primary one is that love is not unidirectional but rather that desire breeds desire in ways that may be complementary, parallel, or even contradictory, and homosocial as well as heterosexual. it was Panfilo’s desire for Fiammetta that brought her to life, after all, as the desiring subject capable of narrating Boccaccio’s book.15 Grimalte’s desire for Gradisa leads him to identify with Fiammetta, and thus to desire Panfilo, while Gradisa’s competing identification with Fiammetta pits her interpretation of Panfilo’s character against Fiammetta’s, ironically placing her in agreement with Panfilo himself, both certain that he no longer loves Fiammetta. When Grimalte sees Panfilo and Fiammetta making love, the scene fuses with his own desire for Gradisa, not only because he believes that his consummation will surely follow but also because he shares a form of desire for both Fiammetta and Panfilo. Fiammetta’s death is like his own, but he does not count on Panfilo’s untimely repentance, and Grimalte, at the end of the story, becomes his partner as he joins his italian model in the wilderness. To achieve his aim of invention and imitation, Flores has Gradisa learn Fiammetta’s intended message about the untrustworthiness of men, while Grimalte and even Panfilo

290

A Boccaccian Renaissance

learn the deeper lesson of how to love. To do this Grimalte must act as the go-between for the two italians, ostensibly as a helper but also in a role that forces him to assimilate their cultural and erotic identities; his fantasies of Gradisa merge with the witnessing of Fiammetta and Panfilo making love because that could happen only if she were less puritanically spanish and more seduceably italian. He must join Panfilo in witnessing Fiammetta’s infernal torments because, as the go-between, he, too, has been responsible for her ultimate death. Desire is universal and, contrary to received wisdom, not satisfied by attaining the beloved. To conclude, being loved can awaken love and transform the passive object of desire into an active narrator, the omniscient if not quite omnipotent author of one’s own story. This is what happens to Fiammetta in Boccaccio’s novel. Reading is similar to being loved in that it can begin as a fairly passive experience, but ultimately one can become a more active reader, in effect a collaborator in the telling of the story. This is what happens to Grimalte. The process of reading can also occur at the national level: As Juan de Flores and his fellow spaniards read Boccaccio, they learn to write novels and ultimately become the protagonists of their own literary history. The fullest lesson of the Fiammetta is to be found in Celestina, which is, among many other things, a parody of the spanish sentimental novels that was published only a few years later. There, every character is motivated by desires for sex and for money. no one is merely a helper, and no one is an object, for all the characters perceive themselves as the protagonists of their own stories. noTes

1. Detailed discussions of Boccaccio’s influence in spain can be found in Joaquín Arce, “Boccaccio nella letteratura castigliana: Panorama generale e rassegna bibliografico-critica,” in Boccaccio nelle culture e letterature nazionali, ed. Francesco Mazzoni (Florence: olschki, 1978), 63–105, and Joaquín Arce, “seis cuestiones sobre el tema ‘Boccaccio en españa,’” Filología moderna 15 (1975): 473–88. information on manuscripts in Latin and in italian is taken from Iter Italicum, http://cf.itergateway.org/italicum/. information on the manuscripts of Boccaccio’s work in catalan and castilian translation is taken from PhiloBiblon, ed. charles Faulhaber, http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/PhiloBiblon/. on Fiammetta in particular, see Lia Mendia Vozzo, “L’edizione di una versione: il caso della ‘Fiammetta’

Boccaccio in the spanish Renaissance

291

castigliana,” in Ecdotica e testi ispanici: Atti del Convegno Nazionale della Associazione Ispanisti Italiani (Verona: istituto di Lingue e Letterature straniere di Verona, universitá degli studi di Padova, 1982), 103–9. 2. on the incunables, see Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, http://www.bl.uk /catalogues/istc/. 3. in the extensive bibliography on the sentimental novels, see Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Orígenes de la novela, nueva Biblioteca de Autores españoles (Madrid: Baílly Balliére e hijos, 1905–15); Armando Durán, Estructura y técnicas de la novela sentimental y caballeresca, Biblioteca Románica Hispánica ii: estudios y ensayos 184 (Madrid: Gredos, 1973); Dinko cvitanovic, La novela sentimental española, el soto 21 (Madrid: Prensa española, 1973); Patricia e. Grieve, Desire and Death in the Spanish Sentimental Romance (newark, De: Juan de la cuesta, 1987); Marina scordilis Brownlee, The Severed Word: Ovid’s Heroides and the novela sentimental (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 1990); Alan Deyermond, “Las innovaciones narrativas en el reinado de los Reyes católicos,” Revista de Literatura Medieval 7 (1995): 93–105; Regula Rohland de Langbehn, La unidad genérica de la novela sentimental española de los siglos XV y XVI, Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Group 17 (London: Department of Hispanic studies, Queen Mary and Westfield college, 1999); and Antonio cortijo ocaña, La evolución genérica de la ficción sentimental de los siglos XV y XVI: Género literario y contexto social, Támesis serie A, Monografías, 184 (London: Támesis, 2001). The sentimental novels were enormously popular in spain and, in translation, abroad. 4. There were editions in Lyons in 1535 and in Paris in 1536. see enzo Giudici, Maurice Scève traduttore e narratore: Note su “La depourable fin de Flamete” (cassino: Garigliano, 1978). 5. on the metafictional aspect of Grimalte, see in particular Deyermond, “Las innovaciones narrativas”; e. Michael Gerli, “Metafiction in spanish sentimental Romances,” in The Age of the Catholic Monarchs, 1474–1516: Literary Studies in Memory of Keith Whinnom, ed. Alan Deyermond and ian Macpherson, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, special issue (Liverpool: Liverpool university Press, 1989), 57–63; Barbara Weissberger, “Authors, characters, and Readers in Grimalte y Gradissa,” in Creation and Recreation: Experiments in Literary Form in Early Modern Spain; Essays in Honor of Stephen Gilman, ed. Ronald e. surtz and nora Weinerth (newark, De: Juan de la cuesta, 1983), 61–76; and Lillian von der Walde Moheno, “La experimentación literaria del siglo xv: A propósito de Grimalte y Gradisa,” in Juan de Flores: Four Studies, ed. Joseph Gwara, Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research seminar 49 (London: Department of Hispanic studies, Queen Mary college, university of London, 2005), 75–89. 6. Quotations from Grimalte are taken from the edition by carmen Parrilla: Juan de Flores, Grimalte y Gradissa, ed. carmen Parrilla, Ficción sentimental 1 (Alcalá de Hernares: centro de estudios cervantinos, 2008). it is common critical practice to spell the character’s name Fiammetta/Fiometa to distinguish

292

A Boccaccian Renaissance

between Boccaccio’s character and that of Juan de Flores. However, other than in direct quotes, i will adopt Fiammetta for both. 7. As cortijo puts it, “Flores aleja sus ficciones sentimentales del carácter de pseudoautobiografías que tenían hasta el momento los representantes del género.” cortijo ocaña, La evolución genérica, 151. 8. see Walde Moheno, who argues that this is not a case of a fictional or veiled autobiography but an allusion to the rhetorical procedure of taking on another voice; Walde Moheno, “La experimentación Literaria,”  79. There is a substantial bibliography on what it means for Flores to take on a fictional voice in imitation of Boccaccio, which also includes Weissberger, “Authors, characters”; Brownlee, The Severed Word; Louise Haywood, “Gradissa: A Fictional Female Reader in/of a Male Author’s Text,” Medium Aevum 64 (1995): 85–99; Ascención Rivas Hernández, “Juegos de ficción y realidad en el Breve tractado de Grimalte y Gradissa,” in Humanismo y literatura en tiempos de Juan del Encina, ed. Javier Guijarro ceballos (salamanca: ediciones universidad, 1999), 423–30. 9. There is a significant relationship between the sentimental novel and contemporary lyric, known as “cancionero poetry,” and the text of Grimalte incorporates verse. see Grieve, Desire and Death; Haywood, “Gradissa”; Barbara Matulka, The Novels of Juan de Flores and Their European Diffusion: A Study in Comparative Literature (new york: Publications of the institute of French studies, 1931). 10. see Rohland de Langbehn, who, in La unidad genérica contrasts the layered amplificatio of Grimalte with the episode addition of the contemporary chivalric novels such as Amadís. 11. on the fictionalization of the reader, see Weissberger, “Authors, characters.” on Grimalte’s desire to use Fiammetta as a “Gaelotto” in imitation of Inferno 5, see Brownlee, The Severed Word, and on Grimalte as a precedent for Don Quixote’s reading-induced madness, see Durán, Estructura y técnicas. 12. on the less-than-savory implications of Grimalte’s becoming a gobetween, see Weissberger, “Authors, characters,” and Walde Moheno, “La experimentación Literaria.” Louise Haywood sees this transformation as proof of Gradisa’s sexual power. see Haywood, “Gradissa.” 13. The importance of the social environment is considered by Durán in Estructura y técnicas and by Julio Rodríguez Puértolas in “sentimentalismo ‘burgués’ y amor cortés: La novela del siglo XV,” in Essays on Narrative Fiction in the Iberian Peninsula in Honour of Frank Pierce, ed. R. B. Tate ([oxford]: Dolphin, 1982), 121–39. 14. since the nineteenth century, some scholars have emphasized connections between the sentimental and the chivalric novels. These include Pascual de Gayangos, ed. and introd., in Libros de caballerías, Biblioteca de Autores españoles 40 (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1857); Menéndez y Pelayo, in Orígenes de la novela; Matulka, in The Novels of Juan de Flores; and cortijo ocaña, in La evolución genérica. 15. For a Girardian reading of Grimalte, see Grieve, Desire and Death.

cHAPTeR 12

Regendering Griselda on the London stage jan e t l e var ie s mar r

Boccaccio’s story of Griselda launched a veritable international industry of retellings: in prose and in verse, in narrative, ballad, and drama. Already by around 1400, Petrarch had reworked it into Latin in his Seniles 17.3, christine de Pizan had retold it in French in her Book of the City of Ladies (Part 2, chap. 50), and chaucer had turned it into the “clerk’s Tale” in his Canterbury Tales. When Thomas Dekker, Henry chettle, and William Haughton wrote their Pleasant Comedie of Patient Grissil in 1599 (performed in 1600, published in 1603), their source was clearly chaucer and not Boccaccio, making their play a grandchild of the Decameron.1 scholars continue to debate whether chaucer, whose clerk names Petrarch as his source, knew the Decameron.2 yet, as Willard Farnham argued nearly a century ago: “certain phrases of chaucer’s are closer to the italian than to the Latin. sometimes the english is so near the italian and so different from the Latin that the resemblance is striking. in a few cases more or less important details are not in the Latin, and are in both italian and english.”3 Another argument on behalf of chaucer’s knowledge of the Decameron story points to both narrators’ oddly undermining ironies at the tale’s end.4 But the feature i most want to highlight, the one that—wittingly or unwittingly—brings chaucer’s tale closer to Boccaccio’s than to Petrarch’s, is the fact that the story does not stand alone and self-sufficient as an isolated saintly account 293

294

A Boccaccian Renaissance

but rather is presented as part of and in relationship to a series of other tales within a framework. Boccaccio’s Griselda story comes at the end of a day devoted to tales of magnanimous behavior, with the narrators seeking expressly to outdo one another with their examples. The final example of one-up-manship is that of the magnanimity of a poor peasant girl surpassing that of wealthy kings. Beyond the tenth day, the tale takes up a recurring theme of crossclass marriages. such marriages are seldom happy, although some of them eventually find harmony. Day 3, tale 9, made famous by shakespeare, gives us a male aristocrat outraged by the order to marry “a shedoctor” despite the king’s insistence. conversely, Day 7, tale 8, gives us the scorn of an aristocratic wife for her mercantile husband and the wonderful rant by her mother against “this small-time trader in horse manure” who has had the nerve to speak ill of her daughter.5 Readers familiar with the Decameron will find other cases of cross-class marriage. Again, the Griselda story comes as the final and most extreme example. Was chaucer aware of these thematic connections when he used the tale as part of what has been called the “marriage debate”? or when he linked it with another story from the Decameron’s tenth day (though admittedly also available from the Filocolo), which asks explicitly which of its characters is the most generous? Most directly and famously, chaucer’s story of Griselda is set in opposition to the “Wife of Bath’s Tale.” not only do widow and clerk combat each other’s attitudes, the clerk referring explicitly to the Wife of Bath “and al hire secte” (iV e 171), but also each stages within his or her narrative (in the wife’s case, her prologue as well as her tale) the competition for mastery between husband and wife. The example of Griselda is simply too extreme to be left on its own without some counterweight. As the clerk responded to the Wife of Bath, so the merchant, speaking next, laments, “There is a long and large difference. / Betwix Grisildis grete pacience. / And of my wif the passyg crueltee” (iV e 1223–25). Dekker, chettle, and Haughton inherited via chaucer the idea of setting Griselda’s situation against an opposite marriage as part of a marriage debate.6 The marquis’s cousin, Gwenthian, marries a mere gentleman, named owen, whom she repeatedly humiliates; this shrewish wife and hapless husband reverse the power relations of Griselda’s marriage.7 That reversal, however, can only be comic—a tone enhanced by making

Regendering Griselda on the London stage

295

the couple Welsh. in addition, the Marquis has a sister, named Julia, who, although courted by several gallants, refuses to marry at all after witnessing the play’s two couples. A few years later, this time collaborating with Thomas Middleton, Dekker again tried making a male Griselda, in The Honest Whore, Part 1 (written, perhaps, in 1603; published in 1604).8 As Dekker is the only playwright involved with both plays, i am assuming that he was interested in reworking this problem.9 candido, the “monstrous patient man” (1.4.7–8) retains his calm despite a series of attempts by his wife and others to provoke him. indeed, one of the events is exactly the same in both plays, though enacted in Patient Grissil and merely narrated in The Honest Whore: the wife shames her husband in front of important guests by appearing ill dressed and refusing to prepare a meal for them. candido’s story, i suggest, needs to be seen not only in its relation to the two other plots in that play (which i will not say much about here) but also in relation to the attempt in Patient Grissil to examine the gendered nature of patience. We can begin by sketching out the features which the two plays share, and then notice how the reversal of Griselda’s gender produces two quite different treatments of the theme. There are three principal shared features: 1. For both Grissil and candido, the qualities of patience and constancy go hand in hand; constancy means that patience is an enduring character quality rather than a one-time act. in both characters, these qualities, normally considered virtues, exist to an extreme, which renders the characters abnormal as humans. Grissil and candido are both referred to as “Angell” and “saint”: Furio: “she’s a saint sure.” Marquis: “An Angell upon earth.” (PG 2.2.123 and 125) A courtier: “Thou maiest sooner raise a spleene in an Angell.” (HW 1.4.23–24) Viola: “if this move not his patience, nothing can, ile sweare then i have a saint, and not a man.” (HW 4.3.176–77) A courtier in The Honest Whore suggests, however, that candido may be less than human rather than saintly or angelic (i.5.109): “sure hees a pigeon, for he has no gall.” Whereas patience is expected of a wife, it

296

A Boccaccian Renaissance

appears inappropriate in a husband. Thus candido’s wife, Viola, complains to her brother about her husband (i.2.59, 63–64): “Hee haz not all things belonging to a man,” for “i have heard it often said, that hee who cannot be angry, is no man.”10 We might note that, similarly, Grissil’s moment of praise for Gwalter’s “patience” is ironic, referring to his patience in putting up with flatterers, that is, a situation in which he should not be patient (PG 2.2.146–47). An earlier version of the title of the second play, before its publication, was “The pasyent man and the onest hore”—clearly intended as a pair of paradoxical concepts.11 Thus the patience of candido, unlike that of Grissil, will have to be repeatedly explained and justified. owen, in contrast, is not patient but exasperated; he is simply unable to control his aristocratic wife, who is determined not to let her husband treat her the way Gwalter is treating Grissil. 12 2. A second shared feature is that in both plays the patience of one spouse, rather than being gratefully appreciated, provokes the mate’s attempts to test and break it. The more the patient spouse remains unreactive to these tests, the more frustrated the tester becomes, and therefore the crueler the efforts to arouse a reaction. Patience is simultaneously a virtue and an irritant. The Honest Whore, at least initially, invites our complicity with the wife and courtiers who seek to provoke candido’s anger. (it is not just the wife who is vexed by his patience.) Patient Grissil situates us instead on the side of Grissil, with less sympathy for Gwalter’s actions, which are much more severe than those of either owen’s or candido’s wife. some tests apply to both candido and Grissil: for example, depriving the subject of clothing appropriate to his or her status in a situation in which this should be embarrassing (so that Grissil appears at the marquis’s wedding in rags and candido, deprived of his cloak, goes to a city council meeting in a carpet),13 and dislocation from his or her marital home to someplace much worse (in candido’s case, his committal to an insane asylum is the ultimate provocation). But the apparent killing of children and the apparent divorce apply only to Grissil; candido seems to have no children, and his middle-class marriage is never in question. nor does Gwenthian ever dismiss owen as her husband. Grissil’s trials remain the most severe. Reversing both Boccaccio’s and chaucer’s order of tests, the marquis in Patient Grissil first banishes Grissil to her old home and then comes after the children; thus for her the ultimate test is not her loss of her

Regendering Griselda on the London stage

297

husband and court life but her loss of her children, about which she finally does complain, thus demonstrating an appropriate maternal affection. Both Gwalter and Viola say they love their spouses (PG 2.2.13–18; HW 1.2.80), but Gwalter’s strongest declaration of love is followed immediately by “yet is my bosome burnt up with desires / To trie my Grissils patience” (20–21), while Viola’s, too, is immediately followed by “But i know not—i ha such a tickling within mee—such a strange longing; . . . i long to have my patient husband eate up a whole Porcupine” (81–82, 87–88). Having a patient spouse is a strong temptation to abuse. in a sense, then, it is the cruel spouse who is tested and found wanting, just as much as the patient spouse has been tested and passed the test. in the end, both Grissil’s husband and candido’s wife confess that they have done wrong—a confession of guilt notably absent from the tales of both Boccaccio and chaucer. 3. The third shared feature is that patience is viewed—at least by someone in the play—as a tactic for overcoming an abusive spouse; patience elicits abuse but also, in the end, shames the abuser. in Patient Grissil, it is not Grissil herself who says this but owen, who, after fruitless attempts at controlling his shrewish wife, declares that Grissil has finally “bridled” her husband (5.2.301–3): “if sir owen was not patient, her Latie had not beene pridled, if Grissil had not beene patient, her cozen Marquesse [i.e., his wife’s cousin, the Marquis] had not been pridled.”14 Gwenthian herself shifts from considering Grissil a “niny pobbie foole” (3.2.202) to declaring to owen that Grissil is a model of wifely mastery: “Marg you now, the man is yeelded to her Latie, lerne now sir owen, learne Knight your duetie” (5.2.189–90). indeed, owen’s giving up on “taming” his wife wins her promise to be sweeter. Dekker and his friends seem to be thinking of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” here in its pairing with the clerk’s. if Grissil is not intentionally using patience as a tactic, candido suggests—in a manner familiar from advice to wives—that his own patience has been a conscious tactic to eventually bring his wife to heel. in Act 3 (1.207), with regard to his wife’s provocations, he remarks on having “foyld her desperate wit.” in the final scene of Act 5, after Viola has said, “Forgive me, and ile vex your spirit no more” (2.478), he announces triumphantly that patience “is the hunny gainst a waspish wife” (509).15 yet despite these shared features, the reversal of genders causes deep divergences. consider first the explanation of causes. Why is Grissil patient?

298

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Because she is a good woman whose virtue makes her a suitable wife for Gwalter despite her lowly origins. Moreover, although surprised by the proposal of marriage, she has been courted by the marquis for some time; it is therefore plausible that, despite her reluctance to marry so unequally, she feels some romantic attachment. she has previously defended the honorable quality of Gwalter’s behavior to her anxious father, and later she even lies to her family about him to protect his image (and perhaps her own as well): ian.: “What said the Marquesse when he banisht thee?” Gris.: “He gave me gentle language, kist my cheeke, For Gods sake therefore speake not ill of him, .......................................... Good Lord how many a kisse he gave my babes, and with wet eyes bad me be patient, .................................. Therefore for Gods love speake not ill of him.” (4.2.47–58) A further motive for her patience is a sense of sheer helplessness; for when her brother exclaims, “shall i in silence bury all our wrongs?,” she counters, “yes, when your words cannot get remedy” (5.1.93–94). Finally, the relation of subject to lord takes over when the relation of wife to husband has fallen apart; thus she scolds her brother’s resistance to the marquis’s orders: “come performe his will, / oh in a subiect this is too too ill” (5.2.60–61). All these sentiments are conventional even if the situations are extreme. As she says, “’Tis but my duetie” (2.2.81). Her sense of “subject” combines moral agency with a recognition of political subjection to power. Gwalter tests his courtiers along with his wife, explicitly commenting that he has made them who they are just as he has given his wife her identity. Flattering courtiers are dismissed when Grissil is welcomed back. The subject is responsible for moral choices but is also made or unmade by the political power to which it is—in any case—subject. But what of candido? The middle-class husband of a middle-class wife, he owes no service, or rather the service that he owes requires not patience but action. His wife even says to his face, after the courtiers have ruined a good piece of cloth and walked out with a silver beaker, “o y’are a goodly patient Woodcocke, are you not now? see what your patience

Regendering Griselda on the London stage

299

comes too: every one sadles you, and rydes you. . . . A womans well holp’t up with such a meacocke, i had rather have a husband that would swaddle me thrice a day, then such a one, that will be guld twice in halfe an hower’” (1.5.190–95). candido’s patience, rather than fulfilling his duties, flies in their face: he seems unwilling to protect his own property, business or personal; he allows an unknown man to fondle his wife,16 and she says that he would tolerate being cuckolded (1.2.92–94). His patience appears to others, paradoxically, as a kind of madness, even though patience is opposed to madness in the noble-class plot line of the play.17 candido’s frustrated wife exclaims (4.3.57–58), “What, a mad-man? a patient mad-man? who ever heard the like?” His rejoinder comes in the final act, set in the madhouse to which his wife has committed him: “is patience madnesse? ile be a mad-man still” (5.2.478). What makes this paradox possible in candido’s case is humoral theory. The play refers frequently to his “blood” and “humor,” especially in the scenes in which he is first talked about, before we meet him (1.2 and 1.4). He has no gall (1.2.72), no spleen (1.4.20 and 23–24). The final act repeats: “He was a man made up without a gall, / nothing could move him, nothing could convert / His meeke bloud into fury” (5.1.60–62). The play’s printed title follows “The Honest Whore” with “The Humours of the Patient Man.”18 Any such strong imbalance in the humors is a kind of physical or mental sickness. Patience is not a moral virtue in candido— although he claims it as such in his final speech—but rather a physiological pathology. nonetheless, as Rosalynde Welch has pointed out, humor is also a way of giving candido an internally defined identity,19 which Grissil never has. she is patient because she owes subservience to her husband or her lord; candido is patient independently, because of his own inner temperament, even when others wish he were not. Besides justifying his patience by his physical temperament, candido also justifies his patience with regard to attacks on his property and even on his person by referring to his ownership of both: . . . i did cut out Penniworths of Lawne, the Lawne was yet mine owne: A carpet was my gowne, yet twas mine owne, i wore my mans coate, yet the cloath mine owne, Had a crackt crowne, the crowne was yet mine owne. (5.2.471–75)

300

A Boccaccian Renaissance

candido even makes economic calculations to demonstrate that what he did was reasonable: it is cheaper to cut a hole in a carpet than to pay the fine for attending town council meeting without a proper robe (3.1.202–6); and if selling a penny’s worth of expensive fabric from the center of the cloth might win him new customers, it is an investment in his business (1.5.120–28).20 This kind of calculation is completely foreign to Grissil, for whom patience means giving absolutely, without any thought of return on investment—although the bystanders who interpret her patience as a winning tactic share candido’s calculating mode.21 candido’s appeal to the right to do as he pleases with what is his suits his social status as a tradesman, and even anticipates the rhetoric of the Levellers a few decades later, who argued that the economic independence of tradesmen gave them equal rights with landowners to a political voice.22 candido’s literal self-possession contrasts sharply with Grissil’s lack of any possession, including herself. To Gwalter’s marriage proposal, she acquiesces thus: As her olde Father yeeldes to your dread will, so she her fathers pleasure must fulfill. if olde ianicola make Grissill yours, Grissil must not deny, yet had she rather, Be the poore Daughter still of her poore Father. (1.2.265–69) she is quite conscious of being given by one man to another.23 not only has she come into the marriage with no possessions, but also even her children are not hers but their father’s: “i know my gratious Lord they are not mine” (4.1.49), and later, “i should doe wondrous ill, should i repine, / At my babes losse for they are none of mine” (4.2.215–16). This is the opposite of candido’s justifications that he can act as he chooses with what is “[his] own.” it is Gwalter who can, like candido, say about the children, “shall not i / Bestowe what is myne owne, as likes me best?” (4.1.57–58). yet, in the final scene, as Grissil embraces her children, she also reclaims them: “My soule knit to your soules, knowes you are mine,” to which Gwalter responds, “They are, and i am thine” (5.2.197–98). Grissil’s last utterance in the play is this reclaiming of her children: the only things she felt Gwalter truly did wrong to take away.24 Her last word, radically, is “mine.”

Regendering Griselda on the London stage

301

A few conclusions may be drawn. obviously, gender is not the only factor in this pair of Griselda plays; class figures significantly. Grissil is doubly subservient in her marriage; owen is subservient only by class; candido not at all. if the alternative to Grissil’s marriage in Patient Grissil is Gwenthian’s “mastery” of her husband, the end of The Honest Whore offers a relationship of equality. To the duke’s urging, “come, come, weele have you friends,” candido replies, “see my Lord, we are even, / [then to his wife] nay rise, for ill deeds kneele unto none but heaven” (5.2.479–81). Having seen the couple work side by side in their shop, we can well imagine this as a marriage of fairly “even” “friends.” Gwenthian, an aristocrat married to a mere gentleman, explicitly rejects the marquis’s urging, “come, ile have you friends” with “Gwenthian scawrnes to be friendes, her Ladie will be Master sir owen” (4.3.159 and 162–63). At the end, while acknowledging her husband as her “head,” she warns nonetheless that should he try to “triumphe too much and treade her Latie downe, God udge mee will tag her will againe doe what her can” (5.2.267–68). That is, just as Grissil’s final status depends on the marquis’s will, so too is owen “head” only insofar as Gwenthian condescends to allow it. class difference determines the issue of “mastery” within marriage. The upper class holds the power, regardless of gender. The second play eliminated this class difference. That Dekker kept the issue of class vexingly in mind is manifest not only in the new class relationship in the second play’s marriage but also in candido’s reference near the end of the play to Jesus, his model for patience, as “the best of men . . . the first true Gentleman” (5.2.491 and 494). The duke, who has just called him “a patient foole” (486), now invites him to “teach our court to shine” (514). one of the courtiers in Act 1 (5.228–29), seeing candido’s patience in the face of intentional vexations, remarks, “Thou art a blest man, and with peace doest deale, / such a meeke spirit can blesse a common weale.” This play offers what is perhaps a middle-class fantasy that the character of a tradesman can create a peaceful society and should provide a model for the court.25 candido’s sense of self-possession and consequent freedom of action are most sharply threatened not by attacks on his wife or his goods but by internment in an insane asylum. yet Viola can neither put him in nor get him out of her own will; she needs an official letter declaring him sane or insane. Thus she has to persuade a constable that candido’s normal

302

A Boccaccian Renaissance

utterances are signs of madness, and then she and candido must persuade the duke that he is sane after all. in Patient Grissil, Gwalter, who is testing everyone—male and female—is always in control. Viola is not; she needs the intervention of male authorities first to challenge her husband’s right to self-determination and then to acknowledge that right again. in an ideologically deeply ambivalent moment of the final scene, the duke is needed to restore candido to his liberty and legal autonomy. ironically, then, even though candido sees his own patience not as humility but as “liberty,” and “freedome” (5.2.500 and 501), his assertion of middle-class self-possession and liberty depends, as much as Grissil’s servile abjection, on political power and a ruler’s will. By taking both gender and marital inequality out of the picture, Dekker reveals the political paradox at the heart of being a “subject”: the self is always socially and politically defined. Jean Howard sees the play as struggling with the creation of a new civic identity for the english commercial class.26 noting the mixed setting, ostensibly italy but often clearly London, she comments, “The more ‘english’ part of the play, the candido subplot, offers the spectacle of the self-regulating man as an alternative to the men out of control in the main plot; and this is probably a chief reason why this story of a London linen draper should be juxtaposed to the story of italianate gallants” (para.14). This, i note, is not simply a matter of italianate versus english practices, but also a matter of class. The main plot involves italian nobility, including the frenzied grief of Hipolito; the “gallants” are the whore’s courtly customers. Thus an english middle-class identity is being set against those of italian aristocrats and courtiers and the vices they encourage. But if this play is an attempt to construct an english middle-class identity, why turn to the story of Griselda, which conspicuously lacks a middle class? As candido calls the police rather than personally chasing after a man who has stolen his silver beaker, Howard observes the creation of a civic subject that hands the violence of enforcing justice over to the institutions of the state: “one of the tasks of the Tudor-stuart state was to accomplish this transmission of authority over violence. . . . selfregulation goes hand in hand with enhanced state regulation” (para. 18). And yet, she notes, candido’s emotional and behavioral self-control is seen by his wife and other characters as unmanly and foolish.27 it requires the duke to rescue candido from his victimization by his wife. The idea of the citizen’s proper submission to the state and its institutions is uneasily

Regendering Griselda on the London stage

303

matched or identified with the issue of proper wifely submission in marriage.28 The necessity of political submission threatens to feminize the shopkeeper even as it supports him. Perhaps that is one reason why, in trying to imagine a new identity for the english tradesman, Dekker returned to Griselda. in both plays, by reversing the gender of Griselda, Dekker pondered whether a virtue that— as Petrarch had said and chaucer’s clerk reiterated—is meant to apply not to women alone but to all mankind, can truly be envisioned in a male. For Dekker and his fellow playwrights, the question was not whether a man can be patient in the face of misfortunes, like Job, but whether he can be represented—without being simply ridiculous—as patient in his marriage in the way that Griselda is. That is, the playwright may be testing the extent to which the story of Griselda can truly represent a human, rather than a wifely, condition. As one of the gallants asks candido (1.5.106–7), “ist possible that Homo, / should be nor man, nor woman?” Perhaps another reason for the attraction of Griselda as a figure useful for thinking about the identity of the commercial class is that Griselda does not need Gualtieri. she may obey him, she may even love him, but she can live with or without him. Might this represent, in a manner not yet expressly articulated, the commercial class’s feelings about the aristocracy and perhaps even the king?29 Griselda’s marriage is also a political relationship. in giving candido an “even” marriage, did Dekker and Middleton hint at a more egalitarian society? one governed by the sort of town council of which candido is a participating member? Might patience be a more manly virtue in that kind of society? noTes

1. A popular ballad was probably an additional source. The text of Patient Grissil is in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers, vol.  1 (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1953), 212–90. For the fortuna of the Griselda story in england, besides work cited in this paper, see especially Raffaele Morabito, ed., La circolazione dei temi e degli intrecci narrativi: Il caso di Griselda (L’Aquila: Japadre, 1988), and Raffaele Morabito, ed., La Storia di Griselda in Europa: Atti del Convegno; Modi dell’intertestualità; la storia di Griselda in Europa, L’Aquila, 12–14 maggio 1988 (L’Aquila: Japadre editore, 1990). For english versions, see Dora Faraci, “il Patto di Griselda: Valori simbolici di una

304

A Boccaccian Renaissance

storia fra chaucer e Dekker,” in Raffaele Morabito ed., La Storia di Griselda in Europa: Atti del Convegno, 103–17. For a more general account of the influence of Boccaccio in england during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and for the publication history of Boccaccio’s works in early modern england and the shift in favorites over time, see Guyda Armstrong, The English Boccaccio: A History in Books (Totonto: university of Toronto Press, 2013). For all english tale collections and plays that include Decameron stories, see Herbert Wright, Boccaccio in England from Chaucer to Tennyson (London: The Athlone Press, 1957); F. s. stych, Boccaccio in English: A Bibliography of Editions, Adaptations, and Criticism, Bibliographies and indexes in World Literature, 48 (Westport, cT: Greenwood Press, 1995); and Giuseppe Galigani, ed., Il Boccaccio nella cultura inglese e anglo-americana (Florence: olschki, 1974). see also chiara Lombardi, “‘in principio, mulier est hominis confusio’: il Decameron e la letteratura inglese,” in Il Decameron nella letteratura europea, ed. clara Allasia, storia e Letteratura, Raccolta di studi e Testi 237 (Rome: edizioni di storia e Letteratura, 2006), 167–82; Peter stallybrass, “Dismemberments and Re-memberments: Rewriting the Decameron, 4.1, in the english Renaissance,” Studi sul Boccaccio 20 (1991): 299–324; and Michele Marrapodi, “From narrative to Drama: The erotic Tale and the Theater,” in The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama: Cultural Exchange and Intertextuality, ed. Michele Marrapodi (newark: university of Delaware Press, 1998), 44–70, also published in italian as “Da Boccaccio a shakespeare: il Racconto dell’eros e la Trasgressione della commedia,” in Viola Papetti and Laura Visconti eds., Le forme del teatro 5: Eros e commedia nella scena inglese (Rome: edizioni di storia e Letteratura, 1997), 133–51. Much of the scholarship on Boccaccio in english literature focuses on shakespeare’s sources: Geoffrey Bullough’s Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1957–75), is an eight-volume classic; Kenneth Muir’s The Sources of Shakespeare’s Plays (London: Methuen, 1977), offers a more modest single volume; and stuart Gillespie’s Shakespeare’s Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeares Sources (new Brunswick, nJ: Athlone Press, 2001), arranges the sources alphabetically rather than by play, with Boccaccio discussed on pages 53–60. see also Piero Rebora, “Boccaccio e shakespeare,” in Civiltà Italiana e Civiltà Inglese: Studi e Richerche (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1936), 109–46. shakespeare studies especially regarding All’s Well and Cymbeline discuss the plays’ uses of and divergences from their Decameron sources. see, for example, Leah scragg, Shakespeare’s Mouldy Tales: Recurrent Plot Motifs in Shakespearean Drama (new york: Longman, 1992), and Shakespeare’s Alternative Tales (new york: Longman, 1996); Howard cole, The “All’s Well” Story from Boccaccio to Shakespeare (urbana: university of illinois Press, 1981); All’s Well, That Ends Well: New Critical Essays, ed. Gary Waller (new york: Routledge, 2007); Kay stanton, “All’s Well at the Decameron’s Well: Women and sexual societal Healing in Boccaccio’s Decameron iii.9, and shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well,” in Holger Klein and Michele Marrapodi

Regendering Griselda on the London stage

305

eds., The Shakespeare Yearbook 10: Shakespeare and Italy (Lewiston, ny: edwin Mellen Press, 1999), 225–52; All’s Well That Ends Well, ed. susan snyder (oxford: clarendon Press, 1993); Cymbeline, ed. Martin Butler (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2005); and Cymbeline, ed. Roger Warren (oxford: clarendon Press, 1998). 2. Robin Kirkpatrick, in English and Italian Literature from Dante to Shakespeare: A Study of Source, Analogue and Divergence (new york: Longman, 1995), 60, opines that chaucer “seems not to have known” that Petrarch had taken the tale from the Decameron. nonetheless, in his discussion of the tale, on pp. 56–60, he acknowledges that chaucer is more critical of the Marquis as a “tyrannical ruler” than is Petrarch, who makes him a figure for God, and that, whereas Petrarch aims “to resolve and close the issues which Boccaccio left open,” chaucer evokes a more complex and emotional response. For other scholarship on this issue, see especially The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question, ed. Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Dean schildgen (Madison, [n.J.]: Fairleigh Dickinson university Press, 2000). 3. Willard e. Farnham, “chaucer’s Clerkes Tale,” Modern Language Notes 33, no. 4 (1918): 193–203. 4. Dioneo comments that it would have served Gualtieri right if his wife had found herself another man, while the clerk follows his tale with a song humorously bidding wives not to allow any clerk “To write of yow a storie of swich mervaille / As of Grisildis,” iV e 1185–87. yves Peyré’s introduction to his translation, “Thomas Dekker, Henry chettle, William Haughton, La plaisante comédie de la patiente Grissil (1600),” in Histoire de Griselde, une femme exemplaire dans les littératures européennes, vol. 2: “Théâtre, ed. Marie-Françoise Déodat-Kessedjian et al. (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2001), 22, takes this concluding irony as evidence that chaucer followed both Petrarch and Boccaccio. 5. Quotations are from the Decameron, trans. G. H. McWilliam (Baltimore: Penguin, 1972). 6. edward e. Pechter, in “Patient Grissil and the Trials of Marriage,” in The Elizabethan Theatre XIV: Papers given at the International Conference on Elizabethan Theatre Held at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in July 1991, 103, writes: “chaucer followed Petrarch, and may not have even known Boccaccio, but the narrative framing of “The clerk’s Tale” (as in Boccaccio or the multiple plot of the play) makes for the same result, the fragmentation of a unified moralism into a contest for narrative mastery re-enacting the debate about marital sovereignty.” 7. The reversal cannot be complete, as it is unthinkable that the aristocratic Gwenthian would marry a peasant. nonetheless, as the Decameron’s tales of merchants married to noble wives reveal, this relatively minor inequality was already quite enough to cause trouble for the assertion of a husbandly authority. For discussions of the marriage issues in this play, see Viviana comensoli, “Fashioning Marriage codes: sixteenth-century Griseldas,” in her “Household Business”:

306

A Boccaccian Renaissance

Domestic Plays of Early Modern England (Toronto: university of Toronto Press, 1996), 49–64, and Pechter, “Patient Grissil and the Trials of Marriage,” 83–108. 8. in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers, vol. 2 (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1955), 20–109. For a discussion of dating and early editions, see also Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works, ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (oxford: clarendon Press, 2007), 507. 9. cyrus Hoy, in vol. 2, 2–5 and 7 of ibid., offers three views of this latter collaboration: (1) that Dekker and Middleton in those years were “so close as virtually to defy any precise definition of their respective shares in works on which they are presumed to have collaborated, and to clothe with high uncertainty the attribution of anonymous works to either the one or the other;” (2) that some scholars consider Middleton’s contribution to this play “negligible” because his name does not appear on the title page, although title-page attributions were “notoriously unreliable;” and (3) that Middleton’s contribution to this play is the figure of candido, who may “be a development of the character of Quieto in Middleton’s The Phoenix,” which he had probably just completed. i have no way to untangle this question of attributions and no special interest in doing so, but, given Dekker’s involvement in both plays, i find it useful to assume that he was rethinking problems of the earlier play when he worked on the later one. The fact that Dekker and Middleton’s next collaboration was The Roaring Girl (1611) certainly suggests that both maintained an interest in questions of gendered behavior. The Honest Whore, Part 2, is apparently Dekker’s alone; Barbara Kreps, in “The Paradox of Women: The Legal Position of early Modern Wives and Thomas Dekker’s The Honest Whore,” ELH 69, no. 1 (2002): 94, comments on Dekker’s treatment of Bellafront in Parts 1 and 2: “His maneuver away from the paradigm of the hardened and indifferent prostitute leads him only to the stereotype of the patient and long-suffering wife,” i.e., a kind of Griselda role. 10. The reference here is to humoral theory: Men are hotter than women and thus have more choler, making them prone to anger. 11. cyrus Hoy, Introductions, Notes, and Commentaries to Texts in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1980), vol. 2, 1. 12. indeed, as owen complains to Gwalter, “pecause Grissill is made foole and turne away, Gwenthian mag foole of sir owen” (4.3.134–35). 13. Rosalynde Welch, in “Fluids, Fabrics, selves: Fabricating identity in The Honest Whore I,” paper presented at the southern california Renaissance conference, 2008 (Ms), 22–26, observes that candido’s trade as a linen draper highlights anxieties about the relationship of clothing to social status and identity and that at the end of the play almost everyone is in disguise. (My thanks to her for sending me a copy of this unpublished manuscript.) While Grissil demonstrates a self unchanged by her changing attire, The Honest Whore struggles somewhat

Regendering Griselda on the London stage

307

incoherently to find a basis for candido’s identity. Judith Bronfman, in “Griselda, Renaissance Woman,” in The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, ed. Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty s. Travitsky (Amherst: university of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 218, sees Gwenthian’s action as a parody of the Grissil plot: whereas Gwalter tries to embarrass Grissil by dressing her poorly in front of guests, Gwenthian successfully embarrasses her husband by dressing poorly in front of his guests. yves Peyré, on 23–27 and 34 of the same volume, emphasizes the play’s theme of false appearances and its frequent references to clothing. 14. The recurring motif of “bridling” in Patient Grissil presents a pun on “bridal,” a pun especially apparent in 4.3.238–39, when Gwalter, planning his final test, says to his sister Julia, “ile make her be a servant to my bride, / Julia ile bridle her.” The play ponders, without a clear answer, whether marriage is possible without the “mastery” of one party over the other. 15. The duke, however, expresses doubt (5.2.512–13): “’Twere sinne all women should such husbands have. / For every man must then be his wives slave.” 16. it is her brother, but he doesn’t know that. Thus the wife’s honor is kept safe despite this test of her husband. 17. Patience and madness are similarly opposed throughout King Lear. 18. Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, ed. Taylor and Lavagnino, 507, cites a series of instances of the use of this theme: Henslowe’s payment to Dekker and Middleton early in 1604 for “ther playe called the pasyent man & the onest hore”; a reference in the stationers’ Register in november of that year to “A Booke called. The humours of the pateint man. The longing wyfe and the honest whore”; a printed edition of The Honest Whore, With the Humours of the Patient Man, and the Longing Wife; and, even, briefly, The Converted Curtezan. 19. “Fluids, Fabrics, selves” (Ms), 6–7 and 9. on the relation of humoral theory to notions of individualization, see also Michael schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1999) and Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2004). 20. Patience was an economic virtue in managing investments. Derrick Higginbotham, in “Retail, Religion, and the Redefinition of Masculinity in Thomas Dekker’s The Honest Whore, Parts I and II (1604–05),” presented at the Renaissance society of America’s annual conference in Washington, Dc, 2012, noted that this attention to business reinforces candido’s parallel with Bellafront, the “whore” of the play’s title; Jean Howard, whom he cites, indicates the same parallel in her online paper “civic institutions and Precarious Masculinity in Dekker’s The Honest Whore (draft version),” http://emc.eserver.org/1-1/howard.html, para. 29. We might ask: if Bellafront is made “honest,” first by renouncing her business and then by marriage to the man that first deflowered her, is candido similarly made honest in the last act by turning his self-justification from matters of

308

A Boccaccian Renaissance

property and investment to the model of Jesus and the idea of patience as “neerst kin to heaven” (5.2.491)? Ronald J. Palumbo, in “Trade and custom in [Part] 1, The Honest Whore,” American Notes and Queries 15, no. 3 (november 1976): 34–35, sees the play rather as contrasting the two businesses of candido and Bellafront in contributing to social order and disorder. Welch, in “Fluids, Fabrics, selves” (Ms), 5–6, notes that both candido’s patience and Bellafront’s decision to become honest are challenged and resisted by other characters because in both cases “their individual inclinations seem incompatible with the positions they occupy in society.” Peter ure, in “Patient Madman and Honest Whore: The Middleton-Dekker oxymoron,” in Essays and Studies, new series 19 (1966): 27, pairs the whore instead with candido’s wife as a shrew who, like the whore, needs to be converted into a proper wife. Jean Howard, in the essay just mentioned, comments along similar lines: “The picture of civic masculinity being constructed through candido cannot be complete without imagining the complementary figure of the self-disciplining and obedient wife, which is what Bellafront becomes and what candido lacks” (para. 26). i observe that if the shrew is converted by her husband’s patience, the whore is converted by the rantings of Hipolito, a nobleman who, in the play’s opening scene, has been reprimanded for his demonstrated lack of patience. Might one similarly see Patient Grissil as a play about the taming of husbands, one by shrewishness and the other by patience? if so, do both plays suggest that patience is only one of two effective tactics? 21. cyrus Hoy, in Introductions, Notes, and Commentaries to Texts in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers, vol. 1 (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1980), 134, mentions a chapbook, printed in 1619 but possibly existing earlier, with the similarly investment-oriented title “The Ancient True and Admirable History of Patient Grisel, A Poore Mans Daughter in France, shewing How Maides, By Her example, in Their Good Behaviour, May Marrie Rich Husbands.” in both plays Dekker seems to question whether patience is a holy virtue or a calculated strategy for winning something worldly, and whether it can be both at once. 22. Those economically dependent, including women, employees, and servants, were presumed unable to vote independent of their master’s wishes. see c. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (oxford: oxford university Press, 1962; repr. 1972). 23. Gwalter, testing his servant Furio along with his wife—although he knows, to begin with, that both are reliable—declares that he has found “two wonders . . . A trusty servant, and a patient wife” (4.1.239–40), thus equating wife and servant, both cherished for constant obedience to their master’s will. Grissil herself sees herself as a servant: “[i] am not worthy to be held your slave, / Much lesse your wife (1.2.241–42); “your hand-maide is so subiect to your will, / That nothing which you doe, to her seemes ill (3.1.124–25).

Regendering Griselda on the London stage

309

24. Despite her statements that Gwalter has the right to do with “his” children whatever he wishes and that she has no cause to complain, she also says, “My heart saies my tongue lyes” (4.2.181). Pechter, in “Patient Grissil,” 96, observes that she thus actually “fails” that test: “At last she betrays an inner resentment,” though it is justified as “the manifestation of her maternal nature, and therefore of a fundamental loyalty and affection after all.” 25. in that regard, it is comparable to Decameron 2.3, not that Dekker knew it. Larry s. champion, in “From Melodrama to comedy: A study of the Dramatic Perspective in Dekker’s The Honest Whore, Parts i and ii,” Studies in Philology 69, no. 2 (April 1972): 192–209, 195, suggests that the ongoing combat between husband and wife needs to be played “broadly . . . farcically,” but that ultimately candido “survives the role as comic butt to emerge as a kind of middle-class hero.” 26. “civic institutions,” para. 3 and 6. Howard’s investigation goes in a nearly opposite direction from that of Welch, who sees an attempt to create some basis for an internal individuated identity separate from social position. in a different opposition to Howard, Viviana comensoli, in “Merchants and Madcaps: Dekker’s Honest Whore Plays and the Commedia dell’arte,” in Shakespeare’s Italy: Functions of Italian Locations in Renaissance Drama, ed. Michele Marrapodi et al. (Manchester: university of Manchester Press, 1993), 125–39, argues that candido is a Pantalone figure through whom Dekker “satirises an unbridled mercantile ethic” (128), manifesting “a growing scepticism on Dekker’s part towards the merchant code” (133). But Palumbo, in “Trade and custom,” 34, declares that candido “embodies the highest value of Dekker’s citizen morality” and “furthers the stability of the social order.” 27. Howard, in “civic institutions,” para. 25, writes: “The patient man, buffoon, and exemplary citizen.” so, too, does Peter ure, in “Patient Madman and Honest Whore,” 26, remark that candido’s combination of humor and virtue “makes him seem ridiculous and touchingly good at one and the same time.” 28. Howard, in “civic institutions,” comparing Bellafront’s “utter abjection” in the later Honest Whore Part 2 with that of Griselda (para. 27), notes: “Looking closely at similarities between Bellafront and candido reveals that the civic masculinity being constructed in the marketplace world of Dekker and Middleton’s play shares much with the abjected feminine position it so strenuously disavows” (para. 29). Twice do Dekker and his collaborators make clear the connection between class and gender as power relations. one attraction of the Griselda story is that it combines both issues and, at least for Boccaccio, uses the story of an abusive marriage to call into question—explicitly—the right of some noblemen to rule. The Honest Whore was written in the wake of James’s assumption of power, with his anxiety-causing claims of absolute authority. 29. Lee Bliss, in “The Renaissance Griselda: A Woman for All seasons,” Viator 23 (1992): 336–37, notes that Griselda’s family “is elevated in status to

310

A Boccaccian Renaissance

sturdily independent rural artisan, prosperous enough to keep a servant,” allowing this industrious pastoral life to offer a “moral norm” opposed to “the envy and abuse of power at court.” But while the play allows several characters to voice repeated protests against injustice and the abuses of power, “it defuses the threat of rebellion it introduces, yet is quietly subversive in another way: it insists on a fundamental human equality and dignity within the status system it upholds.” Without explicit reference to The Honest Whore, Bliss notes, on pp. 337–38, that “this pride in being independent, in getting one’s own living and enjoying a life free from ambition and envy, is a normative value in other Dekker plays.”

conTRiBu ToRs

Jonathan Combs-Schilling is an assistant professor of italian studies at the ohio state university who specializes in medieval and Renaissance italian literature, with an emphasis on the Tre Corone, pastoral, epic, and literary representations of the sea. He has published on authors from Dante to Tasso in journals such as Modern Language Notes and Dante Studies and is currently completing a monograph titled The Edge of Pastoral: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, which examines how the trecento eclogue revival transformed the history of the genre. Rhiannon Daniels is a senior lecturer in italian and co-director of the centre for Material Texts at the university of Bristol. Her research focuses on the reception of Boccaccio in the middle ages and Renaissance, the history of the book, and early modern print culture. she is the author of Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 1340–1540 (oxford: Legenda, 2009) and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio (2015). Martin Eisner is an associate professor of italian studies at Duke university. He is the author of Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature: Dante, Petrarch, Cavalcanti, and the Authority of the Vernacular (cambridge university Press, 2013) and Dante’s New Life of the Book: Revitalizing Literary History (oxford university Press, 2019). He is currently working on a new biography of Boccaccio for Reaktion Books. Simon Gilson is the Agnelli-serena Professor of italian at the university of oxford and a fellow of Magdalen college. He is the author of Dante and Renaissance Florence (cambridge university Press, 2005) and Reading 311

312

contributors

Dante in Renaissance Italy: Florence, Venice and the “Divine Poet” (cambridge university Press, 2018). James Hankins is a professor of history at Harvard university. He is the author of many books and articles on Renaissance intellectual history and a general editor of the i Tatti Renaissance Library. His monograph Virtue Politics: Political Thought in Renaissance Italy between Petrarch and Machiavelli will be published by Harvard university Press in 2018. Timothy Kircher is a professor of history at Guilford college. in a number of books and articles he investigates the work of Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Leon Battista Alberti in relation to that of their contemporaries, and he is a past president of the American Boccaccio Association. His interests include humanist philosophical expression and Renaissance epistolography. He also explores the relation of the humanities to the sciences and other fields at humanitieswatch.org. Victoria Kirkham, a professor emerita of romance languages at the university of Pennsylvania, has authored more than fifty articles on Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, as well as the Renaissance poet Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati, the Paduan jurist Marco Mantova Benavides, the Victorians’ love of italian novelle, and italian cinema. Author of The Sign of Reason in Boccaccio’s Fiction (olschki, 1993) and Fabulous Vernacular: Boccaccio’s Filocolo and the Art of Medieval Fiction (university of Michigan Press, 2001), she has co-translated Diana’s Hunt / La Caccia di Diana: Boccaccio’s First Fiction (university of Pennsylvania Press, 1991) and co-edited Boccaccio 1990: The Poet and his Renaissance Reception (Studi sul Boccaccio 20, 1991–92), Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (2009), and Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (university of chicago Press, 2013). David Lummus is the assistant director of the center for italian studies at the university of notre Dame. He was previously on the faculty at yale university and then at stanford university, where he taught medieval and early modern italian literature and culture. His publications on Boccaccio, Petrarch, and the italian fourteenth century have appeared in journals such as Mediaevalia, Speculum, and Renaissance Quarterly, as well as in

contributors

313

books such as the Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio (2015) and Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (2013). He has recently completed a monograph on conceptions of the civic role of the poet in fourteenthcentury italy, and he is the editor of the American Boccaccio Association’s Lectura Boccaccii for Day 6 of the Decameron. Ronald L. Martinez is a professor of italian studies at Brown university. in addition to publishing over sixty articles on topics in italian literature from thirteenth-century vernacular lyrics to Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, he collaborated with Robert M. Durling on a monograph on Dante’s lyric poetry, Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s Rime Petrose (university of california Press, 1990), and on an edition, with translation and commentary, of Dante’s Divine Comedy (oxford university Press, Inferno, 1996; Purgatorio, 2003; Paradiso, 2011). He is currently working on a monograph on Dante and the mechanical arts. Ignacio Navarrete is a professor of spanish and Portuguese at the university of california, Berkeley. He specializes in medieval and early modern literature, and is the author of a book, Orphans of Petrarch (Publications of the center for Medieval and Renaissance studies 25, 1994), on spanish Renaissance poetry and poetic theory. He is also the author of the forthcoming Narrative Culture in Spain c. 1500, a study of narrative literature that was in print prior to 1520. He has a PhD in comparative Literature from indiana university. Brian Richardson is an emeritus professor of italian language at the university of Leeds and a fellow of the British Academy. His research interests center on the history of the italian language and the history of the circulation of texts in manuscript, in print, and orally in late medieval and Renaissance italy. His publications include Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600 (cambridge university Press, 1994), Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (cambridge university Press, 1999), Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy (cambridge university Press, 2009), and an edition of Giovan Francesco Fortunio’s Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua (Rome and Padua: Antenore, 2001).

314

contributors

Marc Schachter is currently an associate professor in the school of Modern Languages and cultures at Durham university. His scholarship tends to focus on the transmission and reception of sexually and politically volatile texts in Renaissance italy and France. Recent publications have addressed humanist commentaries on sections of Martial and Juvenal addressing sex between women, translations of classical friendship texts commissioned by Marguerite de navarre and her niece Marguerite de France, and the textual tradition and political resonances of La Boétie’s Servitude volontaire. He is completing a book manuscript on the classical tradition and the history of sexuality. Michael Sherberg is a professor of italian at Washington university in st. Louis. He has written on topics ranging from Dante to Pinocchio, with particular attention to Boccaccio, the Renaissance epic, and the question of the language. He is the author most recently of The Governance of Friendship: Law and Gender in the Decameron (ohio state university Press, 2011), and he co-edited (with Victoria Kirkham and Janet Levarie smarr) Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (university of chicago Press, 2013). He is also the editor of Volume iV of the Lectura Boccaccii series. Janet Levarie Smarr is a distinguished professor of theatre at the university of california, san Diego, and part of the interdepartmental italian studies Program. she has published books and many articles on Boccaccio, including several studies on dramatizations of his Griselda story.

inDeX

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Acciaiuoli, niccolò, 9, 11, 30n20 Accolti, Bernardo, 241 Verginia, 238–41 Alberti, Leon Battista Intercenales, 47 Theogenius, 48–49 Alighieri, Dante and Beatrice, 122 biographies of, 17–18, 68, 122, 149n61 Boccaccio’s views of, xiv–xv, xvi, xvii, 17–18, 32n36, 122 the commentary tradition and, 156 editions of, 119 —the Comedy, 149n61, 188, 190 and Giotto, 70, 88n25 portraits of, 59, 60, 62, 63–64, 65–71, 71 Alunno, Francesco, 210–11 Ameto (Boccaccio), 254 fourth and fifth eclogues, 97–99 —metageneric traits, 99 Apuleius, 228, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236–37, 269 Ariosto, Ludovico I Suppositi, 222–23, 231 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 98–99 Barbi, Michele, 190

Baron, Hans, 4, 24, 34n46 Bartolus of sassoferrato, 20 Bembo, Pietro Asolani, 185–86, 188, 189, 195, 200n25 classicism of, 195–96 editions of Dante and Petrarch, 190, 194 Latin works, 189 on Petrarch’s vernacular poetry, 192, 193, 197 Prose della volgar lingua, xxi, 161, 185, 195, 198n7 —Boccaccio as model for literary prose, xx, xxi, 192–95, 196–97, 202–3, 204, 210 —the Decameron and, 186, 188, 190–92, 193, 194, 196, 197, 210, 223 —Latin vs. vernacular, 189–90, 264 Beroaldo, Filippo, 239 Betussi, Giuseppe, 143n13, 162 Genealogia degli dei gentili, 151–52, 157–68 —paratexts, 165–68 —popularity, 176n17 —print history, 164 —readership, 164, 166 315

316

index

Betussi, Giuseppe (continued) as translator, 164–65, 167–72, 181n46 Bibbiena. See Dovizi, Bernardo Boccaccio, Giovanni as author —as auctor, 117–18 —biographer of Dante and Petrarch, 112, 118, 122, 138, 143n13 —and christian faith, 17 —compared to Dante, xiv–xv, xvi, 36, 49 —compared to Petrarch, xv–xvi, xxiiin9, 36, 122, 209, 213 —and early modernity, xvii–xviii —as editor and book maker, 138 —as Fiammetta, 283 —on Fortune, Virtue, Time, and Fame, 16–17, 26 —on gente nuova, 11–12 —his own epitaph, 51n10, 117 —and humanists, 27n4 —humble style of, xiv, 38, 42 —and Latin humanism, 36, 38 —and Latin works, xx, 37, 160, 164, 187, 254 —and legal education, 20 —the liberal arts and, 20 —and literary genres, 97, 98 —as living and speaking character, 225, 283 —and love poetry, 122 —as magister amoris, 256, 269 —as model of prose writing, xvi, xvii, xxi, 185–86, 192, 196–97, 202–10, 223 —modernity of, xvii —as pastoral poet, 96 —political views, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 13–15, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25–26

—portraits of, 59, 62, 63–64, 63, 64, 67–71, 67, 68, 71 —as promoter of Dante and Petrarch, 95 —as promoter of education and virtue, 15–17, 18, 19–20, 23, 26 —as promoter of Greek studies, 37, 116 —as promoter of vernacular writing, 257–58 —pseudo work by, 163, 179n32 —in the Renaissance, xiii, xvi, xviii, 254 —in Renaissance France, xxii, 254– 58, 274n17 —in Renaissance spain, xxii, 280 —represented with Dante and Petrarch, 62, 65–66 —the revival of classical culture and, 15, 18 —on ruling elites and wealthy citizens, 14 —and self-presentation, xiii–xiv, xv– xvi, xxiiin9, 38, 122 —and terza rima, 96 —translated into catalan and castilian, 280 —translated into Latin, 151, 153, 186, 187 —translated into the vernacular, xx, 151–57, 161, 162, 186 —on true nobility, 19, 32n32 —on tyranny, 20–23 —use of Latin prose style, 265, 276n47 —vernacular writings, 18, 37, 38, 39, 96, 119, 122, 161, 164, 187– 88, 195, 202–7, 254 —views of poverty and wealth, 24 —as volgarizzatore, 153–54, 173n6

index biography of —certaldo, 13, 116, 117 —civic involvement, xvi, xix, 9–13, 28n14 —holy orders, 13 —lives of, 68, 112–13, 114–15, 116– 23, 143n13, 166–67 —naples, 283 —personal crisis, 15 —political associations, 11, 12 —relation with Petrarch, 28n14, 187 modern assessments of —Bruni’s views of, xvii —De sanctis’s views of, xxivn13 —in the history of political thought, 4 —as “medieval,” xvii, 4–5, 24, 25, 33n45, 34n46 —in relation to Dante and Petrarch, xvii, xxiiin9 Boiardo, Matteo Maria Orlando Innamorato, 234–35 Bologna, corrado, 187–88 Borsellino, nino, 226 Bracciolini, Poggio, 31n29, 45 Contra hypocritas, 43–44, 46 Facetiae, 42–43 Branca, Vittore, xvii, xxivn14, 4 Bruni, Francesco, xvii, 228, 230 Bruni, Leonardo, 30n20, 45, 46 Boccaccio’s influence on, 40 and classical humanism, 40, 118 Fabula Tancredi, 239, 240 Le vite di Dante e del Petrarca, 68, 118, 143nn12–13, 144n15, 187 views of Boccaccio, 39–40, 41, 116, 154, 175n12, 187 Buccolicum carmen (Boccaccio) Faunus (Bucc. carm. 3) —metageneric hybridity, 101–4

317

—multiple layers, 99–101 —and Petrarch, 109n34, 110n37 —Vergil’s influence on, 100, 102–3, 105, 109n34 Olympia and Saphos (Bucc. carm. 14) —Dante’s influence on, 110n41 —experimental structure, 103–4 Burckhardt, Jacob, 254, 255 castiglione, Baldassare, 185, 264 chaucer, Geoffrey Canterbury Tales —“clerk’s Tale,” 293 —“Wife of Bath’s Tale,” 294 chettle, Henry. See Dekker, Thomas colonna, Francesco, 231 comedia erudita, and Boccaccio as vernacular source, xxi. See also Accolti, Bernardo; Ariosto, Ludovico; del carretto, Galeotto; Dovizi, Bernardo; Machiavelli, niccolò; Mantovano, Publio Philippo; Piccolomini, enea silvio (Aeneas sylvius) Corbaccio (Boccaccio) and male-female relationships, 212 print history, 280 cursi, Marco, xxivn14, 39 de’ Bassi, Piero Andrea, 155–56 Decameron (Boccaccio) alternatives to, 215 in Ariosto, 222–23 Branca’s views of, xvii, xxivn14 brigata, 46, 47 censored versions, 215–17 chaucer’s knowledge of, 293–94, 305n2 in Dovizi, 224 and humanists, xix, 40–50, 187, 190–91, 203

318

index

Decameron (Boccaccio) (continued) and hypocrisy, 43, 44–45 index of Prohibited Books, xxi, 186, 201n28, 215 influence in France, 257, 259–62 language of, 265 and Latin comedy, 227, 228 and medieval dramatic literature, 227 as model, xviii —of life and morals, xxi, 203–4, 211–17, 262 —linguistic, 186, 192–95, 196–97, 202–10, 217, 223, 264 morality vs. eroticism, 41, 42, 240, 264 Petrarch’s views of, 187, 190, 240 print history, 138–39, 143n13, 188, 190–91, 196, 202–9, 211–15, 231, 262 —codices of, 39, 188 —the Deo gratias edition, 188 —in France, 260 —Laurenziana Pluteo 42.1, 39 —manuscript diffusion, 39 —in spain, 280 reception of, 188, 196, 197, 216–17, 227, 262 sainte-Beuve’s views of, 256–57 and secular judgment, 271, 272 as theater, 226 translated from Latin, 173n6 translated into French, 258–64, 267–68 and vernacular culture, 161, 263 and women, xv, 214–15 Decameron, specific sections (in order) cornice (frame), 40–42, 43, 50 —brigata (narrators), 47, 48, 240, 269, 270–71, 305n4 —and the brigata’s servants, 227–28 1.1 (ser cepparello), 271

2.4 (Landolfo Rufolo), 214 3.1 (Masetto da Lamporecchio and nuto), 214, 233 3.8 (the abbot and Ferondo’s wife), 225–26 3.9 (Giletta di narbona), 240 4.1 (Ghismonda and Trancredi), 40–41, 239, 240 5.10 (Pietro di Vinciolo and his wife), 236, 260, 261–62, 266–68, 269–70, 271, 275n39 6.intro. (Tindaro, Licisca, and sicofante’s wife), 224, 227–28, 232 6.4 (chichibio), 229 6.10 (Guccio imbratta and nuta), 228, 230 7.7 (Beatrice and Ludovico/ Anichino), 223, 225 8.3 (calandrino and Tessa), 223, 224, 230–31 8.7 (Rinieri and elena), 47, 48 8.8. (Zeppa and spinelloccio), 236 9.5 (calandrino), 223 9.9 (Giosefo and Melisso), 47–48 9.10 (Donno Gianni and compar Pietro’s wife), 237 10.10 (Griselda and Gualtieri), xxii, 239–40, 294, 303, 305n4, 309n28 conclusion, 121, 223 De casibus virorum illustrium (Boccaccio), 3, 13–14, 30n23 appearance of Petrarch, 16–17 discussion of tyranny, 20–23 exhortation to virtue, 15–16 Fortune and Good Fame, 16–17 fortune of, 27n4 nobility, 32n32 print history, 151–52, 164, 280 suffrage of the people, 25 the Trattatello in laude di Dante and, 31n30

index on the virtues of commoners, 19, 22 on wealth, 24 Decembrio, Pier candido, 121, 146n39 De claris mulieribus (Boccaccio) print history, 151 vernacular version, 153, 164 de Flores, Juan, 281 Grimalte y Gradisa, xxii, 279, 281 —de Flores as Grimalte, 282–83, 284 —the Fiammetta and, 282, 283–84 —and intertextual relationships, 281–84 —readers of, 284, 285, 286, 290 —subjective identifications, 284–90 De genealogia. see Genealogie deorum gentilium degli Arienti, sabbadino, 230–31 Dekker, Thomas collaboration with Middleton, 306n9 and gender reversal, xxii, 297–98, 303 —candido as Griselda, xxii, 295– 96, 298–99 —civic identity and social status, 302–3, 306n13, 307n20, 308n23, 309n26, 309n29 and patience, xxii, 295–97, 298, 299–300, 301–2, 308n21 —cross-class marriage, 294–95, 300–301, 305n7 —as economic virtue, 307n20 The Honest Whore, xxii The Pleasant Comedie of Patient Grissil, xxii, 293 del carretto, Galeotto Li sei contenti, 235–37 de Longuyon, Jacques, 69 de’ Medici, Lorenzo, 216–17, 221n27 de Montaigne, Michel, 255, 256

319

De montibus (Boccaccio) print history, 152, 154, 280 reception of, 154 See also Liburnio, niccolò de navarre, Marguerite, 260, 261 Heptaméron, 257, 258, 265, 266, 268–72 de’ Rossi, Pino, 12, 26 Consolatory Letter to (Boccaccio), 11–12, 13, 24, 26 Dionigi, Francesco, 217 Dolce, Lodovico, 203–4, 205–7, 209 Doni, Francesco, 196–97 Dovizi, Bernardo, 224 Calandra, 223, 224–25, 231 eisner, Martin, 91n42 Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante (Boccaccio), 154 Fiammetta (Boccaccio), 254, 279, 290 and Grimalte y Gradisa, 281–90 as lesson on love, 213–14, 256, 289 as rhetorical model, 280–81 Filelfo, Francesco, 41–42 Filocolo (Boccaccio) and the Comedy, xiv print history, 122–41 See also squarzafico, Girolamo Florence and Boccaccio, xvi, 9, 11–14, 17–18, 26 booksellers, 39 vs. certaldo, 13 and its language, 263, 263 mythic origins, 69 party politics, 11–13, 20 —commoners, 21–22, 23 —gente nuova, 11–12 —magnate families, 11, 21, 22

320

index

Florence (continued) —wealthy popolano citizens, 14, 20, 23 people of, 263 practice of law, 263, 264 salutati’s views of, 72 status of, 115 the Three crowns and, xvi, 62, 65, 67 treatment of Dante, 17–18 Walter of Brienne, 20–23 Formentin, Vittorio, 37 Fortunio, Giovan Francesco, 210 Garanta, nicolò, 202–3 Genealogie deorum gentilium (Boccaccio), 37, 95–96, 228 compared to Petrarch’s work, xv–xvi the Dante commentary tradition and, 156 print history, 154, 280 reception of, 153, 155, 175n11, 176n13, 187 the Teseida and, 155–56 vernacular translation of, 152, 153, 155, 164–72 See also Betussi, Giuseppe Giolito, Gabriele, 213–14 Giotto, 70 Giovanni Gherardo da Prato, 72 Giovio, Paolo, 160 Guarino, Battista Menechini, 229–30 Haughton, William. See Dekker, Thomas humanism civic, 4, 6, 7, 9, 24 classical, 40–41, 46 Florentine, 115 italian, 4, 5 Petrarchan, 4, 15 Renaissance, 5

humanists and biographical genre, 115, 118, 119, 187 and Boccaccio’s writings, xviii, xix, 38, 39, 49–50, 119, 154–55, 160, 187, 196–97, 211, 226, 237 and classical culture and education, 6, 8–9, 15, 20, 43, 46, 68 and comedies in Latin, 228–29 the Decameron and, xix, 37, 40–49, 187, 190, 203 and dissimulation, 43, 44–45, 48 and Latin, 36–37, 40, 43, 187, 189, 226 and morality, xxi, 9, 41, 42, 43–44, 240 political thought and theory, 4, 5–6, 7–8 —equality, 8 —liberty and freedom, 5, 28n7 —merit and virtue, 7–8, 26 —poverty and wealth, 24 —respublica, 5–6 —vs. scholastic thinkers, 6 —true nobility, 8, 19 and print culture, 138, 142n5, 189 and public speaking, 7 the study of history and, 9 use of dialogue, xix, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 225 and vernacular literature, 37, 119, 190, 211 views of ancient virtue and wisdom, 7, 8, 15, 23 ianziti, Gary, 143–44n13, 144n15 Kircher, Timothy, 226, 240 Kriesel, James, xxivn16, 195 Landino, cristoforo, 117, 145n31, 259

index on Boccaccio, 49 Comento sopra la Comedia di Danthe Alighieri, 156–57 on Dante, 122 Laurario, castorio, 211–13 Le Maçon, Anthoine Boccaccio as linguistic model, 258, 262, 264, 265, 266 Decameron in French, 253–54, 258–263, 266, 269, 272, 273n4 —vs. Boccaccio’s italian, 266–68 emilio Ferretti’s letter, 258–59, 263–66 Liburnio, niccolò Delli Monti, 152, 157–68 —paratexts, 161–63 —print history, 157–58, 161–63 —readership, 158–61 —reception of, 153–54 Le tre fontane, 81, 161 Life of Dante (Boccaccio), 17 Lucretius, 49 Machiavelli, niccolò adaptation of Boccaccio’s novelle, 225 Mandragola, 225–26 Manelli, Francesco, 38–39 Manetti, Giannozzo, 36–37, 68, 114, 116, 143–44n13 Boccaccio’s influence on, 40–41 biography of Boccaccio, 119, 187 Mantovano, Publio Philippo Il Formicone, 231–34, 235, 245n48, 246n56 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 45 Michelet, Jules, on Boccaccio’s writings, 254–55, 264 Middleton, Thomas. See Dekker, Thomas Milner, stephen J., 11

321

nardo di cione, 62 nesi, Giovanni, 7 niccoli, niccolò, 45, 46 norton, Glyn, 265 Palmieri, Matteo, 41 pastoral literature Boccaccio’s treatment of, 95, 96, 97, 98, 105 Renaissance, 94–95, 96 and Vergil, 98 —see also Ameto; Buccolicum carmen Pastore stocchi, Manlio, 27n4, 31n29 Patterson, Annabel, 105 Peletier, Jacques, 257 Petrarch, Francis biographies of, 68, 121 Boccaccio’s views of, xv–xvi, 28n14 compared to Boccaccio, 122 editions of his works, 119 —the Canzoniere e Trionfi, 121 on fame, 16–17 influence on Bembo, 185–86, 190, 192 Latin translation of Griselda’s tale, 40, 187, 239, 240, 293, 303 —as chaucer’s source, 293, 305n2 and Laura, 121 and Petrarchism, 185 portraits of, 62, 63, 65–67, 70–71, 71 as promoter of vernacular writing, 257–58 relation with Boccaccio, 72–73, 187 the Renaissance and, xiii vernacular works, 121, 188, 190 Piccolomini, enea silvio (Aeneas sylvius), 42, 229, 239, 281 Plautus, xxi, 223, 227, 229, 230, 232, 234–35, 237, 238

322

index

Poliziano, Angelo Nutricia, 69–70 Premierfait, Laurent de French Decameron, 259–60, 261 print culture, 161–63 and Boccaccio’s vernacular works, 202–5, 231 booksellers’ catalogues, 188–89 —editorial and linguistic revisions, 204–9 Florentine, 124, 151–52, 225 Venetian, 115, 124–26, 128–30, 133, 135–37, 138, 151–52, 164, 179n32, 191, 202, 204, 210 —Francesco Doni’s La libraria, 196–97 questione della lingua, 152 and French, 257–60, 262–64, 266– 68, 272, 273n7 —vs. italian culture, 265–67 —ordinance of Villers-cotterêts, 263, 272 and grammars and dictionaries, 210–11 sixteenth-century debates, 185, 186, 257, 264 —translating into the vernacular, 167–72 Raphael, 70, 155 readership, xxi, xxiii, 45, 46, 284 of Boccaccio, 202, 209, 290 female, 122, 153, 164, 211, 213, 269, 283, 284 male, 212 non-Latin, 160–61, 166, 190 Renaissance, 138, 202, 217 Regnicoli, Laura, 33n45 Renaissance, the, Michelet’s views of, 254–55 Renaissance republicanism, 6

Richardson, Brian, 128 Ruscelli, Girolamo, 204, 206–9, 215, 219n13 Rustici, Marco di Bartolomeo, 68–69 salutati, coluccio, 37, 38, 50, 66, 115 vs. Antonio Loschi, 72 and Boccaccio’s vernacular work, 38–39 relation with Boccaccio, 38, 51n6 relation with Villani, 65 salviati, Lionardo, 196, 217, 221n28 sansovino, Francesco, 214–16, 262 santagata, Marco, 90n39 skinner, Quentin, 24, 34n46 sodomy, 265–66, 275n39 squarzafico, Girolamo, 115–16, 176n13 as biographer, 118, 135 biography of Boccaccio, xx —accompanying letter, 132, 134 —Boccaccio as love poet, 119, 120, 122, 132, 136 —on Boccaccio’s vernacular works, 120, 122 —the Filocolo and, 114, 116, 117, 119, 122–41, 142n9 —as paratext, 114, 116–17, 123, 128, 136 —and print culture, 115–16, 122, 123, 138–139, 143n12, 166 —rubrics, 135, 149n65, 150n66 life of Petrarch, 121 Terence, xxi, 222, 223, 227, 229, 231 Teseida (Boccaccio) and Genealogie deorum gentilium, 155–56 Three crowns, xvi, xix, 62, 72–73 biographies of, 62, 68, 115, 143n13, 144n15

index canons of, 73–84 defined, 71–72 eclogues of, 95 Latin and vernacular works, 36, 161, 186–88 Latin literacy of, 36 Petrarch’s views of, 72–73 tomb in honor of, 65 Trattatello in laude di Dante (Boccaccio), 13, 24, 30n23, 41, 118, 119, 122, 138, 149n61

323

unico Aretino. See Accolti, Bernardo Vasari, Giorgio, 70 Vérard, Antoine, 260, 261–62 Vergerio, Pier Paolo, 229 Villani, Filippo, 37, 68, 113, 122, 143–44n13 biography of Boccaccio, 118, 145n24 and uomini famosi, 65–66, 69 Walter of Brienne, 20–23