Boccaccio's Corpus: Allegory, Ethics, and Vernacularity 0268104514, 9780268104511

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BOCCACCIO’S CORPUS

The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature Zygmunt G. Barański, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., and Christian Moevs, editors Volume 15 Boccaccio’s Corpus: Allegory, Ethics, and Vernacularity   James C. Kriesel

Volume 14 Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text   Sarah McNamer

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   edited by Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne

Volume 10 Petrarch and Dante: Anti-­Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition   edited by Zygmunt G. Barański and Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. Volume 9

Volume 8

Volume 7

The Ancient Flame: Dante and the Poets   Winthrop Wetherbee

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

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

Volume 6

Understanding Dante   John A. Scott

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

Volume 5

Volume 3 Volume 2 Volume 1

Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body   Gary P. Cestaro

The Design in the Wax: The Structure of the Divine Comedy and Its Meaning   Marc Cogan The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany   edited by Zygmunt G. Barański and Patrick Boyde Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies   edited by Theodore J. Cachey, Jr.

B OCCACC IO’S CORPUS A l l e g o r y, E t h i c s , a n d Ve r n a c u l a r i t y

JAMES C. KRIESEL

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: Kriesel, James C., author.
 Title: Boccaccio’s corpus : allegory, ethics, and vernacularity / James C. Kriesel. Description: Notre Dame, IN : University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. | Series:    The William and Katherine Devers series in Dante and medieval Italian    literature ; volume 15 | 
 Identifiers: LCCN 2018043820 (print) | LCCN 2018046233 (ebook) | ISBN    9780268104511 (pdf ) | ISBN 9780268104528 (epub) | ISBN 9780268104498    (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268104492 (hardback : alk. paper)
 Subjects:  LCSH: Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375—Criticism and interpretation.
 Classification: LCC PQ4284 (ebook) | LCC PQ4284 .K75 2018 (print) | DDC 
    858/.109—dc23
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018043820 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 L L I A M A N D K AT H E R I N E D E V E R S S E R I E S I N DA N T E A N D M E D I E VA L I TA L I A N L I T E R 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

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

For Caroline

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

xi



Abbreviations, Editions, Translations

xiii



A Note on Translations and Citations

xvii



Introduction: Boccaccio’s Corpus: Text and Body

1

ONE



The Allegory of the Corpus: Genealogie deorum gentilium and Scholarly Works

TWO



The Poetics of the Corpus: Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (Ameto) 59

THREE



FOUR FIVE





The Ethics of the Corpus: Amorosa visione

25

109

The Love of the Corpus: Decameron 157 The Hatred of the Corpus: Corbaccio

203

Epilogue

255

Notes

275

Bibliography

327

Index

363

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Through the writing of this book, I have forged wonderful friendships. While developing this project, I have also gained insight—about all manner of topics related to Italian culture and beyond—from numerous colleagues. Zygmunt Barański is both a great friend and an exceptional mentor. He commented on sections of this book during every phase of its development, from dissertation to publication. He also unfailingly offered encouragement whenever I needed it. At the University of Notre Dame, I am grateful for the expertise and guidance of Martin Bloomer, Theodore Cachey Jr., and Christian Moevs. They were instrumental in the conceptualization of this project and provided detailed feedback on various drafts of the manuscript. Zyg, Martin, Ted, Christian: thank you. It is a privilege to have collaborated with you. I am extremely grateful for the assistance of Simon Gilson and Simone Marchesi. Their work has often inspired my research, and they generously offered suggestions on this project and on others related to it. I owe a particular debt to David Lummus and Sabrina Ferri for their collegiality, for their scholarly insights, and for their warm friendship. Other colleagues and friends who have assisted with this project include Luca Cottini, Jesse Flavin, Brendan Hennessey, Laurence Hooper, Charles Leavitt IV, Adrianna Paliyenko, Jeremiah Reedy, Stefano Reksten, Mark Ross, and John Welle. My heartfelt thanks go to those associated with the Medieval Institute of Notre Dame. Former director Thomas F. X. Noble supported the initial stages of this project in crucial ways. Roberta Baranowski, Margaret Cinninger, Linda Major, and Julia Schneider assisted with matters ranging from the quotidian to the bibliographical. The coffee crew of Narberth, Chuck, Hilda, Jen, Joe, Ken, Dr. Ken, and Len provided encouragement and laughter in the final stages of the xi

xii  Acknowledgments

book’s writing. Matthew Dowd, David Juarez, Stephen Little, and Wendy McMillen at the University of Notre Dame Press made the process of publishing the book a pleasure. The three anonymous readers gave constructive advice for issues concerning argumentation and rhetoric. I am particularly grateful to Scott Barker, who copyedited the manuscript and worked patiently with me as I made changes to the text. Initial research for this project was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, by grants endowed by the Devers and Ravarino families, and by an Edward Sorin Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame. The Subvention Program of Villanova University provided funds for several expenses related to publication. A section of the first chapter originally appeared in Studi sul Boccaccio 37 (2009): 197–226. It has been revised and is reprinted with permission. Finally, I am grateful for the love and encouragement of my mother, Judy, my father, John, and my brother, Tony. The book is dedicated to my wife, Caroline, who is a first-­ rate editor, a savvy interpreter of medieval culture, a bedrock of emotional support, and above all my dearest friend.

A B B R E V I AT I O N S , E D I T I O N S , T R A N S L AT I O N S

The following abbreviations, editions, and English translations are used thoughout. Other editions of primary sources are listed in the notes. ABC Aen.

Toledano, Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares Virgil, Aeneidos, in Opera, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 104–422 AM Boccaccio, Allegoria mitologica, ed. Manlio Pastore Stocchi, in Tutte le opere, 5.2:1098–1113 Ameto Boccaccio, Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, ed. Antonio E. Quaglio, in Tutte le opere, 2:679–835; L’Ameto, trans. Judith Serafini-­Sauli (New York: Garland, 1985) Amores Ovid, Amores, in Amores, Medicamina faciei femineae, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, rev. ed., ed. Edward J. Kenney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5–108 Ars Ovid, Ars amatoria, in Amores, Medicamina faciei femineae, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, rev. ed., ed. Edward J. Kenney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 121–219 AV Boccaccio, Amorosa visione, ed. Vittore Branca, in Tutte le opere, 3:23–148; Amorosa visione, trans. Robert Hollander, Timothy Hampton, and Margherita Frankel (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1986) BAV Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Bible Biblia sacra: Iuxta vulgatam versionem, 4th rev. ed., ed. Robert Weber et al. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994) BML Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana xiii

xiv  Abbreviations, Editions, Translations

BNC BR Bucc.

Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana Boccaccio, Buccolicum Carmen, ed. Giorgio B. Perini, in Tutte le opere, 5.2:706–903 Caccia Boccaccio, Caccia di Diana, ed. Vittore Branca, in Tutte le opere, 1:15–43 Carm. Boccaccio, Carmina, ed. Giuseppe Velli, in Tutte le opere, 5.1:404–55 CCCM Corpus christianorum: Continuatio mediaevalis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1966– ) CCSL Corpus christianorum: Series latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953– ) Comedy Dante, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, 4 vols., 2nd ed., ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994); The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, 3 vols.: vol. 1, Inferno; vol. 2, Purgatorio; vol. 3, Paradiso, ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling; intro. and notes Ronald L. Martinez and Robert M. Durling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996–2011) Consol. Boccaccio, Consolatoria a Pino de’ Rossi, ed. Giuseppe Chiecchi, in Tutte le opere, 5.2:629–51 Conv. Dante, Convivio, 3 vols., ed. F. Brambilla Ageno (Florence: Le Lettere, 1995) Corb. Boccaccio, Corbaccio, ed. Giorgio Padoan, in Tutte le opere, 5.2:441–516 Dec. Boccaccio, Decameron, 2 vols., ed. Vittore Branca (1980; repr. Turin: Einaudi, 1992); Decameron, trans. Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella (2002; repr. New York: Signet, 2010) De Can. Boccaccio, De Canaria, ed. Manlio Pastore Stocchi, in Tutte le opere, 5.1:970–79 De mul. Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris, ed. Vittorio Zaccaria, in Tutte le opere, vol. 10 De rem. Petrarch, Les remèdes aux deux fortunes. De remediis utriusque fortune, 1354–66, 2 vols., ed. and trans. Christophe Carraud (Grenoble: J. Millon, 2002) Dve De vulgari eloquentia, ed. and trans. Steven Botterill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Abbreviations, Editions, Translations    xv

ECG

Dante[?], “Epistle to Can Grande,” in Epistole, ed. Claudia Villa, in Opere, ed. Marco Santagata (Milan: Mondadori, 2011– ), 2:1494–1521 (Ep. 13); Dantis Alagherii Epistolae: The Letters of Dante, 2nd ed., trans. Paget Jackson Toynbee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 195– 211 (Ep. 10) Elegia Boccaccio, Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, ed. Carlo Delcorno, in Tutte le opere, 5.2:23–189 Ep. Boccaccio, Epistole, ed. Ginetta Auzzas, in Tutte le opere, 5.1:506–743 Espos. Boccaccio, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, ed. Giorgio Padoan, in Tutte le opere, vol. 6; Boccaccio’s Expositions of Dante’s “Comedy,” trans. Michael Papio (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009) Fam. Petrarch, Le familiari = Familiarium rerum libri [Familiares], 5 vols., ed. Vittorio Rossi, Umberto Bosco, and Ugo Dotti, trans. Ugo Dotti, with Felicita Audisio (Racconigi, Cuneo: Aragno, 2004–9) Fil. Boccaccio, Filocolo, ed. Antonio E. Quaglio, in Tutte le opere, 1:61–675 Filost. Boccaccio, Filostrato, ed. Vittore Branca, in Tutte le opere, 2:15–228 Gen. Boccaccio, Genealogie deorum gentilium, 2 vols., ed. Vittorio Zaccaria, in Tutte le opere, 7–8:1–1813 Her. Ovid, Heroides, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Grant Showerman, rev. George P. Goold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 10–331 Inf. Dante, Inferno Meta. Apuleius, Metamorphoseon, ed. Maaike Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Metam. Ovid, Metamorphoses, ed. Richard J. Tarrant (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004) Ninf. Boccaccio, Ninfale fiesolano, ed. Armando Balduino, in Tutte le opere, 3:291–421 Par. Dante, Paradiso Purg. Dante, Purgatorio Rem. Ovid, Remedia amoris, in Amores, Medicamina faciei femineae, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, rev. ed., ed.

xvi  Abbreviations, Editions, Translations

Edward J. Kenney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 225–61 RVF Petrarch, Canzoniere [Rerum vulgarium fragmenta], rev. ed., ed. Marco Santagata (Milan: Mondadori, 2006); Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The “Rime sparse” and Other Lyrics, ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976) Sec. Petrarch, Secretum, ed. and trans. Ugo Dotti (Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 1993) Sen. Petrarch, Le senili = Rerum senilium libri [Seniles], 3 vols., ed. Elvira Nota and Ugo Dotti, trans. Ugo Dotti, with Felicita Audisio (Racconigi, Cuneo: Aragno, 2004–10) Somnium Macrobius, Commentarium in somnium Scipionis, vol. 2 of Macrobius, rev. ed., ed. Jacob Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1994) Tes. Boccaccio, Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia, ed. Alberto Limentani, in Tutte le opere, 2:245–664 TLIO Tesoro della lingua italiana delle origini, ed. Pär Larson and Paolo Squillacioti Tr. Petrarch, Triumphi, ed. Vinicio Pacca, in Tronfi; Rime estravaganti; Codice degli abbozzi, ed. Vinicio Pacca and Laura Paolino (Milan: Mondadori, 1996), 39–626 Tratt. Boccaccio, Trattatello in laude di Dante, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci, in Tutte le opere, 3:437–538 Trist. Ovid, Tristia, ed. John B. Hall (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1995) Tutte le opere Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 10 vols., ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1964–1998) Vita Pet. Boccaccio, Vita di Petrarca, ed. Gianni Villani (Rome: Salerno, 2004) Vn Dante, La vita nuova, ed. Michele Barbi (Florence: Le Lettere, Edizione nazionale della Società Dantesca Italiana, 1960); references to the divisions proposed by Gorni appear in brackets following references to Barbi’s edition; Vita nova, ed. Guglielmo Gorni (Turin: Einaudi, 1996)

A N O T E O N T R A N S L AT I O N S A N D C I TAT I O N S

The English translations of foreign languages are mine unless an English translation is mentioned in the abbreviations, editions, translations list (above), or in the notes. The translations cited have occasionally been modified to draw out the meaning of the original language more accurately. The English translation of the Amorosa visione cited is based on what was thought to be a second draft of the poem by Boccaccio (the so-­called B-­text). Since this version has been deemed inauthentic, the translation has been modified to reflect the so-­called A-­text of the poem cited throughout. Finally, u/v and f/s have been modernized in Latin quotations.

xvii

I N T RO D U C T I O N

Boccaccio’s Corpus Text and Body

In his final years, Giovanni Boccaccio from Certaldo (1313–75) wrote a sonnet about the act of cultural translation and its ethical import (ca. 1374).1 The vernacular lyric addresses these topics by drawing on the meta­ literary resonances of the body in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: S’io ho le Muse vilmente prostrate nelle fornice del vulgo dolente, et le lor parte occulte ho palesate alla feccia plebeia scioccamente, non cal che più mi sien rimproverate sì facte offese, perché crudelmente Appollo nel mio corpo l’ha vengiate in guisa tal, ch’ogni membro ne sente. Ei m’ha d’huom facto un otre divenire, non pien di vento, ma di piombo grave tanto, ch’appena mi posso mutare. Né spero mai di tal noia guarire,

5

10

1

2  Boccaccio’s Corpus

sì d’ogni parte circondato m’have; ben so però che Dio mi può aiutare. If I have vilely prostrated the Muses in the bordellos of the vulgar crowd, and foolishly revealed their hidden parts to the dregs of the ignorant masses, there’s no further need for me to be reprimanded for such affronts, for Apollo has avenged them on my body such that every limb now bears the brunt. He’s turned me from a man into a pouch, filled not with wind, but lead so heavy that I’m scarcely able to move about. I no longer hope to recover from such ills, so completely have they enveloped me; I well know, though, that God can help me. The narrator uses the body as a symbol for the literary text when explaining that he has revealed the Muses’ “parte occulte” (hidden parts), that is, he has discussed (classical) textual traditions with the masses in the vernacular (ll. 1–4).2 He also refers to the body while lamenting the ethical and spiritual consequences of having stripped naked the female Muses. For such a transgression, the god Apollo has disfigured the narrator’s own body (ll. 5–8). Finally, the lyric poem thus features the body to signify other, or allegorical, meanings beyond its literal sense (allegoria; etymologically “other speak,” from alieniloquium).3 In engaging the body as a textual symbol, Boccaccio was drawing on a pervasive commonplace. In both classical Latin and fourteenth-­century Tuscan, the word for body, corpus, corpo, was used metonymically to refer to writings united in a volume.4 In the Middle Ages, the body was also a common symbol for the literary text because God had embodied the Word, or his “text,” at the Incarnation.5 In particular, “S’io ho le Muse” employs the symbolic valences of the body to highlight three concerns of Boccaccio’s writings. The poem demonstrates that Boccaccio had a recurring interest in the subjects of allegory, ethics, and vernacularity. The chapters of this book will clarify whether Boccaccio was feeling remorse about these subjects or instead foregrounding the essential facets of his authorial identity. The presentation herein contextualizes Boccaccio’s ideas about allegory, ethics, and vernacularity within several medieval and early Renaissance literary debates. More specifically, the following chapters explore why Boccaccio reflected on these topics by reference to the body, especially

Introduction  3

the female body.6 As will become clear, his engagement with the body was informed by various historical factors. In the mid-­to late fourteenth century, the Italian peninsula was more economically, socially, and culturally diverse than Dante’s (1265–1321) only decades earlier.7 Boccaccio himself considered developments in global trade and exploration by writing about the discovery of the Canary Islands (De Canaria, 1341–ca. 1350 [autograph; BNC, Banco Rari 50]).8 He also addressed tensions related to multicultural dialogue and religious pluralism. For example, the three opening stories of the Decameron (ca. 1348–60; Dec. 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3) feature Muslims, Jews, and Christians negotiating textual and spiritual matters.9 Perhaps inspired by his geographical and social mobility, Boccaccio also depicted in his works individuals from both established and new socioeconomic classes.10 He spent his youth in the Angevin, monarchical, royal environment of Naples. He lived his adult years in the Tuscan, republican, mercantile, banking environment of Florence. Finally, Dante had recently attempted to affirm that the vernacular could be a literary language by writing the Comedy.11 Petrarch was promoting Latin culture by experimenting with classicizing genres and by searching for ancient texts. In his compendium of mythology, the Genealogie deorum gentilium (ca. 1350–75 [autograph ca. 1360; BML, 52.9]), Boccaccio highlighted his singular role in creating the first courses of Greek at the Florentine Studium (Gen. 15.7.5–6).12 These cultural changes lent urgency to age-­old literary debates and prompted several new topics of heated discussion. Fourteenth-­century writers argued about the value of his­tori­­cal versus fictional literature, secular versus religious experience, Latin versus vernacular, elite versus popular culture, and ancient versus modern authority. As “S’io ho le Muse” demonstrates, Boccaccio had a lifelong interest in several of these topics. The poem also reveals that he frequently reflected on them by engaging the metaphoric valences of the body. Boccaccio developed many of his ideas about literature and the body in dialogue with Dante and Petrarch (1304–74). In fact, his two (near) contemporaries sometimes expressed differing opinions about these subjects. Boccaccio was in an exceptional position to reflect on literary topics because he lived just one generation after Dante and he was a contemporary and friend of Petrarch. In the three drafts of his biography of Dante, Trattatello in laude di Dante (1352–53, 1363–66, and late 1360s), Boccaccio discussed all of Dante’s Latin and vernacular writings (Tratt.

4  Boccaccio’s Corpus

§§190–201; cf. A and B §§128–38).13 However, he also emphatically underscored the historic import of the Comedy. He noted that the poem was written in the “fiorentino idioma” (Florentine vernacular) for (new) educated and uneducated readerships (Tratt. §§190 and 190–94; cf. A and B §§128–30). In his biography of Petrarch, De vita et moribus Domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia (ca. 1342–50), Boccaccio instead characterized Petrarch as a classicizing writer.14 He primarily discussed Petrarch’s studies of antiquity, Latin writings, and experimentation with ancient literary forms (Vita Pet. §§5–9, 18, and 26–30). By emphasizing Dante’s vernacularity and Petrarch’s Latinity, Boccaccio was highlighting—it will be maintained—his unique authorial identity. He thereby suggested that he was experimenting with more genres in the vernacular and in Latin than his two (near) contemporaries. And, with respect to Dante and Petrarch, scholars have documented the extraordinary range of Boccaccio’s generic experimentation. They have also reflected upon the exceptional nature of his copying, collecting, and glossing of classical works. In addition, they have discussed the novelty of his anthologies of vernacular literature, dedicated to Dante and to the Florentine lyric tradition (e.g., “To” ABC, Zelada 104.6 [ca. 1352–53]; and “Chig” BAV, Chigi L.V.176 [ca. 1363–66]).15 Finally, readers have noted that Boccaccio was unique in addressing texts to women, in featuring women as protagonists in his works, and especially in writing texts with an overt erotic component. How Boccaccio defended his diverse and highly erotic texts has figured among the most pressing questions in scholarship on medieval Italian literature. “S’io ho le Muse” shows that combining textual traditions or writing erotic literature could be perceived as controversial and sinful. Boccaccio’s views about these issues have been discussed in relation to medieval ideas about narrative, ars dictaminis (art of letter writing), genre, rhetoric, hermeneutics, and material culture.16 What has been missing is a comprehensive study of Boccaccio’s engagement with the primary discourse about textuality in the fourteenth century, namely, that which concerns allegory.17 In pre-­and early modern culture, ideas about allegory were intertwined with all matters related to textual signification and interpretation. This is one of the reasons why the rhetorical trope was defined simply as “other speak” (alieniloquium). Nor has Boccaccio’s engagement with allegory been contextualized in relation to the philosophical and theological debates that influenced ideas about allegory.18

Introduction  5

Therefore, this book explores how Boccaccio drew on ideas from medieval literary theory, philosophy, and theology to justify a controversial expansion of the literary corpus. In other words, this book presents research on how Boccaccio expanded what was recounted in literature and what was considered appropriate to signify serious meaning. A study of these topics is also essential for contextualizing Boccaccio’s views about the status of Latin versus vernacular writing and his ideas about the dignity of erotic texts. In fact, confusion about allegory in Boccaccio’s vernacular works has engendered conflicting interpretations of his authorial identity. Boccaccio has frequently been characterized as a forerunner of modern realism.19 As a realist writer, Boccaccio supposedly depicted contemporary history, erotic experiences, and lay culture positively without the symbols considered typical of medieval Christian allegory. He has also been categorized as a protodeconstructionist who questioned the capacity of allegorical writings, such as Dante’s Comedy, to convey theological or ethical ideas.20 Finally, he has been considered a Christian moralist who wrote allegories to qualify the value of erotic and mundane experiences.21 The former two interpretations exacerbated the superficial impression that Boccaccio’s vernacular and Latin works are contradictory. This scholarship often juxtaposed the supposedly pro-­ erotic ideology or skeptical views of his (earlier) vernacular writings to the moralizing content of his (later) Latin works.22 The fact that Boccaccio wrote in the vernacular and in Latin throughout his life suggests that he did not consider his writings to be incoherent.23 Scholars have also highlighted Boccaccio’s serious engagement with gender, law, politics, ancient culture, and vernacular literatures, as well as the metaphoric resonances of the erotic in the Decameron.24 The groundwork has thus been prepared for a comprehensive study of Boccaccio’s ideas about the potential of erotic texts to signify. The time is also ripe for a reconsideration of his views about the constructive, rather than the deconstructive, ethical dimension of literature.25 The following chapters address these issues in Boccaccio’s writings by employing the comparative methodology that Boccaccio himself encouraged readers to adopt. In the Prohemium to the Genealogie, Boccaccio emphasized that readers could only appreciate a specific textual tradition by considering it in relation to other literatures. He argued that a compendium composed exclusively of classical Greek and Latin texts would

6  Boccaccio’s Corpus

not properly elucidate either the history or the cultural importance of literature: Iam satis video, strenue miles, quod, pretermissis barbarorum remotissimis libris, existimes ex Grecis Latinisque opus hoc integrum perfici posse. O bone Deus! Non ne ipse, Domnine, vides quia hac ipsa concessione maximam partem operi demas? (Gen. 1, Pr. 1.25) O worthy knight, do you think—leaving apart the most ancient of books—one can complete a work like this just from studying Greek and Latin sources? O good God! Do you not see that with this concession you take away the most important part of the work? Boccaccio then lamented that the world’s literatures had been scattered throughout the Mediterranean like fragments after a shipwreck. He explains that he must search for their remains and recompose them in a singular genealogical corpus: litora et montuosa etiam nemora, scrobes et antra, si opus sit, peragravero pedibus, ad inferos usque descendero, et, Dedalus alter factus, ad ethera transvolavero; undique in tuum desiderium, non aliter quam si per vastum litus ingentis naufragii fragmenta colligerem sparsas, per infinita fere volumina deorum gentilium reliquias colligam, quas comperiam, et collectas evo diminutas atque semesas et fere attritas in unum genealogie corpus, quo potero ordine, ut tuo fruaris voto, redigam. (Gen. 1, Pr. 1.40) If necessary I will wander the shores and deep woods, the chasms and caves. I will descend to Hell, and like a second Daedalus, I will soar up to the Heavens. And everywhere according to your desire, as though they were fragments along a shore, I will collect the remains of the gentile gods scattered through nearly infinite volumes. And what I have found, though diminished, eaten away, and worn down by time, I will compose in the unified body of a genealogy, with the best order I can, so that your wish might be fulfilled.

Introduction  7

Boccaccio suggested that readers should not focus exclusively on one fragment of the literary body to highlight the range of his cultural interests. However, his remarks also invite readers to adopt a broad comparative view when reflecting on the meaning and import of Boccaccio’s own Latin and vernacular writings. Consequently, the chapters of this book are organized so as to put Boccaccio’s later critical writings (Trattatello, Genealogie, Esposizioni; chapter 1) in dialogue with his erotic vernacular fictions (chapters 2–5). In his scholarly works, Boccaccio explicitly indicated which of his many writings present his most important ideas about literature and which are instead novel literary experiments. In other words, his scholarship deliberately guided both the perception and the interpretation of his own texts. Most of Boccaccio’s writings concern issues related either to allegory or to erotic experiences, and many of his works treat both subjects.26 His first extant writings include a Latin poem called Allegoria mitologica (ca. 1339–40 [autograph; BML, 29.8]) and a fictional epistle addressed to Petrarch titled Mavortis milex (Ep. 2; ca. 1339 [autograph; BML, 29.8]).27 The poem recounts the universe’s creation by reference to Christian allegorizations of classical myths (e.g., AM §1–12). The letter instead highlights the transitory nature of amatory desires with an allegorical personification of Fortune (Ep. 2.2–8). The Caccia di Diana (1333–38), Boccaccio’s first vernacular fiction, is a moral allegory about celestial Venus’s triumph over Diana’s spiritual infertility (Caccia 17.1–36). In Naples, Boccaccio also experimented with the genre of romance in the Filocolo (ca. 1333– 38), a prose work about Florio and Biancifiore, who fall in love while reading Ovid’s Ars amatoria (Fil. 1.45–2.2). He combined elements of epic and tragedy in the Filostrato (ca. 1333–38), a poem about Criseyde’s betrayal of the soldier Troilus. And he created a hybrid of romance and epic in the Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia (ca. 1340–41 [autograph 1348–50; BML, Acquisti e doni, 325]), a work in ottave rime about Arcita and Palemone’s battle to wed Emilia.28 Upon returning to Florence, Boccaccio wrote a trilogy of allegorical and erotic works. In the Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (also called the Ameto; 1341), seven nymphs recount tales of an adulterous nature to the shepherd Ameto. Their stories eventually teach him to interpret their presence as an embodied representation of divine love (Ameto 46–47). In

8  Boccaccio’s Corpus

the Amorosa visione (1342–43), Boccaccio-­dreamer encounters persons from a diverse range of fictional and historical texts. At the conclusion of his vision, he is permitted to erotically embrace his beloved (AV 45.10–27 and 46.22–60). And, in the Ninfale fiesolano (ca. 1344), a story about the origins of Tuscany, the shepherd Africo rapes the nymph Mensola (Ninf. §243). These three works have been interpreted as reflections on the relationship between terrestrial and celestial Venus, or human and divine love.29 After writing these erotic texts, Boccaccio composed an Ovidian-­ inspired elegy, Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (Elegia) (ca. 1344–45). As Ovid’s heroines do in the Heroides, the female protagonist laments that a lover has abandoned her and will not return (e.g., Elegia, Pr. 1–6 and 8.1– 8). In the Decameron (ca. 1348–60), the first-­person narrator repeatedly comments on matters concerning the metaphoric nature of his erotic language and stories (e.g., Dec. 3, Conc. 18; and Conc. 3–6).30 In this period, Boccaccio also began his first Latin eclogues (ca. 1347–48), which were inspired by the ancient magister amoris (master of love) Ovid (Bucc. 2.75– 100). He published the collection of sixteen compositions thirty years later (ca. 1367; revised until 1375 [autograph; BR, 1232]), along with an epistle that outlined allegorical readings of the poems (Ep. 23; ca. 1372).31 Sometime in the late 1350s or mid-­1360s, Boccaccio wrote his final vernacular prose fiction, entitled Corbaccio. The work features a mysterious prophetic figure who orders a dreamer to hate a widow and all women (see Corb. §§172–83, 278, 345, 373–75, 382–83, and 413). In his later scholarly works, Boccaccio also addressed topics related to allegory and love in literature. Boccaccio initially reflected on the trope of allegory in his biography of Dante (Tratt. §§128–64). The biography introduces his first Dante anthology, which contains the Vita nova, Comedy, and fifteen so-­called canzoni distese (“To”; ca. 1352–55). He then revised the biography and the discussion of allegory for another anthology dedicated to the Florentine lyric tradition (see Tratt. A §§80–101). The manuscript (“Chig”; ca. 1363–66) features the revised Trattatello, Dante’s Vita nova, Guido Cavalcanti’s “Donna me prega” (with Dino del Garbo’s gloss), Boccaccio’s Latin poem about Dante titled Ytalie iam certus honos, Dante’s canzoni distese, and a version of Petrarch’s Canzoniere (1359– 62).32 The Genealogie deorum gentilium (ca. 1350–75) is instead a collection of allegorical interpretations of classical texts and myths (books 1–13). The final two books of the compendium present Boccaccio’s most

Introduction  9

detailed theoretical reflection on allegory (14–15). They explore how allegory might resolve several of the cultural debates of the fourteenth century, and describe how readers misunderstand the allegorical dimension of erotic literatures (Gen. 14.9 and 14.15–16). Finally, at the end of his life, Boccaccio again theorized matters relating to allegory for his public lectures on the literal and allegorical senses of the Comedy (Espos., Acc. 8–22, 1.1.73–112, and 1.2.1–25). The lectures were compiled in written form under the title Esposizioni sopra la “Comedia” di Dante (ca. 1373–74). Boccaccio reflected on allegory and erotic content because ideas about these subjects influenced canonical distinctions between religious and secular writing. Christians thought that God had signified allegorically through the events of providential history and the things of creation (termed allegoria in factis), both of which prefigured other events and things (figura, typus; Luke 24:44–47; Gal. 4:21–26).33 Like Christ’s body, scripture was considered a historical corpus that signified perfectly. Exegetes did, however, recognize that the Bible contained figu­rative language. For example, the Song of Song’s erotic metaphors and symbols were considered part of the literal sense that recounted a narrative about the relationship between Christ and the Church, or the individual soul and God.34 Medieval Christians also theorized that scripture had three other senses in addition to the literal. The allegorical was typically related to Christ’s life; the moral concerned personal behavior; and the anagogical dealt with the end of days or the afterlife. Given that the Bible was a record of creation and history, medieval writers thought of the universe itself as a carnal or physical book (Ps. 18:1–2).35 Consequently, the universe was interpreted for traces of ideas about the divine will. The cosmos was considered an encrypted physical embodiment of the spiritual realm (1 Cor. 13:12). God’s signifying in history was contrasted to the fact that human authors communicated meaning exclusively through the words of a fictional literal sense (termed allegoria in verbis). Moreover, theologians and philosophers sometimes condemned fictions as falsehoods and argued that erotic literatures were inappropriate for signifying serious ideas (see Gen. 14.2–6, 13, 19). This does not mean that secular literature was considered to have no didactic value. Fantastic or erotic texts, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Ars amatoria, were read in medieval schools to teach topics related to grammar, ethics, and ancient culture.36 In fact, in the

10  Boccaccio’s Corpus

twelfth century, writers at Chartres canonized the idea that one needed to look sub velamine (under a veil) or sub integumento (under a wrapping) of a text’s fictional narrative.37 By looking under a text’s literal sense, readers were supposed to discover ideas about nature or ethics. In addition, writers suggested—implicitly and explicitly—that all kinds of writings could be interpreted according to three senses for a variety of allegorical, moral, and even anagogical ideas (see Dante, Conv. 2.1.2–9). The key point is that in theory everything in medieval culture could be allegorical. Christians were encouraged to read any text, event, or natural occurrence allegorically for ideas about God or ethics (allegoresis). Nevertheless, writers and readers debated how an author should intentionally compose a text to convey meaning (allegory). In other words, they reflected on the signifying properties of literary texts. Authors frequently considered what were the most efficacious and orthodox types of narratives, images, and linguistic idioms for communicating with diverse readerships. These were the essential issues involved in justifying the dignity of literature as a mode of discourse in comparison to philosophy and theology. Several decades before Boccaccio, Dante attempted to change perceptions of secular literature. He boldly asserted that the Comedy re-­ presents meaning truthfully in a manner that approximates how the Bible presents truth.38 For example, the signifying properties of the poem are likened to the ontology of a prophetic vision, that is, a divinely bestowed experience of reality within an individual’s imagination.39 Dante implies that the poem’s formal structures have a historical and truthful dimension akin to that of a divine vision when the pilgrim is on the ledge where the wrathful repent. There the pilgrim feels drawn into a “visïone / estatica” (rapturous vision) composed of three episodes (Purg. 15.85–86, and generally 85–114). The truthfulness of the vision is underscored when his soul returns “a le cose . . . fuor di lei vere” (to the true things . . . outside of it) (Purg. 15.115–17). The poet subsequently defines the events witnessed in the vision, and by extension the episodes described in the poem, as “non falsi errori” (not false errors) (Purg. 15.117). Dante also compares the poem to a natural marvel to counter the charge that literature was an unnatural (contra naturam) art form, that is, contrary to God’s signifying in history. The poet suggests the poem is akin to a marvel by swearing on the verses of the Comedy that he saw the “figura . . . / maravigliosa” (marvelous . . . figure) of Geryon (Inf. 16.131–32).40 These verses imply that

Introduction  11

the monster Geryon, the guardian of fraud in Hell that has the face of a man, reptilian and serpentine elements for a body, and the tale of a scorpion, is an analogue of the poem. By making the creature’s hybrid body a textual symbol, Dante likened the poem—with its various styles, linguistic registers, and narrative types—to God’s work as the divine artist (Deus artifex). The implication is that the Comedy faithfully imitates God’s artistic rules and is a natural part of his wondrous creation. Boccaccio lived in the mid-­to late fourteenth century, when the value of secular, fictional, and erotic literatures was still contested by philosophers and theologians (again see Gen. 14.2–6, 13, and 19). In addition, Boccaccio was addressing recent criticisms of vernacular and erotic texts from humanists such as Petrarch and Giovanni del Virgilio (fl. 1300– 1327).41 These writers considered (ancient) Latin texts as serious literature for educated men, and classified vernacular works as frivolous trifles for the masses and women. In his biography of Petrarch (ca. 1342–50), Boccaccio even obscured the fact that Petrarch had composed vernacular love poems. Boccaccio downplayed that Petrarch wrote vernacular literature by interpreting the poet’s descriptions of his yearning for Laura in the Canzoniere as an allegory about the writer’s desire for the ancient poetic laurel crown (Vita Pet. §26). Boccaccio’s biography anticipated and even inspired aspects of Petrarch’s public presentation of himself as a classicizing Latin scholar and writer. (Boccaccio did, however, also inspire Petrarch to work on his vernacular Canzoniere and Triumphi.)42 In epistles addressed to Boccaccio, Petrarch criticized the vernacular for some of the same reasons that Dante had promoted it, namely, on account of its modern and popular resonances. In Familiares 21.15 (ca. 1359) and Seniles 5.2 (1364), Petrarch denigrated Dante’s, Boccaccio’s, and his own vernacular writings by characterizing them as juvenile, popular, or immoral (Fam. 21.15.7–8, 10–13, and 24–25; and Sen. 5.2.8–9, 23–27, and 36–37). Finally, perceptions of erotic and vernacular writings were intertwined with ideas about literatures classified as female, and with debates about women’s spirituality. In antiquity, Ovid characterized erotic elegy as a feminine genre because it features women and subjective material, in contrast to masculine genres, such as epic and tragedy, that concern martial and political topics (see Ovid, Amores 3.1; Rem. 361–97; and cf. Virgil, Aen. 1.1–2). In the late Middle Ages, vernacular texts were associated with women because a male poet had supposedly invented vernacular poetry

12  Boccaccio’s Corpus

to communicate with a woman who did not know Latin (see Dante, Vn 25.5–6 [16.5–6]).43 And, for his part, Petrarch was self-­consciously writing in Latin to educated male readers about moral, spiritual, and political matters.44 Moreover, given that natura was gendered female, writers often depicted sinful earthly desires with images of hideous or filthy women’s bodies (an emblematic example is Dante’s description of the Siren; Purg. 19.1–36).45 These same writers drew symbolically on women’s bodies to promote spiritual knowledge and ethical dispositions. Beatrice’s physical presence helps Dante experience beatitude in the Vita nova (Vn 2.3– 7, 3.1, 5.1 [1.3–8, 1.12, 2.6], and so on). Her celestial beauty also helps guide the pilgrim to the Empyrean (e.g., Par. 30.19–33 and 31.58–93). Furthermore, perceptions of textuality generally speaking were influenced by gendered notions in ancient rhetoric, Christian pedagogy, and medieval literary theory.46 Writers pondered whether the metaphoric, stylistic, and metrical properties of texts faithfully embody truth or distract readers with what are characterized as the allures of feminine artifice and adornment. In the late medieval period, the significance of women’s bodies was also contested in debates concerning spiritual experiences and expressions of piety. Whereas orthodox Christians emphasized the goodness of creation and the body, the Cathars maintained that the material world was fallen, sinful, and irredeemable.47 The Church countered these hereti­cal views by promoting female spiritual practices of a somatic nature. These experiences were often composed of Eucharistic devotion, fasting, carnal penitential acts, and mystical marriages.48 At the same time, their bodily expressions of spirituality were intertwined with what scholars term “affective piety.”49 Ideas about the affects were inspired by the theological notions of Pseudo-­Dionysius (fl. fifth or early sixth century), who was confused with Paul’s convert in Acts (17:34).50 In De caelesti hierarchia, Pseudo-­Dionysius explained that the Bible employed material images to help readers in the initial stages of contemplating metaphysical notions.51 The twelfth-­century French Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and many others drew on Pseudo-­Dionysian ideas while theorizing analogies between erotic experience, mystical marriage, and divine meditation.52 For example, in his Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, Bernard interprets the kissing of the bride’s body (a symbol for Christ) as a metaphor for humankind’s affection for spiritual understanding.53 Such contemplation

Introduction  13

was bolstered by ideas about memory and imagination. Memory-­images were thought to be associated with emotive feelings.54 Theories of cognition affirmed that the imagination engaged emotionally charged images when assisting the intellect in contemplative acts. Across Europe not all of these aforementioned texts or ideas circulated widely.55 Still, the notion that carnal images psychosomatically motivate, or affectively stimulate, humankind’s contemplation of God was widely appreciated. In the Paradiso, Bernard is described as a mystic who “ard[e] / tutto d’amore” (completely burn[s] with love); who feels a “vivace / carità” (lively charity); and who is motivated by “tanto affetto” (so much affection) (Par. 31.100–101, 109–10, and 141, respectively). He then helps Dante contemplate Beatrice, Mary, and the entire Empyrean (e.g., Par. 31.70–78 and 103–11). In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Pseudo-­Dionysian and Bernardian notions influenced Franciscan theology, Umbrian mendicant movements, and Tuscan expressions of piety.56 These spiritual traditions encouraged readers to reflect on the humanity of Christ’s and Mary’s sufferings. Contemplatives were instructed to imagine Jesus’s and Mary’s bodily and emotional pain and thereby to feel—personally and intimately—love, grief, and compassion. For example, Francis saw Christ in the disfigured bodies of lepers, and he was later marked by the stigmata on his own body.57 Female mystics such as Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) and Catherine of Siena (1347–80) also had divine visions with highly erotic and carnal elements. They kissed and embraced the cross; became spiritual brides of Christ (sponsae Christi); and were profoundly influenced by meditating on images of Christ’s passion.58 Similarly, in Tuscany a genre of writing flourished—the Pseudo-­Bonaventurean Meditationes vitae Christi (ca. 1305) was an influential example—that encouraged readers to form imaginarias representaciones (imaginary representations) in their souls of Christ’s life and physical suffering.59 Therefore, concepts related to the body, desire, and the affects were intertwined in late medieval devotional practice. It was thought that meditating on depictions of the corpus could arouse one’s yearnings for spiritual improvement. Furthermore, given the bodily and erotic nature of this contemplation, medievalists have debated whether affective meditation was characteristic of female spirituality. Several scholars have proposed that women, who were often defined by their corporeality, were considered privileged

14  Boccaccio’s Corpus

in their capacity to respond affectively to Christ with compassion (com + pati = “to suffer with”).60 Christ himself was, in fact, often associated with notions of motherhood, brideship, and charity.61 Other scholars have argued that such gendered distinctions about male and female piety are too stark, given that masculine-­and feminine-­connoted concepts were commonly attributed to both genders.62 Nevertheless, in the fourteenth century, Dominicans were increasingly criticizing the evidentiary or epistemological value of female spiritual experiences associated with the supposedly unstable, inconstant body.63 In short, the female body was a medieval locus for wide-­ranging discussions about language, representation, and orthodoxy. And throughout his life Boccaccio had ample opportunity to encounter these French-­and Tuscan-­inspired concepts related to gender, spirituality, and literature. He was born in Florence, or Certaldo, near San Gimignano and Siena (1313).64 Young Boccaccio studied canon law at Naples (1327–40/41), and he frequented the court of King Robert of Anjou (1277–1343), who patronized the Franciscans.65 He went through or near Umbria while traveling to and from Naples, and in 1354 and 1365 the Florentine Republic sent him on diplomatic missions to the papal court at Avignon. Between 1354 and 1360 Boccaccio was sufficiently trained in pastoral matters to take clerical vows, which were sanctioned by Pope Innocent VI on November 2, 1360. He also maintained and frequented a residence at Certaldo. Finally, Franciscan and affective notions were foundational components of mendicant and pietistic movements. They were transmitted widely through various Latin, vernacular, oral, and written channels.66 In the 1350s, Boccaccio’s knowledge of homiletics (ars praedicandi) and the rural parish life of Tuscany is evidenced by stories about preaching in the Decameron (1348– ca. 1360). The tales about Ser Ciappelletto and his confessor and about Frate Cipolla of Certaldo feature individuals who draw on homiletic commonplaces and bodily images to affect the devotional practices of their congregations (Dec. 1.1.83–88 and 6.10.37–54). The purpose of this book, therefore, is not to address theoretical issues concerning gender in Boccaccio’s works. These have traditionally involved such questions as these: Did Boccaccio voice protofeminist ideas? How do Boccaccio’s depictions of women relate to historical readerships? What social contexts influenced his representations of gender? Why do contradictory depictions of women appear across his oeuvre?67

Introduction  15

Instead, the work presented here contextualizes Boccaccio’s symbolic uses of gender in relation to medieval debates about literature, ethics, and language. I thereby hope to complement studies about how Boccaccio engaged gender conceptually while reflecting on matters related to readerships, hermeneutics, and governance.68 Still, by addressing the symbolic resonances of gender in Boccaccio’s texts, this study may shed light on select theoretical questions. It may clarify matters pertaining to why Boccaccio wrote about women in seemingly incongruous terms. Finally, what follows will contribute to discussions about the affects and women by exploring how a fourteenth-­century Tuscan author of erotic fiction engaged the topica. This book examines how Boccaccio attempted to resolve various literary, philosophical, and theological debates by drawing on three interrelated ideas. First, as evidenced by remarks about the fragmented corpus in the Genealogie, Boccaccio strove to promote the dignity of all literatures in the fourteenth century, Latin, Greek, vernacular, and so on. Boccaccio defended these texts by prioritizing what he characterized as the most explanatory properties of literature. Like his peers, he was not merely interested in hermeneutic questions concerning how texts should be interpreted (allegoresis). Rather he reflected on the crucial debate about how authors ought to compose their texts to convey meaning (allegory). In fact, he promoted the signifying properties common to diverse texts regardless of a particular work’s language, genre, or ideological connotations. In considering these aspects of literature, Boccaccio gave voice to a succinct yet key insight about the nature of literature and tex­tu­ality. He was the first author to argue explicitly that all texts—regardless of language, genre, or cultural connotations—can be allegorical and thus truth-­bearing. Medieval writers recognized that in theory anything was interpretable. Boccaccio instead proposed an understanding of textuality that was more controversial. He argued that authors could convey serious meaning in any type of text because literatures have similar truth-­ bearing properties. In the Genealogie, Boccaccio declared that allegory is the essential and defining property of literature: mera poesis est, quicquid sub velamento componimus et exponitur exquisite (pure literature is whatever we compose under the veil and is exquisitely interpreted) (Gen. 14.7.8).69 Though Dante drew on a similar insight implicitly in his works, Boccaccio stated this notion in a clearer and more overt way than Dante ever did.

16  Boccaccio’s Corpus

Boccaccio then exploited his understanding of allegory to resolve several of the most contentious literary questions of the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. This insight is Boccaccio’s most important contribution to the history of literary theory, and its impact on subsequent writers can hardly be overstated.70 Second, just as Dante did, Boccaccio frequently reflected on matters pertaining to the reception of his writings. He was especially concerned about readers’ perceptions of the orthodoxy of his erotic vernacular works. He defended what was often considered heterodox by drawing on philosophical and theological ideas about images, which were intertwined with views of allegory. Image (imago) was a broad concept in medieval culture, and it encompassed categories of signs ranging from symbol and icon to figure and enigma. Boccaccio justified his literary uses of the erotic by appealing to Chartrian, Pseudo-­Dionysian, and Franciscan views about how carnal images promote knowledge. He drew on these traditions to defend both the signifying properties and the effectiveness of the female body for communicating meaning. His strategy consisted of foregrounding the symbolic efficacy of erotic literatures in an overt manner—by repeatedly using women’s bodies as symbols for his writings. By using the female body as a textual symbol, Boccaccio underscored the significance of erotic textual traditions. More crucially, he thereby promoted spiritual and ethical ideas associated with women. After he developed aspects of these notions in the Ameto and Amorosa visione, Boccaccio’s championing of the female body reached its fullest expression in the Decameron. The vernacular stories, which are addressed to women, feature women as protagonists, and frankly depict erotic acts, begin with a programmatic allusion to Christ’s incarnation (Dec. 1, Intr. 8). The narrator concludes the tales with a reflection on artists who depict Jesus as a man suffering on the cross (Dec., Conc. 6). These framing passages of the Decameron recall Jesus’s birth and experience of death—the period when the Word was embodied before the Resurrection. Comprehensively, the references suggest that the vernacular, erotic, “female” stories signify with the body in a manner that approximates God’s carnal “writing.” Boccaccio asserted this notion most clearly after having been surrounded by Tuscan ideas about the body and the affects. He returned to Florence in 1341, and then was working on the Decameron between approximately 1348 and 1360. Boccaccio was also, however, drawing on

Introduction  17

philosophical, devotional, and religious concepts to defend more overt erotic material than had been previously defended by reference to these same concepts. In other words, Boccaccio did not recall notions in theological or devotional writings as part of a reactionary, pietistic agenda. He engaged the authoritative discourses of the late Middle Ages to champion texts that were often considered frivolous, immoral, or sinful. Third, Boccaccio’s ideas about poetics are closely intertwined with his ethical views. In reflecting on ethics, Boccaccio was again indebted to Chartrian and Franciscan notions that emphasized God communicated with humankind in and through the body. Boccaccio was drawing on such ideas to counter ideological traditions that characterized women’s bodies and female desires negatively. In the Amorosa visione, a female guide even commands Boccaccio-­pilgrim to embrace his beloved Fiammetta so that he can obtain true spiritual fulfillment (AV 48.52–63). Boccaccio’s call to respect the human form in general—and the female body in particular— was also related to ethical ideas about compassion. The Decameron begins with the declaration that compassion is an essential human value (an idea also developed in other writings): “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti” (It is human to have compassion on those who are suffering) (Dec., Pr. 2). As will be explained, for Boccaccio the notion of compassion entails a Christ-­inspired love of the (female) body. The allusions to the Incarnation in the female Decameron signal that Christ himself sanctioned the dignity of both men’s and women’s bodies. Indeed, it was commonly thought that Christ expressed compassion for humanity by being incarnate in Mary and assuming a body.71 Boccaccio thus urged readers to love their bodies and cherish their fleeting moments of embodiment. In the Decameron, Boccaccio also promoted the idea that “female” readers have a unique capacity for expressing compassion. By highlighting women’s charitable nature, he implied that the men who, in reality, read Boccaccio’s feminine literatures, would be especially capable of loving others. The narrator champions this notion by affirming that women are more strongly affected by love, and by implication erotica, than men are (Dec., Pr. 9–12). He adds that his female readers, given that women are “naturalmente tutte . . . pietose” (all naturally . . . compassionate) (Dec. 1, Intr. 2 and 34), will be most affected by his descriptions of the plague’s effects on the body. These notions further underscore that Boccaccio defended the affective nature of his erotic writings by reference to Tuscan

18  Boccaccio’s Corpus

ideas about piety. When coupled with the Christological allusions, these remarks imply that reading Boccaccio’s tales of desire can engender compassion in a manner that approximates meditating on the Incarnation and the Passion. That is to say, his novelle feature the (sexualized) body to stimulate spiritual change as devotional texts do. Moreover, he recalled affective notions to champion the dignity of unchaste, imperfect, typical corpora. The “Introduction” to Day 1 invites readers to consider the bodies of their contemporaries just as they might meditate on Christ’s or Mary’s embodied experience. In developing these notions, Boccaccio was likely influenced by the same social, spiritual, and religious developments that influenced Angela of Foligno, the author of the Meditationes, and Cathe­ rine of Siena. He was also—and this is key—proposing ideas about literature, women, and the emotions. Several of these concepts would (and others would not) come to be considered typical of affective piety in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In his own context, however, Boccaccio was drawing on widely known Pseudo-­Dionysian and Franciscan concepts to attenuate tensions between erotics and ethics, physical and metaphysical, and carnal and spiritual. The theological and philosophical concepts that inspired the signifying properties of Boccaccio’s writings have not been studied in detail. Scholars have proposed, however, that the symbolic dimension of the Decameron may have been influenced by William of Ockham’s (1288– 1348) nominalist thought.72 In the early fourteenth century, Ockham was drawing attention to the problematic relationship between sign (vox), concept (conceptus), and referent (res). The Decameron—subtitled Galeotto (Go-­between)—seems to dramatize the unreliability of semiotic mediators by featuring multiple (competing) storytellers, narrative viewpoints, and interpreting publics (see Dec., Conc. 8, 20–21, and 27). The first story of the Decameron similarly appears to foreground difficulties related to signification and epistemology.73 In Panfilo’s tale, the notary Ciappelletto recounts an elaborate series of lies to make others believe him a saint. Panfilo concludes the story by remarking that we humans cannot ultimately know whether Ciappelletto is a faithful or a fallacious “intermediary” (mezzano) between humans and God (Dec. 1.1.90). Considering these resonances of “go-­between,” scholars have often suggested that the Decameron characterizes the rapidly evolving juridical, social, and economic realities of fourteenth-­century Italy as enigmatic and labyrinthine.74 Consequently,

Introduction  19

various readers have proposed that the Decameron teaches that the world is composed of ambiguous and shifting signs, whose interpretation and utility depend on the individual subject. This book nuances aspects of such an understanding of Boccaccio’s writings and thought, and it complements these interpretations by exploring how Boccaccio grappled with ambiguities related to human communication and artistic expression. The following chapters reveal that Boccaccio attempted to transcend epistemological skepticism and hermeneutic relativism by signifying meaning in and through the body. In his writings, the human form was presented as the most orthodox, immediate, and stable sign possible in the present world. Finally, the book addresses Boccaccio’s dialogue with both Dante and Petrarch. Scholars have explored how Boccaccio promoted Dante by copying, editing, and commenting on his vernacular works.75 They have also assessed how Boccaccio distinguished his views from Dante’s in relation to various subjects: politics, social class, and the law; the ethical role of literature; hermeneutics, linguistics, and poetics. Nevertheless, scholars have not rigorously evaluated how Boccaccio engaged with Dante’s poetics—especially with the signifying properties of Dante’s texts—in his own vernacular and Latin works.76 Modern readers have disagreed about how Boccaccio viewed the symbolic properties and truth claims of Dante’s Comedy. It has even been intimated on occasion that Boccaccio did not understand Dante’s poetics or that he was parodying, in a superficial or an anodyne manner, the poet’s works. With respect to Petrarch, Boccaccio has traditionally been—and at times still is—characterized as slavishly repeating Petrarch’s rhetoric about the superior dignity of Latin writing versus popular vernacular (erotic) literature.77 However, scholars have also highlighted that Boccaccio more overtly championed erotic, vernacular, and Greek literatures than Petrarch did; thought there was continuity between ancient and modern culture, whereas Petrarch emphasized rupture and discontinuity; and promoted Dante to counter some of Petrarch’s literary, linguistic, and political views.78 This book refines several of these historiographical notions by contextualizing Boccaccio’s ideas concerning Dante and Petrarch within literary, ethical, and theological debates about the body. Modern readers generally agree that Dante characterized the Comedy as a truthful account of an otherworldly voyage that dealt with all

20  Boccaccio’s Corpus

facets of reality and human experience.79 Scholars have also documented that the poet tried to depict the complexities of the cosmos by employing diverse linguistic registers, species of images, and narrative categories. The following chapters do not refine these views about Dante or his texts. Instead, they focus on how Boccaccio guided impressions of Dante’s artistic achievement. On the one hand, this book addresses Boccaccio’s debts to Dante and his strategies for championing him. It complements the work of those scholars of material culture who have explored how Boccaccio promoted Dante by compiling anthologies of his vernacular writings. On the other hand, the chapters highlight how Boccaccio engaged critically with Dante. This aspect of Boccaccio’s writings has sometimes been downplayed or obscured in accounts of fourteenth-­century literary history.80 In fact, Boccaccio repeatedly considered the vital question (for late medieval Italy) regarding the Comedy—he probed whether the poem successfully conveyed orthodox ideas about God, creation, and human existence. In considering the achievement of the Comedy, he was participating in fourteenth-­century debates about the poem.81 Various contemporaries questioned—either strategically or unwittingly—the truth claims and poetics of the Comedy. This book highlights that Boccaccio did not believe that Dante wrote about every facet of reality. In his Esposizioni, Boccaccio plainly stated that the poem was not a plurilinguistic text or a conventional comedy, a genre that usually dealt with humble persons and erotic or “basse materie” (base matters) (Espos., Acc. 18–19). In his view, the poem primarily employed a sublime style that accorded with its depiction of exalted persons, exceptional acts of virtue and vice, and the “divina essenzia” (divine essence) (Espos., Acc. 18–19). Boccaccio also reflected on Dante’s treatment of matters pertaining to embodiment and sex.82 Modern readers too have considered how the body, desire, and erotic literatures are characterized in the Comedy.83 They have explored these issues, for example, in relation to the fact that Francesca da Rimini committed adultery after reading a romance (Inf. 5.88–138). They have assessed the import of Beatrice’s condemnation of how the pilgrim viewed her (dead) body (Purg. 30.103–45 and 31.22–69). And they have highlighted that the pilgrim’s desires—for Beatrice, God, or blessedness—facilitate his voyage up Mount Purgatory and enjoyment of Paradise. Furthermore, scholars have considered the presentation of the body and eros in the Paradiso with

Introduction  21

respect to eschatological issues. Several studies have suggested that Dante cautioned readers to be wary of identifying (excessively) with the body and subjective passions.84 Other scholarship has proposed that Dante strove to resolve medieval antitheses pertaining to erotic pleasures and ethical Christian behavior.85 The quantity and diverse nature of these analyses demonstrate that Dante’s engagement with the sexualized corpus was complex. His poem has, in fact, prompted readers to clarify and even to disagree about Dante’s views. For his part, Boccaccio reflected on the somatophobia that could be engendered by a depiction of otherworldly carnal and spiritual purification (for example, the pilgrim’s body becomes lighter on Mount Purgatory; Purg. 12.10–13 and 115–36; cf. Par. 1.82–142). He also considered how Dante-­pilgrim is drawn to God by Beatrice and her paradisiacal beauty rather than by women who have their (unchaste) earthly bodies.86 In the Vita nova, Dante-­lover also initially declared that she did not seem to be the daughter of a mortal but of God (Vn 2.8 [1.9]; and cf. 26.2 [14.2], 26.6.8 [17.6.8], and 29.3 [19.6]). In the Earthly Para­ dise, Beatrice explained that she appeared to Dante with a beauty that surpassed any other created by nature or art (Purg. 31.49–51). Boccaccio was a careful and sympathetic reader of Dante. He never implied in his works that Dante devalued erotic texts or the body. He did, however, attenuate passages of the Comedy that could be (mis)interpreted as hostile to the body, especially flawed or common ones. His engagement with Dante thus included reflection on metaliterary and ethical issues related to the corpus inherent in several of the Comedy’s key passages, those concerning Fran­cesca, Cavalcanti, Ulysses, and Beatrice. Therefore, this book addresses how one informed (near) contemporary understood the strengths and weaknesses of Dante’s writing. A rigorous study of Boccaccio’s critical engagement with Dante is essential for refining ideas about the reception of the poet’s texts. It is also vital—and this is the key—for an appreciation of how Boccaccio championed his own originality. Boccaccio similarly engaged with Petrarch in a nuanced and strategic manner. In various letters, Petrarch criticized Boccaccio for having written vernacular, erotic, and immoral texts (see Fam. 21.15, Sen. 5.2, and Sen. 17.3). Scholars have documented how Boccaccio responded to Petrarch’s criticisms of vernacular culture (by promoting Dante, vernacular lyric traditions, and so on). They have not addressed in similar detail

22  Boccaccio’s Corpus

how Boccaccio defended erotic literature in response to Petrarch’s critiques. On the one hand, Boccaccio never suggested that Petrarch harbored nega­tive views of the body or mundane experiences. On the other hand, he reflected on how Petrarch’s personae often voiced—even if only for rhetorical purposes—anxiety about the potential tension between body and spirit, worldly and otherworldly, present and eternal (e.g., in the programmatic RVF 1).87 In the Corbaccio, the mysterious guide recalls Petrarch’s (fictional) criticisms about Boccaccio’s erotic texts and mundane experiences tout court (e.g., Corb. §§118–27, 316–18, 331–32, and 375). In his own texts, Boccaccio attempted to clarify the possible moral and rhetorical implications of Petrarch’s writings. Therefore, he defended not only the dignity of his own vernacular works but also the orthodoxy of his ethics. Finally, Boccaccio’s desire to distinguish his mode of writing about these topics from Dante’s and Petrarch’s informed his evolving engagement with Dante. Boccaccio more emphatically differentiated his views from Dante’s earlier in his life. In his later years, he more overtly promoted Dante’s cultural achievements (ca. post-­ 1350) to counter Petrarch’s negative remarks about vernacular culture. Chapter 1 focuses on Boccaccio’s ideas about the signifying properties of literature (allegory) in his scholarly works. His critical writings were composed in the latter third of his life, from approximately 1350 until his death in 1375. Boccaccio wrote these texts to respond to Petrarchan, Dominican, and Neoplatonic criticisms of fictional, erotic, and vernacular literatures. The book, therefore, begins with an analysis of Boccaccio’s later critical works because they were partially written to guide interpretations of his erotic fictions. The first section of chapter 1 contextualizes theoretical ideas about allegory in the Trattatello in laude di Dante, Genealogie deorum gentilium, and Esposizioni sopra la “Comedia” di Dante in relation to ancient and medieval views of the trope. It also addresses how Boccaccio understood the allegorical signifying properties of Dante’s vernacular writings. The second and third sections assess how Boccaccio modified medieval ideas concerning allegory to counter Petrarch's criticisms of vernacular and erotic literatures. During their discussions, Boccaccio also signaled the relevance of his literary theory for his previous writings. In his scholarly works, he self-­reflexively highlighted the signifying properties of various works, ranging from his vernacular erotic fictions to his Latin Buccolicum carmen (e.g., Gen. 14.9 and 14.10.6–7). His ideas about allegory

Introduction  23

were developed to underscore the dignity of all the fictional and historical literatures in his corpus, including his Latin biographies of men and women, De casibus virorum illustrium (begun ca. 1355) and De mulieribus claris (begun ca. 1361 [autograph 1373; BML, 90 sup. 98I (LI)]).88 The book also begins with an analysis of the Genealogie because passages of the compendium highlight which of Boccaccio’s fictional writings present his most authoritative ideas about poetics and ethics. An older Boccaccio indicated the specific texts that most clearly depict his views about literature and the body (the works discussed in this book). These writings were composed after 1340 when Boccaccio returned from Naples to Florence, where he encountered a unique Dantean, allegorical, and erotic literary culture.89 The texts in question are the Ameto, Amorosa visione, Decameron, and Corbaccio (the focus of chapters 2 to 5, respectively). These writings not only feature some of Boccaccio’s most overtly erotic passages. They also most explicitly promote love for the body (the Corbaccio being the exception). Consequently, readers may find select passages in works written prior to 1340 that contradict Boccaccio’s championing of the erotic body (e.g., Tes. 11.1–3 and 91; and Filost. 8.20–27, 9.1, and 9.6). Moreover, in the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (ca. 1344–45), the eponymous female protagonist repeatedly laments that Fortune and Love have mistreated her.90 Fiammetta even characterizes eros as a fury, rage, and madness. The Elegia, therefore, presents a notable yet superficial exception to the fact that after 1340 Boccaccio promoted the symbolic and ethical utility of female erotic literature. Fiammetta undermines the seriousness of her comments by specifying that she is engaged in a fictional rhetorical competition with other writers (Elegia 1.23.6–10). At the culmination of her discourse, she even emphasizes that she has suffered even more than famous literary women, such as Dido, Thisbe, Phaedra, and Medea (8.1, 2, 4–5, 8, and so on). The present book touches on how Boccaccio subsequently guided impressions of these challenging literary experiments.91 Chapters 2 and 3 treat the issue in passing, but chapter 4 examines how Boccaccio attempted to control the interpretation of the Ovidian-­inspired Elegia in the Decameron. The Elegia became a vexing issue for Boccaccio because the Decameron is also deeply indebted to Ovidian erotic elegy. In addition, chapter 5 explores how Boccaccio came to disagree with writers—and with any fictional protagonists—who expressed negative ideas about erotic literatures and experiences.

24  Boccaccio’s Corpus

Chapters 2 and 3 treat Boccaccio’s vernacular Ameto and Amorosa visione, respectively. In the Genealogie, these two works are evoked in a discussion about the symbolic and affective value of erotic fiction (Gen. 14.9). Written a few years before the Decameron, the texts introduce Boccaccio’s ideas about erotic images by engaging philosophical and theological notions related to the body. The bulk of these two chapters is also dedicated to putting Boccaccio’s ideas about images and ethics in dialogue with Dante’s views, which are explicitly evoked in each text. Chapter 4 then treats another vernacular work defended in several passages of the Genealogie, the Decameron (Gen. 14.9 and 14.10.6–7). This chapter reviews how Boccaccio clarified the properties of the Decameron by comparing its poetics to the poetics of a classical genre, erotic elegy. Boccaccio was thus guiding perceptions of the symbolic and especially metaliterary properties of his short stories, an uncanonized genre in late medieval culture. In addressing such issues, the chapter details the role of the diverse allusions to Ovid’s elegiac poems in the Decameron’s three overt metaliterary sections (Proemio, “Introduction” to Day IV, and “Conclusion”). In these passages, the narrator discusses the properties and ethics of the novelle in the first person. Chapter 5 examines the Corbaccio (frequently considered Boccaccio’s most enigmatic work) and evaluates the intertextual relationship between the Corbaccio and the Genealogie. It proposes that the protagonists of the Corbaccio who hate women behave like the readers most criticized in the Genealogie. In the compendium, Boccaccio overtly condemned those who misread erotic elegiac authors such as Ovid and, by implication, Boccaccio himself (Gen. 14.14.1–2; and 14.15–16). This final chapter also addresses why the work’s protagonists voice negative remarks about erotica and women from Petrarch’s writings. Though scholars have identified several of these echoes, their relevance for Boccaccio’s dialogue with Petrarch has not been fully considered. The chapter explores how Boccaccio dealt with negative comments about the corpus in Petrarch’s works while promoting his own amatory texts. Therefore, it investigates how Boccaccio responded to those who wanted to castigate him—as depicted in the lyric “S’io ho le Muse”—for having signified ideas about allegory, ethics, and vernacularity by reference to the female body.

ONE

The Allegory of the Corpus Genealogie deorum gentilium and Scholarly Works

B O C C AC C I O’ S T E X T UA L C U LT U R E S

Boccaccio documented his theoretical ideas about literature from approxi­ mately 1350 to 1375. During these years, the literary cultures of the Italian peninsula were rapidly evolving. By the second half of the fourteenth century, Boccaccio’s world of books was significantly more diverse than Dante’s only fifty years earlier. Boccaccio himself was promoting the study of new texts by editing Dante’s vernacular Vita nova and Comedy (ca. 1352–ca. late 1360s), by patronizing Leontius Pilatus (d. 1365), who was the first teacher of Greek at the Florentine Studium (ca. 1360–62; see Gen. 15.7.5–6), and by collecting and copying recently discovered classical Latin works. When in the 1350s he began drafting his compendium of mythology, the Genealogie deorum gentilium (ca. 1359–60), Boccaccio had also already written a plethora of works both in Latin and in the vernacular. He had experimented with genres ranging from romance, epic,

25

26  Boccaccio’s Corpus

elegy, and short story to lyric poetry, pastoral, dream vision, and eclogue. With respect to Dante and Petrarch, Boccaccio was also unique in composing works that featured women as protagonists, that were associated with female readerships (see Dec., Pr. 9–14; Dec. 6.1; and Corb. §§316– 18), and that were classified as female genres. For his part, Petrarch was often experimenting with masculine genres and addressing his works to elite, Latin-­literate male readers.1 Boccaccio addressed these same male audiences, but often did so through female literary genres, voices, and fictional reading publics. When Boccaccio defended literature by writing about theoretical issues, he could not rely on any previous rhetorical strategy or argument. No defense had overtly accounted for the diversity of texts that made up mid-­fourteenth-­century culture or Boccaccio’s own oeuvre. Boccaccio instead had to develop a series of interrelated arguments to valorize the various literatures circulating around the Italian peninsula. The first section of this chapter addresses Boccaccio’s defense of vernacular fiction. The chapter begins with Boccaccio’s apology for vernacular writing because he inherited notions about the signifying properties of literature from Dante. Boccaccio even drew on Dante’s views to defend Dante in the Trattatello and Esposizioni, characterizing him as an author who had “mirabilmente” (marvelously) written an allegorical fiction about Christian spirituality and ethics (Tratt. §179; and cf. Tratt. §177; Gen. 14.7.1–7; and Espos., Acc. 17–22 and 30–31). At the same time, Boccaccio was developing strategies to underscore the dignity of other types of literature. These encompassed fantastic and overtly erotic texts that were quite different from Dante’s or Petrarch’s writings. Nor did these literatures resemble the works of the ancient poet-­theologians that were being defended by Albertino Mussato (1261–1329) and Petrarch. In the Genealogie, Boccaccio modified ideas that he was employing in relation to Dante to champion the literatures that his peers had not explicitly defended, and indeed had sometimes criti­cized. The second section of the chapter assesses how Boccaccio drew on Dante’s ideas about allegory to defend more controversial types of writing, especially his own erotic fictions. The third section addresses the role that allegory played in Boccaccio’s dialogue with Petrarch about the dignity of Latin versus vernacular literature. Though Boccaccio’s ideas about Latin and the vernacular were intertwined with the previous topics, the subject merits a separate treatment

The Allegory of the Corpus   27

because of its importance for Boccaccio’s identity as an author. Boccaccio even drew on his understanding of allegory to transcend Petrarch’s views about the superior cultural dignity of elitist Latin literature versus popular vernacular writing. Boccaccio thus engaged ideas about allegory to reveal the broad scope of his cultural interests, thereby distinguishing himself from both Dante and Petrarch.

B O C C AC C I O’ S DA N T E

Boccaccio wrote a biography of Dante after learning that Petrarch did not have a copy of the Comedy during their meeting in Padua in 1351. Between 1351 and 1353 Boccaccio initially responded by sending Petrarch a large-­format, decorated manuscript of the Comedy (BAV, Vat. Lat. 3199; termed “Vat”), along with a Latin lyric poem about Dante, Ytalie iam certus honos (Already Certain Honor of Italy).2 As the properties of the manuscript suggest implicitly, the Latin poem explicitly proposes that Dante’s works merit serious study. Boccaccio requests that Petrarch concivem doctumque satis pariterque poetam / suscipe, perlege, . . . , cole, comproba (read carefully, . . . , study, and praise a distinguished fellow citizen and learned poet) (ll. 37–38).3 In 1352–55, Boccaccio then composed a vernacular biography of the poet under the Latin title De origine, vita, studiis et moribus viri clarissimi Dantis Aligerii Florentini, poete illustris, et de operibus compositis ab eodem (Concerning the Origins, Life, Studies and Habits of That Most Distinguished and Illustrious Poet Dante Alighieri, and the Works Composed by Him). The biography introduces the first of Boccaccio’s three Dante anthologies (referred to as “To”; ABC, Zelada 104.6), which were probably inspired by collections of Virgil’s poems.4 “To” contains Dante’s Vita nova, Comedy, and fifteen canzoni distese, or “extended poems,” several of which were included in the Convivio. The manuscript also features paratextual materials that present Dante as a writer whose cultural import resembles that of an ancient auctoritas. For example, the biography functions as an accessus, an introduction to a commentary on a biblical or classical text, by addressing biographical, historical, and literary matters. Readers have often noted that the biography complements the manuscript’s classicizing characterization of Dante by likening Dante’s life to Petrarch’s.5 Like Petrarch, Dante was mistreated

28  Boccaccio’s Corpus

by the city of Florence; craved the poetic laurel crown; worked in solitude to avoid politics; struggled with erotic desires; and above all cultivated classical pursuits (Tratt. §§1–10, 19, 22, 28–29, 51, 84, 172–74).6 The biography also features both a discussion of the origins of poetry and a consideration of the relationship between poetry and theology (Tratt. §§128–64), recurring topics in the humanist writings of Mussato and Petrarch. After meeting Boccaccio in Milan in 1359, Petrarch sent a letter to his friend (Familiares 21.15), in which he questioned Boccaccio’s humanist characterization of Dante.7 Boccaccio then revised the biography under the vernacular title Della origine, vita, costumi e studii del chiarissimo poeta Dante Alighieri di Firenze, e dell’opere composte da lui (On the Origin, Life, Customs and Studies of the Illustrious Poet Dante Alighi­ eri, and His Writings). This second version appears at the beginning of an anthology of vernacular lyric writings by Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, and Petrarch (termed “Chig”; 1363–66). Boccaccio subsequently revised the biography again in the late 1360s, but the autograph is not extant. He himself also called it “in sua laude un trattatello” (a little treatise in praise [of Dante]) in his commentary on the Comedy (Espos., Acc. 36). At the end of his life, Boccaccio gave about sixty public lectures on the Comedy, between October 1373 and January 1374, at the Florentine church Santo Stefano in Badia.8 Boccaccio compiled the written version of the lectures during the period when he was speaking. The Esposizioni have references to both listeners and readers (Espos., Acc. 1–4 and 74; 1.1.1; 1.2.1; and 8.1.17; autograph not extant).9 Like other Dante commentators, Boccaccio included remarks in the accessus about authorship, the properties of the poem, and the category of philosophy to which the poem belongs, namely, ethics (Espos., Acc. 42). The Esposizioni are organized according to university teaching commonplaces and the Scholastic lectio (divisio and expositio textus, or division into and commentary on discrete textual units).10 In general, Boccaccio discusses issues related to language, doctrine, the historical context of episodes in the Comedy, ethics, and the poem’s allegory. For example, the pilgrim’s physical tiredness in Inferno 1 is interpreted as intellectual sleepiness or sin (Espos. 1.2.29– 46). As in the Trattatello, Boccaccio was trying to make the vernacular poem appealing to humanists. He thus defended literature by drawing on humanist ideas about the origins of poetry and by discussing similarities between poetry and theology (Espos. 1.1.70–112).11

The Allegory of the Corpus   29

Boccaccio championed Dante by copying his works in formats that implied the author’s vernacular writings should be considered as culturally significant as ancient Latin works. He also sought to promote Dante by suggesting that the vernacular poet and the humanist Petrarch shared classical interests. At the same time, he highlighted the dignity of Dante’s writing with a more fundamental rhetorical strategy. In each version of the vita, Boccaccio characterized Dante as an author of allegorical fiction with Christian truths. He structurally foregrounded ideas about the signifying properties of Dante’s writing in the opening, middle, and concluding sections of the biography (e.g., Tratt. §§16–19, 128–63, and 215–29). In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio also emphasized that Dante was a writer of Christian allegory both when addressing the Comedy’s properties in the accessus and when commenting on the first cantos of the poem (e.g., Espos., Acc. 8–10 and 18–22). The fact that the topics of these passages are similar suggests that remarks about allegory in the Trattatello and Esposizioni were developed to complement and shed light on one another. Scholars have not typically considered Boccaccio’s ideas about allegory in the Trattatello, Genealogie, and Esposizioni in a comparative and comprehensive manner.12 The selective nature of previous studies may have prompted modern readers to harbor contradictory opinions about Boccaccio’s theoretical ideas. Boccaccio’s views have typically been discussed in relation to humanist debates about classical poetry, in which allegory played an important but a limited role.13 In recounting these debates, diverse readers have asserted that Boccaccio merely repeated ideas from Petrarch, even when he boldly repurposed Petrarch’s ideas to defend Dante.14 The originality of Boccaccio’s conception of allegory comes into sharper focus through a consideration of his debts to Dante’s vernacular writings. The nature of his views also emerges more clearly when his critical works are contextualized in relation to notions in medieval literary theory. A more detailed historical interpretation of Boccaccio’s writings reveals the novelty of his ideas with respect to his near contemporaries and previous authors. This comprehensive, comparative methodology also clarifies how Boccaccio viewed the properties of his own fictional writings, a topic that has engendered conflicting interpretations.15 In general, the fact that Boccaccio was drawing on such diverse traditions implies that he wanted to transcend peninsular and Florentine debates about literature. It also suggests that he was addressing readerships beyond those

30  Boccaccio’s Corpus

who might have seen one of his manuscript anthologies, for example, Petrarch, Florentine Dante enthusiasts, or government dignitaries. In his scholarship, Boccaccio drew on theoretical traditions related to the Bible, Neoplatonic philosophy, classical poetry, and Dante’s Comedy. In the Esposizioni, he recalls how the Bible signifies with four senses when explaining why poets like Dante employ allegory. He first recalls the Neoplatonic commonplace that poets use allegory to conceal important ideas from the masses, and then adds that readers enjoy the search for meaning (Espos. 1.2.4–6 and 10–11; cf. Somnium 1.2.7–19). Then, like other contemporaries, Boccaccio elucidates the notion of polysemy by discussing the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses of Psalm 113 (In exitu Israel de Egypto; Espos. 1.2.18–20; and cf. Gen. 1.3.6–9).16 In addition to biblical exegetical ideas, Boccaccio references humanist ideas about the discursive properties of ancient poetry. The humanists defended exceptional ancient writers by drawing on Aristotle’s ideas about the poet-­theologian (Metaphysics 1.3, 983b28–30), who—according to Aristotle—was not to be considered a liar but an inspired author.17 Petrarch developed his defense of poets in his speech for the poetic laurel crown, Collatio laureationis (1341); in the Latin epistle that introduced his eclogues, Familiares 10.4 (1349); and in his diatribe against physicians, Invective contra medicum (1352–53 and revised in the 1360s).18 Mussato expressed ideas about the poeta-­theologus and literature in Latin metrical letters modeled on Horace’s epistolary poem Ars poetica: Ep. 4 (1316); Ep. 7 (1308 or perhaps 1316); and Ep. 18 (1316).19 Petrarch suggested that the early poets depicted ideas about morality, history, and nature, while Mussato argued that they signified notions related to these topics and basic ideas about the coming of Christ.20 They added that these exceptional writers also conveyed ideas as the prophets did, by employing a variety of modi tractandi (modes of treating a subject).21 Mussato and Petrarch discuss modi such as lyric forms, meter, and figurative tropes like metaphor and allegory. In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio summarized Petrarch’s Familiares 10.4 when considering Dante’s models and literary predecessors (Espos. 1.1.70–112, esp. 73–77). Finally, Boccaccio was influenced by the Dante commentary tradition, probably by the works of Jacopo Alighieri (ca. 1289–1348), the author of the Ottimo commento (ca. 1333–38), Guido da Pisa (ca. 1250–ca. 1340),

The Allegory of the Corpus   31

and Pietro Alighieri (1300–1364).22 In general, one commentator’s debts to another are difficult to identify because the writers echo each other and repeat similar ideas.23 Nevertheless, the author of the “Epistle to Can Grande” (ca. 1315–17), whose attribution to Dante is disputed, generally influenced later discussions of the Comedy.24 The “Epistle” treats the subjects typically found in an accessus, topics related to authorship, genre, and style. The author begins with a reflection on polysemy and allegoria in factis in the Bible, but notably does not attempt a fourfold reading of the poem (ECG §7). He discusses only the literal and allegorical senses of the Comedy and states that one of its modi tractandi is fictivus (fictional) (ECG §9). Like biblical exegetes and classical commentators, the Dante commentators also analyzed the “causes” of authorship by considering biographical, ethical, historical, and political matters.25 Their remarks typi­cally downplay the Comedy’s historicizing and prophetic truth claims, and instead present the poem as a conventional fiction.26 For example, in the proem to his Chiose sopra alla “Commedia” (ca. 1322), Jacopo Alighieri explains that the Comedy is a fictional poem about mortal vices, spiritual cleansing, and the blessedness of Paradise (Pr. 30–53).27 Guido da Pisa’s exegesis instead represents an important exception to the common view that the poem is a conventional work of fiction.28 In his Expositiones (Exp.) (ca. 1327–40), Guido initially states that one of the poem’s modi tractandi is “fictivus” (fictional) (Exp., Pr. 7 and cf. 14).29 However, he goes on to characterize the Comedy as a prophetic text with four senses: hystoricus (literal), allegoricus, tropologicus, anagogicus (Exp., Pr. 14). He argues that Dante was the calamus Spiritus Sancti (pen of the Holy Spirit) (Exp., Pr. 10) and interprets the pilgrim’s sleepiness in Inferno 1 as an example of a divinely inspired vision (as an oraculum, a visio, and a somnium according to the Macrobian classification cited; Exp. 1.ex.1; cf. Somnium 1.3.2–11). Finally, the commentators also noted in passing that literary, biblical, and even philosophi­ cal texts feature lyric forms and figurative language. Guido mentions the examples of Plato’s writings and the Song of Songs as texts that have meta­phoric elements (Exp. 1.ex.91). In the Trattatello, Boccaccio’s discussion of Dante and allegory reflects these traditions, but also his own views of the Comedy. In the biography, Boccaccio comments on all of Dante’s vernacular and Latin writings (Tratt. §§193–201). However, he only highlights the formal and symbolic

32  Boccaccio’s Corpus

properties of the epic-­comic poem.30 In fact, Boccaccio addresses how Dante had promoted literature in the Comedy by comparing the formal properties of the poem to the ontology of prophetic visions.31 Boccaccio underscored his understanding of Dante’s rhetorical strategy in the opening and concluding sections of the Trattatello—by framing the biography within a vision (Tratt. §§16–19 and 205–28). In prefatory remarks, Boccaccio explains that he composed the biography to honor Dante since Florence mistreated its poet by exiling and ignoring him (Tratt. §§1–10). Boccaccio then first recounts a dream that Dante’s mother had (§§16–19); continues with anecdotes about the poet’s political involvement and death (§§20–91); highlights Dante’s views of Florence, appearance, and character (§§92–126); gives a defense of literature (§§127–62); treats Dante’s faults and writings (§§163–204); and finally interprets the dream (§§205– 28). In beginning the biography with a dream, Boccaccio modeled his work on Suetonius’s life of Virgil.32 He thereby implied that Dante’s poem was the modern vernacular equivalent of Virgil’s ancient Latin epic. Recalling the description of Virgil’s birth, Boccaccio recounts that Dante’s mother dreamt that she would give birth to Dante under a laurel tree (Tratt. §§16– 18).33 Boccaccio then discusses Dante’s life, but he comments on how the dream truthfully foretold aspects of his vita at the end of the biography. He also interprets the dream of Dante’s mother allegorically in relation to the cultural and religious significance of the Comedy (Tratt. §§208–28). The frame of the Trattatello suggests that the signifying properties of the Comedy resemble those of an inspired vision or dream. However, by making this claim, Boccaccio was not classifying the poem within the dream-vision genre. (Dante himself did not categorize the poem as a dream vision.) In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio interprets the pilgrim’s sleepi­ness allegorically as sin (Espos. 1.1.11 and 1.2.29–36). Instead, the frame suggests that the Comedy’s properties should be likened to a somnium, a visio, and an oraculum. In his taxonomy of visionary experience, Macrobius explained that a somnium communicates via symbols and obscure events (allegorically); that a visio relates truthful ideas; and that an oraculum is inspired by an authority figure (Somnium 1.3.2–11). Boccaccio discussed Macrobius’s well-­known classification in the Genealogie (Gen. 1.31.6–20).34 The frame specifies that the Comedy signifies truthful ideas in a manner akin to a visio and should be considered authoritative.35 Moreover, the frame implies that the allegorical properties of Dante’s

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poem approximate the historical prefiguration of the Bible. Boccaccio subsequently explains that Dante’s mother had a divine dream that was a “predimostrazione” (predemonstration) of Dante’s life and career (Tratt. §§209–10). These remarks imply that as the dream “pre-­demonstrated” the poet’s life, so the Comedy represents aspects of the unfolding of history. Therefore, Guido da Pisa drew on ideas about dreams to characterize Dante as a prophetic visionary, potentially akin to Daniel, the prophet, or David, the author of the Psalms, who are discussed in the Prologus (Exp., Pr. 1, 6, and 12). Boccaccio engaged concepts related to visions to elucidate more overtly the formal properties of Dante’s literary text. The dream frame foregrounds Dante’s importance as an author of literature by proposing that he deserves the poetic laurel crown.36 In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio specifies more directly that the Comedy should not be considered an untruthful or a fraudulent form of writing. His discussion is again influenced by ideas in the Dante commentaries, which were partially indebted to the “Epistle to Can Grande.” Boccaccio probably had direct knowledge of at least the first part of the letter. In the Trattatello, he explains that Dante sent various letters to Can Grande (Tratt. §§183, 189, and 194).37 Though echoing ideas in the “Epistle,” Boccaccio altered the presentation of these ideas with respect to the letter. The author of the “Epistle” first elucidated the concept of polysemy with a discussion of allegoria in factis and the four senses of Psalm 113 (ECG §7). He then treated the Comedy’s literal and allegorical senses: Est ergo subiectum totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post mortem simpliciter sumptus; nam de illo et circa illum totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, subiectum est homo prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est. (ECG §8) The subject, then, of the whole work, taken in the literal sense only, is the state of souls after death, pure and simple. For on and about that the argument of the whole works turns. If, however, the work be regarded from the allegorical point of view, the subject is man according as by his merits or demerits in the exercise of his free will he is deserving of reward or punishment by justice.

34  Boccaccio’s Corpus

E’ adunque il suggetto, secondo il senso litterale, lo stato dell’anime dopo la morte de’ corpi semplicemente preso . . . ; il suggetto secondo il senso allegorico è: come l’uomo, per lo libero arbitrio meritando e dismeritando, è alla giustizia di guiderdonare e di punire obligato. (Espos., Acc. 8) Therefore, its subject in the literal sense, taken simply, is the state of souls after the death of their bodies. . . . In the allegorical sense, the subject relates to how humankind, through meritorious or demeritorious use of free will, is bound by justice to punishment or reward. Boccaccio initially explains that the subject of the poem is twofold, both literal and allegorical, thus obscuring topics related to fourfold allegoria in factis. He then turns to discuss its modi tractandi (as the author of the “Epistle” does in a later section): La forma o vero il modo del trattare è poetico, fittivo, discrittivo, digressivo e transuntivo; e, con questo, difinitivo, divisivo, probativo, reprobativo e positivo d’essempli. (Espos., Acc. 10; emphasis added) The style, or method, of composition is poetic, fictional, descriptive, digressive, and mimetic. It also serves to define, to classify, to prove, to refute, and to provide examples. Forma sive modus tractandi est poeticus, fictivus et descriptivus, digressivus, transumptivus, et cum hoc diffinitivus, divisivus, probativus, improbativus et exemplorum positivus. (ECG §9; emphasis added) The form of manner of treatment is poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, and figurative; and further, it is definitive, analytical, probative, refutative, and exemplificative. By not discussing fourfold exegesis in the accessus, Boccaccio clearly distinguished the Comedy’s fictional mode of signifying from historical allegoria in factis.

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Several commentators, Jacopo Alighieri among them, classified the Comedy as a fiction perhaps out of a limited understanding of the poem’s novel signifying properties. Late medieval readers also sometimes categorized the poem as a fiction to obscure the poem’s controversial prophetic character. By contrast, Boccaccio’s engagement with the Comedy should not be understood either as an unintentional or as a conservative qualification of Dante’s truth claims or poetic achievement.38 These passages in the Esposizioni champion the truthfulness and cultural significance of what is characterized as a literary text. Indeed, Boccaccio specifies that the Comedy, though a fiction, is nevertheless true and should be considered more truthful than other secular fictions. He explains that Dante’s Comedy is not like comedies about pastoral love affairs that did not actually happen or could have happened (in medieval rhetorical terms, fabula or argumentum): “nelle comedìe si racontano cose che per avventura mai non furono, quantunque non sieno sì strane da’ costumi degli uomini che essere state non possano” (in comedies there are recounted events that never took place, though they may not vary so much from normal actions so as to be unbelievable) (Espos., Acc. 22, and generally 18–22). Adapting an idea expressed in the “Epistle,” he adds that the “istoria” (story) of the Comedy recounts the events of salvation history: la sustanziale istoria del presente libro, dell’essere dannati i peccatori, che ne’ loro peccati muoiono, a perpetua pena, e quegli, che nella grazia di Dio trapassono, essere allevati alla eterna gloria, è, secondo la catolica fede, vera e stata sempre. (Espos., Acc. 22; emphasis added) The substantial story of this work (i.e., that sinners who die in their sins are condemned to eternal punishment and that those who pass away in the grace of God are raised up to eternal glory) is and has always been true according to the Catholic faith. Nam si totius operis litteraliter sumpti sic est subiectum, status animarum post mortem non contractus sed simpliciter acceptus, manifestum est quod hac in parte talis status est subiectum, sed contractus, scilicet status animarum beatarum post mortem. Et si totius operis allegorice sumpti subiectum est homo prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem

36  Boccaccio’s Corpus

est iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius, manifestum est in hac parte hoc subiectum contrahi, et est homo prout obnoxius est iustitie premiandi. (ECG §11) For if the subject of the whole work taken in the literal sense is the state of souls after death, pure and simple, without limitation, it is evident that in this part the same state is the subject, but with a limitation, namely, the state of blessed souls after death. And if the subject of the whole work from the allegorical point of view is man according as by his merits or demerits in the exercise of his free will he is deserving of reward or punishment by justice, it is evident that in this part this subject has a limitation, and that it is man according as by his merits he is deserving of reward by justice. Boccaccio’s characterization of the Comedy conflates different senses of what it means to say a narrative is true. Boccaccio discusses the generic properties of comedies in terms of whether they are historically true or verisimilar. In his analysis of the Comedy, he instead argues that, though fictional, the poem is true because its “substantial story” concerns salvation history. Boccaccio was either correctly intuiting Dante’s own understanding of the Comedy, or he was ignoring other claims that Dante had made about the historical nature of the poem. Like other Dante commentators, he was thus attempting to attenuate objections about the poem’s orthodoxy, but unlike other dantisti, he was more overtly championing the semiotic value of the poem’s supposedly fictional narrative. After addressing the Comedy’s formal properties in the biography and commentary, Boccaccio develops the second part of his argument in each text. He highlights the properties that are common to both secular and religious writing when discussing the origins of literature. Like his contemporaries, Boccaccio argues that ancient poets signified in a literary form that resembles the properties of the Bible. But whereas Petrarch, Mussato, and Guido da Pisa suggested that ancient fictions have many modi similar to the Bible’s, Boccaccio emphasizes more overtly that the modus of allegory is common to all texts. Boccaccio probably prioritized the role of allegory in literature because neither Petrarch’s nor Mus­sato’s

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arguments about the poeta-­theologus were necessarily valid for prose works. Their writings did not address texts such as Apuleius’s Latin Metamorphoses or Boccaccio’s vernacular Filocolo or Decameron. Therefore, when discussing Dante or ancient writers, Boccaccio was also promoting the dignity and orthodoxy of his own writings. In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio highlights the importance of allegory in his literary theory when he cites, summarizes, but crucially alters Petrarch’s Familiares 10.4 (1349; Espos. 1.1.73–77). Petrarch begins by briefly noting that the fictions of the poet-­theologians and the Bible are allegorical: Cristum modo leonem modo agnum modo vermem dici, quid nisi poeticum est? mille talia in Scripturis Sacris invenies que persequi longum est. Quid vero aliud parabole Salvatoris in Evangelio sonant, nisi sermonem a sensibus alienum sive, ut uno verbo exprimam, alieniloquium, quam allegoriam usitatiori vocabulo nuncupamus? Atqui ex huiusce sermonis genere poetica omnis intexta est. Sed subiectum aliud. (Fam. 10.4.1–2) Is it not an example of poetry when Christ is called a lion, lamb, or worm? You could find a thousand other examples in the Bible, which would be too long to enumerate. What else are the parables of our Savior in the Gospel, if not a discourse with other senses, what I might call with one phrase “other speech” [alieniloquium], which we typically call allegory? And poetry has many examples of this kind of speech. But let’s change the topic. He then describes at length how both secular and sacred writings feature modi, such as transferred tropes, meter, and so on (Fam. 10.4.6–9). Boccaccio instead ignores other modi and treats the presence of allegory in secular and sacred texts on three occasions. He first notes that exceptional ancients intuited ideas about God, and then “nascosero quelli [gli alti misteri della divinità] sotto fabuloso velame” (hid them [the high mysteries of the divinity] under a fictional narrative) (Espos. 1.1.74). He then repeats that the poets, like the biblical prophets, communicated their ideas under an allegorical “velamento” (veil): “non sono dal modo del parlare diffe­ renti da’ profeti, ne’ quali leggiamo, sotto velamento di parole nella prima

38  Boccaccio’s Corpus

aparenza fabulose, l’opere ammirabili della divina potenza” (their way of speaking does not differ from that of prophets, in whose writings we read of the wondrous works of divine power, concealed under a veil of apparently fabulous words) (Espos. 1.1.75). Finally, he concludes that though the early poets did not comprehend the nature of reality as perfectly as the prophets, they nevertheless wrote works with allegorical properties (Espos. 1.1.76). In the Trattatello, Boccaccio asserts that both poets and prophets communicated allegorically by employing a fictional veil. Informed by Dante’s views about the similarities between literature and visions, Boccaccio develops this argument by highlighting aspects of the Old Testament that can be ontologically likened to fiction. He notes that scripture communicates with a “figura d’alcuna istoria” (figure of a history; subsequently glossed as an apparition), the “senso d’alcuna visione” (sense of a vision), and finally the “’ntendimento d’alcun lamento” (meaning of a lament) (Tratt. §141). Poetry communicates ideas through fictions about gods, stories of humans who change forms, and what are termed “leggiadre persuasioni” (graceful persuasions) (Tratt. §142). Boccaccio then implies that the kinds of truths depicted in religious and secular texts are also similar. He explains that the Holy Spirit represented the virgin birth to Moses in the burning bush (“figura d’alcuna istoria”), and the lamentations of Jeremiah foreshadowed the destruction of Jerusalem (Tratt. §143). The poets also seem to have written about notions that a Christian would understand typologically or anagogically. For example, Boccaccio notes that Hercules was transformed into a god because of his deeds, and posits that his life reveals how humans can attain eternal salvation (Tratt. §§141 and 145–46). Bolstered by the notion that even biblical writers used a fictional allegorical mode, Boccaccio concludes with a controversial claim, for the fourteenth century. Like Petrarch and Mussato, he argues that literary and sacred texts “quasi una cosa si possono dire, dove uno medesimo sia il suggetto” (can almost be called one thing, where the subject is one and the same) (Tratt. §154; and cf. Espos. 1.2.24).39 However, unlike Petrarch or Mussato, Boccaccio supported the claim with a more detailed, Dante-­ inspired reflection on allegory. Boccaccio alerts Petrarch to the significance of Dante’s ideas about allegorical fiction and prophetic visiones by concluding his analysis with a translation of Petrarch’s Familiares 10.4

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(1–2). He would later summarize and alter the same passage in the Esposizioni (the passage cited previously): E che altra cosa è che poetica fizione nella Scrittura dire Cristo essere ora leone e ora agnello e ora vermine, e quando drago e quando pietra, e in altre maniere molte, le quali volere tutte raccontare sarebbe lunghissimo? che altro suonano le parole del Salvatore nello evangelio, se non uno sermone da’ sensi alieno? Il quale parlare noi con più usato vocabolo chiamiamo “allegoria.” (Tratt. §154) And what else is it but a poetic fiction when Scripture sometimes says Christ is a lion, a lamb, and a worm, as well as a dragon and a rock, and so on; and indeed it would take too much time to list all the examples? What else are the words of the Savior in the Gospel, if not speech with another sense, which we commonly term “allegory?” Boccaccio thereby provocatively showed Petrarch how Dante’s ideas might be used to defend the literatures dearest to him, just as he himself was doing in his own writings. Boccaccio was drawing on Dante’s insights to defend poets, but he also championed Dante by asserting that he was a poet-­theologian. This is the third and final stage of his arguments in the Trattatello and Esposizioni. Boccaccio’s interpretation of the dream emphasizes that Dante taught truths in a poem to recapitulate Christ’s preaching. He explains that Dante wanted to instruct readers as the poets and Christ also did. In his view, Dante teaches by means of a poetic depiction of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise (Tratt. §§217–18 and 223–25). In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio later clarifies that Dante’s Comedy is an exposition of Christian concepts in verse (Espos. 1.2.6–7 and 18). Guido da Pisa similarly noted that Dante and the Latin poet Arator (fl. ca. 540) lyricized episodes from the Bible (Exp., Pr. 6 and 12). Boccaccio then explains that Dante composed select passages of the poem in imitation of the Bible’s fourfold allegory. Whereas the author of the “Epistle to Can Grande” and Boccaccio discussed the Comedy by reference to two senses (ECG §7–8), Boccaccio specifies that the Comedy occasionally features the three allegorical-­ spiritual senses

40  Boccaccio’s Corpus

in different passages: “dissi questo libro esser poliseno, per ciò che tutti questi sensi, da chi tritamente volesse guardare, gli si potrebbono in assai parti dare” (I said that this book is polysemous because all these types of meanings may be found in various parts of it, even by the most superficial reader) (Espos. 1.2.21). In his Ovidius moralizatus (1340), Pierre Bersuire (ca. 1290–1362) also adapted a model of biblical exegesis to secular (pagan) texts, but thereby ignored authorial intention (allegoresis).40 Like the Dante commentators, Boccaccio instead asserts that Dante intentionally composed his poem to approximate how the Bible signifies (allegory). Boccaccio, however, never applies a fourfold model of interpretation to literary works in any of his scholarly texts. He glosses the three senses under the allegorical, a calculated decision on his part to apply simi­lar exegetical practices to diverse writings.41 He has nevertheless affirmed the dignity of fiction in more sustained terms in comparison to other writers, thanks in part to Dante. Boccaccio’s ideas about classical literature and the Comedy were controversial in the late fourteenth century, and his views were debated. Consequently, Boccaccio changed the nuances of his arguments in subsequent drafts of the Trattatello and clarified matters in the Esposizioni. For example, in the final redaction of the Trattatello, Boccaccio adds the commonplace that poets do not have “piena” (full) knowledge of the Holy Spirit or God (Tratt. B §§102 and 103–5). More importantly, Boccaccio’s evolving ideas reveal the acutely self-­reflexive nature of his understanding of Dante’s poetic contributions. Several fourteenth-­century Dante commentators, for example Guido da Pisa and Benvenuto da Imola (1330– 88), championed Dante as a peerless poet and an inspired prophet.42 Others, such as Pietro and Jacopo Alighieri, characterized Dante as a writer of a conventional fiction with Christian ideas. Scholars have noted that Boccaccio did not boldly characterize Dante, or any author for that matter, as a prophet. Nevertheless, his discussion of Dante did not stem from ignorance about Dante’s truth claims or from mere skepticism about the poet’s ideas.43 Boccaccio’s characterization of Dante is intentional and rhetorically strategic. Boccaccio argues that Dante, and to an extent the poet-­theologians, can represent truths as biblical writers do even though they are not (fully) inspired by the Holy Spirit. In other words, he asserts that an author can depict serious meaning not because of the influence of divine inspiration, but rather on account of the allegorical properties of literature. These

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properties enable writers to engage their communities and fulfill social and spiritual roles akin to a prophet’s. Boccaccio, therefore, endeavored to prove that fiction was not ontologically a lie. He defended the truthfulness of fiction by promoting the symbolic efficacy of more literatures than the Dante commentators (mainly the Comedy) or the humanists (select ancient texts) typically did. For Boccaccio, diverse types of fiction are a valid medium for communicating meaning, in part because poets composed imaginative works and in part because God included metaphoric and fictional elements in the Bible. In his scholarship, Boccaccio also downplayed Dante’s truth claims because he disagreed with several of the poet’s ideas about inspiration and poetics. Moreover, he obfuscated aspects of Dante’s prophetic self-­ fashioning to emphasize similarities between the Florentine writer and the ancient pagan poets (to their mutual benefit). If Boccaccio had characterized Dante as an unrivaled author, he could not have claimed that the poet’s ideas about the signifying properties of the Comedy were valid for many types of writing. Boccaccio appreciated Dante’s views about the epic-­comic poem; however, he drew on these notions for the opposite reasons that Dante had developed them. Dante reflected on the properties of the Comedy to highlight that the work was not like other conventional fictions but was sui generis. Boccaccio emphasized that many writers have key insights about the nature of human experience that resemble Dante’s, and he asserted that many texts can signify as effectively as the Comedy.

T H E G E N E A LO G Y O F A L L E G O RY

The Genealogie deorum gentilium is a compendium of ancient myths for King Hugo IV of Cyprus (d. 1359), who commissioned the work (Gen. 1, Pr. 1–3). It is also addressed to various learned (humanist), unlearned (but Latin-­literate), lay, and clerical readerships, who are mentioned by the narrator (see Gen. 15.6; 15.12.2 and 5; 15.13.3; and 15, Conc. 2–3).44 The text is composed of fifteen books. The first thirteen books feature the interpretations of myths and are organized according to the genealogies of the pagan gods.45 Boccaccio probably began collecting materials for the project in the 1350s, and finished a draft by 1365. He continued to work on the text for the rest of his life, as evidenced by an autograph with colored genealogical trees (BML, 52.9). The final two books

42  Boccaccio’s Corpus

(14–15) contain the defense of literature and may have been revised in 1372–75. In the apology, Boccaccio foregrounds issues concerning whether and how writers are inspired. He again draws on the humanist concept of the poet-­theologian, namely, the idea that there were exceptional ancient writers who were not liars but inspired individuals. Boccaccio initially defines literature (poesis) as a form of inspired writing: Poesis . . . est fervor quidam exquisite inveniendi atque dicendi, seu scribendi quod inveneris. Qui, ex sinu Dei procedens, paucis mentibus, ut arbitror, in creatione conceditur, ex quo, quoniam mirabilis sit, rarissimi semper fuere poete. (Gen. 14.7.1) Poesis . . . is a certain fervor of exquisitely inventing and saying or writing what is found. This fervor, which comes from the bosom of God, is in my opinion given to few intellects, and therefore because it is rare there were always few poets. He then specifies that poesis does not derive from the Greek poio, pois (or fingo, fingis; to form, deceive in Latin), but from poetes meaning exquisita locutio (exquisite discourse) (Gen. 14.7.4).46 Poesis, therefore, defined by Boccaccio as “exalted discourse,” encompasses the literary broadly understood.47 Boccaccio even highlights the wide-­ranging nature of the concept by adducing as examples of poesis works written in materno sermone (vernacular speech) (Gen. 14.7.2). Moreover, though initially noting that few poets are inspired (as Petrarch does), he subsequently expands upon Petrarch’s elitist views by suggesting that anyone who writes is inspired to a degree. He will go on to assert that not just select men but even an anicula (old woman) in Apuleius’s Latin prose Metamorphoses told a story with metaphysical meanings (Gen. 14.9.13–14).48 Boccaccio’s initial agreement with Petrarch may have been designed to introduce critical readers to these provocative concepts in progressively more controversial stages of argument. Boccaccio then addresses how God influences the creative capacities of a human author. He repeats ideas about poetic inspiration that Cicero had voiced in his oration Pro Archia (8.18; and Gen. 14.7.5–7).49 Petrarch discovered the Ciceronian speech and referred to it when discussing this

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same subject in his Collatio laureationis and Invective (2.7 and 1.27, respectively).50 Boccaccio explains: Atque sic a summis hominibus eruditissimisque accepimus: ceterarum rerum studia et doctrina et preceptis et arte constare, poetam natura ipsa valere, et mentis viribus excitari, et quasi divino quodam spiritu inflari. (Gen. 14.7.6) Learned men of excellent and profound erudition have taught that the study of other disciplines consists of doctrine, rules, and art, but the writer [poetam] excels by nature itself, stimulated by the strength of mind and filled by a certain divine spirit. Boccaccio thus develops a notion of authorship for secular writers that approximates the medieval theory of biblical authorship, the so-­called duplex causa efficiens.51 Medieval exegetes believed that God inspired biblical authors to write in a manner that exceeded their human capabilities. God was responsible for the allegorical and spiritual senses of the Bible and the historical events that signified those senses. The inspired author was responsible for composing the literal sense that recounted those events. In an analogous manner, Boccaccio maintains that a divine spirit “fills” the mind of a writer, who is guided by his “stimulated” yet human intellect. After discussing inspiration, Boccaccio reflects on the signifying properties of literary texts. As he does in the Trattatello and Esposizioni, so in the Genealogie he maintains that allegory is the defining property of literature. He thereby again distinguishes himself from Petrarch and Mussato, who emphasized that secular and religious texts have various modi in common. Moreover, Boccaccio clarifies that the presence of allegory distinguishes a literary from a rhetorical work. He explains that though both writers and orators use figures of speech and beautiful language, authors of literature intentionally structure their works to signify allegorically: Dicent forsan, ut huic a se incognite detrahant, quo utuntur rethorice opus esse, quod ergo pro parte non inficiar. Habet enim suas inventiones rethorica; verum apud integumenta fictionum nulle sunt rethorice partes; mera poesis est, quicquid sub velamento componimus et exponitur exquisite. (Gen. 14.7.8; emphasis added)

44  Boccaccio’s Corpus

They ignorantly will assert, perhaps to detract from it, that what the poets use is the purview of rhetoric, which in part I do not deny. Rhetoric has its inventions, but they have nothing to do with the veil [integumenta] of fictions. Pure literature [poesis] is whatever we compose under the veil and is exquisitely interpreted. Boccaccio subsequently asserts that the veil to which he refers is not merely rhetorical in nature: Quis preter ignaros dicat: “Fecerunt fabulas poete vacuas et inanes, solo valentes cortice, ut eloquentiam demonstrarent?” (Who but the uninformed would say: “Poets made empty and vacuous fables, only to demonstrate their eloquence in the veil?”) (Gen. 14.10.1). Boccaccio also clarifies differences between literature and philosophy by reference to their unique modi tractandi. Philosophy and literature communicate similar ideas, but philosophical texts signify apertissime (most openly) by means of syllogisms, whereas literary texts conceal truths sub velamento (under a veil) (Gen. 14.17.3–4). Boccaccio then supports the claim that literary works have similar signifying properties by giving diverse examples of allegorical writing. He reveals his views by evoking but altering Macrobius’s (fl. ca. 400) Neoplatonic criticism of fictional writing in his commentary on the “Dream of Scipio” (recounted in book 6 of Cicero’s De re publica). At the beginning of the commentary, Macrobius argues that fantastic and erotic narratives are unsuitable for signifying serious ideas. He asserts that these fraudulent stories are only fit for nutricum cunas (the cradles of wet nurses) (Somnium 1.2.8). Macrobius then denigrates other types of fiction, such as Aesop’s fables, which depict truthful ideas but in a fantastic narrative form (Somnium 1.2.9). He concludes only a narrative that fundatur veri soliditate (is grounded in a solid foundation of [historical] truth) should signify philo­ sophical ideas (Somnium 1.2.9). Boccaccio counters writers such as Macrobius by arguing that fantastic and erotic stories do communicate serious allegorical content. Boccaccio first underscores the orthodoxy of fiction by discussing the word fabula. Fables are not lies, he explains, for the etymology of fable stems from the Latin for, fari (to speak) the verb that gives us the noun confabu­ latio (speaking with, confabulate) (Gen. 14.9.3). He notes that Christ himself confabulated with his disciples in the village Emmaus after his resurrection. Boccaccio then adds that not only Aesop but even a

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philosophical authority such as Aristotle used fictional fables in his writings (Gen. 14.9.5). He continues that the first poets also created narratives with both historical and fictional elements to signify (Gen. 14.9.6), while the poets Virgil and Homer combined what happened or could have happened (historia and argumentum) in their epics (Gen. 14.9.7).52 Boccaccio concludes that even God signified with these three types of narrative in the Bible. He explains that trees and woods speak in the Old Testament (an example of fiction; Judg. 9:8–15);53 both the prophets and poets mix history and fiction with the same method contegendi aut detegendi (of covering or uncovering) (Gen. 14.9.9); and Jesus’s parables feature more historical than fictional elements (Gen. 14.9.10). These claims are supported by the fact that the historical prefiguration of the Old Testament encompassed both historical events and divine visions. As poets compose fictional works, so scripture features the visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel (Gen. 14.9.9). Boccaccio’s point, therefore, is not merely to review the literary properties of the Bible, as, for example, biblical commentators did in their prologues. His discussion highlights the range of elements common to various forms of writing. Boccaccio also highlights the self-­referential import of his analysis of textual signification, thereby distinguishing his views from Petrarch’s. In particular, Boccaccio disagrees with Petrarch about the symbolic potential of the stories delirantium vetularum (of crazy old women) (Gen. 14.9.8). In the Invective, for example, Petrarch criticized kinds of fables with fantastic creatures and women as superficial children’s stories: Audires, credo, libentius fabellas, quas post cenam ante focum de orco et lamiis audire soles, sed annis certe iam non puer, si potes, adsuesce melioribus. (Inv. 3.111) I think you would rather hear fables [fabellas], about ogres and witches, which you typically hear after dinner around the fire, but now that you are no longer a boy, if you can, learn to appreciate better things. At first glance, Boccaccio appears to denigrate the tales of women, just as Petrarch or Macrobius did. He states that this type of tale nec in abscondito

46  Boccaccio’s Corpus

veritatis habet (hides no truth) (Gen. 14.9.8). His initial agreement with Petrarch may again have been calculated, designed to slowly habituate readers to his more controversial notions. Boccaccio later proposes that the fables of female narrators are not only inspired, but that they also communicate major philosophical and spiritual ideas. He explains that Apuleius recounted how a lady told a fable to comfort a girl afflicted by Fortune (Gen. 14.9.13–14). In the Metamorphoses, an anicula (old lady) recounts the story of Cupid and Psyche to the young captive Charis.54 Boccaccio concludes that King Robert was unlearned until fables taught him philosophy and made him nearly as wise as Solomon. The allusion to a female narrator comforting Charis is not occasional but has multiple self-­referential resonances.55 The reference suggests that even genres with highly erotic content, like Apuleius’s Metamorphoses or Boccaccio’s own works, signify metaphysical notions. The old lady in Lucius’s narrative does not merely tell a story to comfort Charis. She tells a story that prefigures the Neoplatonic notion that underwrites Lucius’s entire experiential journey, namely, the soul’s liberation from spiritual slavery. Boccaccio himself believed that Apuleius’s tale revealed such a major spiritual concept. He interpreted the erotic text as an allegory about the soul returning to its divine origins (Gen. 5.22.11–17).56 Boccaccio accordingly recalled Lucius’s odyssey explicitly in the Ameto (26.18). The shepherd Ameto, like Lucius, experiences a spiritual transformation by listening to erotic stories (e.g., Ameto 12.7–8 and 49.1–6).57 Boccaccio also self-­referentially evoked the signifying efficacy of the erotic poetics of the Ameto in the Amorosa visione (AV 41.28–39). In the poem, the dreamer similarly undergoes a spiritual conversion following a variety of erotic and carnal (textual) experiences. Apuleius, in fact, appears with ancient Latin authors in the triumph of Wisdom (AV 5.37–38).58 Moreover, the allusion to the “confabulation” between Charis and the anicula concludes Boccaccio’s discussion of fable that began with Christ speaking with the disciples. This event, of course, was part of the biblical narrative about the soul’s journey from bondage to freedom. That “fable-­telling” among the disciples in a village in turn recalls the Decameron’s narrators, who gather in villas to tell stories. Therefore, Boccaccio acknowledges that the fictions of the poet-­theologians Virgil, Dante, and Petrarch, as well as the historical narratives of Macrobius, reveal important truths. However, he specifies that the erotic and fantastic narratives of Apuleius’s Latin Metamorphoses, the prose short stories of the erotic vernacular Decameron, the adulterous tales

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of the vernacular pastoral Ameto, and the amatory dream vision Amorosa visione do too. Boccaccio developed these arguments to counter Petrarch and other humanists who could be critical of several of Boccaccio’s preferred textual traditions. He instead affirmed the signifying potential of his most ambitious writings that were classified as fictional and female literatures. By drawing on gender to reflect on genre, Boccaccio was engaging established commonplaces in classical and medieval culture. Ovid coded his Latin elegiac poems about love as feminine in contrast to the masculine genres of epic and tragedy that typically dealt with political and martial topics (e.g., Her. 19.5–16; Amores 3.1; Ars 1.17 and 27; Rem. 361– 97). The narrator of the epic Aeneid instead sang of arma virumque (arms and the man), the man who came from Troy to found Rome (Aen. 1.1).59 Aeneas must also end his relationship with Dido to complete the divinely ordained, male project of nation-­building (Aen. 4.219–78). In addition, vernacular writing was associated symbolically with women because a man supposedly invented vernacular poetry to speak to a woman, who did not understand Latin (see Dante, Vn 25.5–6 [16.5–6]).60 Medieval erotic and romance literatures could also be associated with female—and by extension non-­Latin-­literate male—readerships. Francesca da Rimini is damned for (mis)reading a romance story about an affair between Lancelot and Guinevere in the Comedy (Inf. 5.127–38). Boccaccio-­narrator dedicates the erotic stories of the Decameron to women, in part because they feel the effects of love more strongly than men do (Dec., Pr. 9–14). And the guide and dreamer mock the widow in the Corbaccio for reading superficial stories about love (Corb. §§316–18).61 In the Genealogie, Boccaccio also dedicates a paragraph to criticizing male readers, who are seduced by the erotic content and the sensuous women of Ovid’s, Catullus’s, and Propertius’s elegiac poetry (Gen. 14.16.5–6). Based on these passages of the Genealogie, feminine writings include Latin literatures with an overt erotic component; erotic vernacular literatures (Ameto, Amorosa visione, Decameron); texts with female protagonists or storytellers (Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, Ameto, Decameron); and genres including pastoral poetry, dream visions, and short stories. Though indebted to medieval ideas about allegory, Boccaccio’s statement about mera poesis (pure literature) marks a watershed for the history of literary theory. In writing about allegory, Boccaccio synthesized diverse strands of Western thought about religious and secular writings, ancient

48  Boccaccio’s Corpus

and modern texts, Latin and vernacular languages, and elite and popular cultures. His expansive reading inspired him to state—for the first time in overt terms—that allegory is the defining property of literature. As noted in this book’s introduction, it was commonly thought that readers could interpret any text or facet of reality for ideas about the divine will (allegoresis). However, Boccaccio asserted the more controversial notion that writers could intentionally convey serious meaning in any type of writing (allegory). He did not merely state that every text is interpretable; rather, he argued that all texts have efficacious truth-­bearing properties. In addition, he suggested that the presence of allegory justifies literature as a form of writing in comparison to “open” discourses, such as philosophy and theology. For his part, Petrarch also noted—again overtly and explicitly—that allegory was one of the defining properties of literature.62 However, Petrarch had a much more restrictive definition of what should be considered literature. When reflecting on allegory, he was either writing about exceptional ancient poets (Collatio 2–4; and Invective 1.35–42 and 3.131) or his Latin bucolic writings (Familiares 10.4). Unlike Boccaccio, Petrarch did not discuss allegory in Dante’s vernacular writings, and he mocked literatures that feature fantastic and feminine elements (Invective 3.111). Boccaccio instead argues that all literatures—whether fictional or historical—can be truth-­bearing. He appears to have asserted this insight about literature as a response to his cultural environment and expansive reading practices. Boccaccio was reflecting upon more textual traditions in comparison to Petrarch, Mussato, and the Dante commentators. In addition, how Boccaccio does not introduce and discuss allegory is significant. Medieval writers drew on ideas about allegory to differentiate between sacred and secular writing (allegoria in factis versus allegoria in verbis). Boccaccio downplayed and obscured this canonical distinction related to the Bible and imaginative writing. His treatment of allegory suggests that there is one kind of allegory in all texts, not different kinds of allegory in sacred and secular writing, or in historical and fictional literatures. Boccaccio only referred to the four senses of Bible on two occasions, in relation to the general notion that classical texts and the Comedy are polysemous (Gen. 1.3.7–9; and Espos. 1.2.18–21). In the Esposizioni, he explained that various passages of the Comedy have several allegorical senses, an idea indebted to one of Dante’s rhetorical strategies for

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justifying literature. However, whereas Dante adapted the biblical model for all “scritture” (writings) in the Convivio (2.1.2–9), Boccaccio never theorized a biblically inspired fourfold model for diverse literatures. Nor did Boccaccio ever systematically apply such an interpretive model. Boccaccio drew on more general theoretical concepts related to allegory to engage a wide range of texts without distinction. Whereas writers like Pierre Bersuire and Dante adapted fourfold exegetical models to interpret nonbiblical texts, Boccaccio, in his Genealogie and Esposizioni, commented on various literatures by reference to only two senses—literal and allegorical. Though original and provocative, Boccaccio’s understanding of fiction in the Genealogie is again deeply indebted to Dante. Nevertheless, Boccaccio used Macrobius as a foil to show that he was expanding upon both Dante’s and Petrarch’s ideas. Boccaccio was adapting ideas that Dante had developed primarily in relation to his Comedy. Whereas Dante reflected on allegory to highlight the uniqueness of his poem, Boccaccio suggested that other works besides Dante’s have similar allegorical properties. In fact, Boccaccio engaged Dante’s arguments about allegory and fiction to defend the kinds of female, erotic, and fantastic texts from which Dante had distinguished his “poema sacro” (sacred poem) (Par. 25.1). Therefore, with respect to previous writers, Boccaccio endeavored to define in more direct terms the fundamental properties of literature. In his view, all texts are composed of similar narrative types (history and fiction), signify in the same way (allegorically), and every writer is inspired to a degree.

T H E G E N E A LO G Y O F L I T E R AT U R E

Boccaccio drew on his views about allegory to transcend Petrarch’s perceptions about the superior cultural value of elitist Latin versus popular vernacular writing. His strategy did not only depend on the argument that Dante’s vernacular poem conveyed important meaning.63 He did something much bolder given the ideological climate of the fourteenth century. Boccaccio repeatedly asserted that Petrarch’s Latin and Dante’s vernacular writings have the same capacity to signify—despite their different linguistic and generic properties. Boccaccio first documented his interest in Petrarch during his years in Naples. He addressed the fictional Latin

50  Boccaccio’s Corpus

epistle Mavortis milex to Petrarch, who was characterized as a master of the (Latin) liberal arts (ca. 1339–40 [autograph; BML, 29.8]).64 He may have begun his biography of Petrarch, De vita et moribus Domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia (On the Life and Character of Francis Petrarch of Florence), shortly after his return to Florence (ca. 1342–50 [autograph not extant]).65 As he did implicitly in the epistle Mavortis milex, so in the biography he overtly characterizes Petrarch as a learned writer and scholar with humanist interests. When Boccaccio discusses Petrarch’s writings, he only mentions Petrarch’s Latin works, the epic Africa, Franciscus’s dialogue with Augustinus, the Secretum, the political eclogue Argus, and a classicizing comedy, the Philostratus (Vita Pet. §§28–30). By contrast, he obfuscates and downplays the fact that Petrarch composed vernacular writings. Boccaccio only mentions the Canzoniere when discussing Petrarch’s recurring struggles with erotic desires. Boccaccio deemphasizes the extent to which Petrarch may have sinned by interpreting the poet’s desire for Laura as a yearning for the laurel crown: bene puto, Laurettam illam allegorice pro laurea corona quam postmodum est adeptus accipiendam existimo (I myself believe that she must be interpreted as an allegory for the laurel crown, which he subsequently obtained) (Vita Pet. §26). Boccaccio’s allegorical reading of the Canzoniere obscures Petrarch’s contributions to vernacular literature by interpreting his lyrics in light of Latin humanist values.66 Boccaccio thereby guided perceptions of Petrarch by characterizing him as the kind of classicizing writer Petrarch wanted to be known as. Boccaccio’s dialogue with Petrarch about Dante in the 1350s also reveals his interest in issues related to perceptions of vernacular versus Latin writing.67 Boccaccio reflected on Dante’s poetry in two texts composed in the same period, the occasional poem Ytalie iam, originally sent with a copy of the Comedy (“Vat”) to Petrarch, and the first (“To”) version of the Trattatello. Nevertheless, these two texts emphasize different aspects of Dante’s cultural contributions. In Ytalie iam, Boccaccio specifies that Dante wrote in a metrum vulgare . . . modernum (modern vernacular meter) (Ytalie, l. 9), but he should be considered Petrarch’s equal on account of the Comedy’s allegory.68 Ytalie iam first includes a Petrarchan-­ inspired crowning of the poet whose verses are frondibus ac nullis redimiti (uncrowned by any laurel) (Ytalie, ll. 7 and 21–22). Boccaccio then highlights the allegorical nature of the Comedy when he asks Petrarch to read under the veil to discover truths in Dante’s poem:

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Insuper et nudas coram quas ire Camenas forte reris primo intuitu, si claustra Plutonis mente quidem reseres tota, montemque superbum atque Iovis solium, sacris vestirier umbris [et] sublimes sensus cernes . . . (Ytalie, ll. 23–27) Furthermore, those Muses which at first glance you perhaps think go around openly nude, if you will look with your whole mind, you will see the prison of Pluto and the tall mountain and throne of Jove, [and] sublime truths covered by sacred shadows . . . He also underscores the primary role of allegory in Dante’s poetics—and this is the key—by using allegory in the occasional composition dedicated to Dante. He employs myths in the epistle to communicate with Petrarch through an allegorical “veil.” In the first redaction of the Trattatello, Boccaccio instead fashions not a modern vernacular, but a classicizing allegorical author to appeal to humanists. He notes that Dante was the first to resurrect the ancient Muses; that Dante’s poetics imitates the poetics of classical writers such as Virgil, Horace, and Ovid; and that Dante has ennobled the vernacular language as Homer did for Greek and Virgil for Latin (Tratt. §§19, 22, and 84). For these reasons, Boccaccio promoted Dante as an allegorical poet-­theologian. These changes in Boccaccio’s depiction of the allegorical poet reveal the controversial nature of Boccaccio’s views in the mid-­to late fourteenth century. He proceeded cautiously in defending vernacular writing, and he developed different strategies in support of Dante. In Familiares 21.15 (ca. 1359), Petrarch disagreed with Boccaccio’s classicizing characterization of Dante. Petrarch explains that Dante belongs to an earlier generation of vernacular love poets rather than epic writers, and specifies that he instead studies Latin literature (Fam. 21.15.7–8 and 10–13).69 He adds that Dante could (and did) write in Latin, but specifies that he was a more accomplished vernacular poet (Fam. 21.15.24). Between 1363 and 1366, Boccaccio then rewrote the Trattatello (A redaction in “Chig”) as part of a new anthology dedicated not just to Dante but to the vernacular lyric tradition.70 The manuscript

52  Boccaccio’s Corpus

was subsequently split into two parts and reordered by Boccaccio. “Chig” (BAV, L.V.176) is made of a high-­quality parchment and has wide margins for subsequent glosses. It features the revised Trattatello, Vita nova, Cavalcanti’s “Donna me prega” with Dino del Garbo’s commentary, the Latin poem Ytalie iam, Dante’s canzoni distese, and, crucially, the only extant copy of the 1359–62 version of Petrarch’s Canzoniere. The second part (BAV, L.VI.213) instead has the epic Comedy, terza rima summaries before the three canticles, and vernacular prose rubrics for each canto. Before the reordering, the Comedy was probably situated between pre-­and post-­Dantean lyric poetry. However, after the manuscript was altered, Ytalie iam became the bridge between various lyric productions—and between the writings of Dante and Petrarch.71 And the reasons seem to be the following. The Latin allegorical lyric about the vernacular Dante highlights that Latin texts (like Petrarch’s) and vernacular writings (like Dante’s) have similar signifying properties. Moreover, the occasional poem draws attention to the allegorical properties common to the Florentine literary tradition. The poem underscores that vernacular authors (of lyric and epic poetry) structure their texts to signify allegorically. Finally, the bespoke poem about interpreting the Comedy (Ytalie, ll. 37–38) and Dino’s commentary encourage readers to read both lyric and epic texts allegorically. The revised Trattatello accordingly presents a vernacular allegorical Dante as opposed to a Latinate one. The passage comparing the vernacular Dante to Homer and Virgil is excised (see Tratt. §§19, 22, and 84), and references to Dante’s Latin works are also omitted or shortened (Tratt. §§195–201 and A §§133–38). In the Genealogie, Boccaccio highlighted the similar signifying properties of other literary traditions. Whereas “Chig” foregrounded the allegorical dimension of the lyric tradition, the compendium addresses ancient Latin and Greek literatures, modern vernacular writings, a diverse range of genres, and so on. For example, Boccaccio foregrounds more overtly the dignity of vernacular writing by turning Petrarch’s arguments about Dante against Petrarch. Boccaccio subsequently characterizes Dante, as Petrarch was doing, as an author who primarily wrote in the vernacular. However, he then asserts that the vernacular writings of Dante and the Latin writings of Petrarch share key properties. Emblematic of Boccaccio’s response to Petrarch is his summary of allegory in literature at the end of book 14:

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Et, ut ex multis aliquid ostensum sit, noster Dantes, dato materno sermone, sed artificioso, scriberet, in libro, quem ipse Comediam nuncupavit, defunctorum triplicem status iuxta sacre theologie doctrinam designavit egregie. Et illustris atque novissimus poeta Franciscus Petrarca in suis Buccolicis sub velamine pastoralis eloquii veri Dei et inclite Trinitatis laudes irasque eius in calcantes ignavia Petri naviculam mira descriptione notavit. (Gen. 14.22.8) And so that it may be clear, among many poets, our Dante, though he wrote in the maternal tongue, but always with art, indicated in an excellent way, in the book that he himself called the Comedia, the triple state of the dead according to the doctrine of sacred theology. And Francis Petrarch—the illustrious new poet—in his Buccolicum Carmen, under the veil of pastoral language, has written the praises of the true God and wondrous Trinity with incredible descriptions, as well as voiced his outrage against those who shamefully abuse the ship of Peter. Boccaccio bases the passage on the discussion of pagan and Hebrew authors from Petrarch’s Familiares 10.4 (1349). Boccaccio, however, has turned Petrarch’s letter into a history of allegorical poetry. He also replaced Petrarch’s discussion of the biblical epic poets with remarks about Dante and Petrarch (Fam. 10.4.5–9). Drawing again on the symbolic resonances of gender, Boccaccio defines Dante as a feminine vernacular author for having written the Comedy in a materno sermone (maternal language). Boccaccio then pairs the maternal and vernacular Dante with Petrarch, who wrote masculine bucolic poetry in Latin.72 Both Petrarch and Boccaccio appreciated the masculine resonances of bucolic poetry. Petrarch programmatically addressed the commentary on his first eclogue to his brother Gerardo (Fam. 10.4), and the opening eclogue features a commonplace of the genre, a dialogue between men, Monicus and Silvius (see Fam. 10.4.13–19). In his vernacular pastoral Ameto, Boccaccio also included a very brief masculine poetic dialogue between two male shepherds (Ameto 14) in a work that is otherwise programmatically dominated by female narrators.73 Furthermore, Boccaccio emphasizes that Dante’s and Petrarch’s works should be

54  Boccaccio’s Corpus

studied for major truths (allegoresis) when he discusses how the interpretations of the Genealogie were compiled. He notes that information was collected both de novis (from modern) and de . . . antiquis (from ancient) authors (Gen. 15.6.12). The feminine vernacular Dante belongs to the former category, the masculine Latin Petrarch to the latter (Gen. 15.6.5 and 15.6.11). Therefore, Boccaccio drew on ideas about allegory to equate Dante’s vernacular and Petrarch’s Latin works even though their texts are linguistically, culturally, and generically different. He downplayed the linguistic, literary, and gender preferences of the humanists by repeatedly showing that both Latin and vernacular writings convey ethical, philosophical, and theological concepts. Boccaccio endeavored to harmonize the cultural projects of his two (near) contemporaries for self-­reflexive reasons. He was also defending his own Latin and vernacular writings, by affirming that they too signify serious concepts. In the Genealogie, Boccaccio suggests that his works should be considered along with Dante’s and Petrarch’s as the culmination of Christian allegory. In addition to Dante’s vernacular epic and Petrarch’s Latin eclogues, he adduces his own Latin bucolic poems as works with theological meanings: Possem preterea et meum Buccolicum carmen inducere, cuius sensus ego sum conscius, sed omictendum censui, quia nec adhuc tanti sum ut inter prestantes viros misceri debeam, et quia propria sunt alienis linquenda sermonibus. (Gen. 14.10.6) I could also mention my own Eclogues, the meaning of which I know, but I thought it better to omit them, because I am still not important enough to be mentioned alongside such outstanding men, and because one’s own things should be discussed by others. With these remarks, Boccaccio actually characterizes his poems as emblematic examples of allegorical writing, and he intimates they merit commentary. Boccaccio, however, then discusses his female vernacular short stories. Earlier in the Genealogie, Boccaccio had said that the tales of old women were not allegorical, and then he adduced examples that demonstrated the contrary. Boccaccio subsequently and more overtly argues that

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women’s tales also have allegorical meanings, especially those recounted by the female narrators of the Decameron: Taceant ergo blateratores inscii, et omutescant superbi, si possunt, cum, ne dum insignes viros, lacte Musarum educatos et in laribus phylosophie versatos atque sacris duratos studiis, profundissimos in suis poematibus sensus apposuisse semper credendum sit, sed etiam nullam esse usquam tam delirantem aniculam, circa foculum domestici laris una cum vigilantibus hibernis noctibus fabellas orci, seu fatarum, vel Lammiarum, et huiusmodi, ex quibus sepissime inventa conficiunt, fingentem atque recitantem, que sub pretextu relatorum non sentiat aliquem iuxta vires sui modici intellectus sensum minime. (Gen. 14.10.7) Let the ignorant and boastful loud mouths be silent, if they can, since one must believe that outstanding men, nurtured on the milk of the Muses, versed in the study of philosophy, and having persevered in sacred training, always hid profound ideas in their poetry. Similarly, we must understand that even a crazy old woman, around the fireplace with others awake on a winter night, making up and recounting tales of monsters, fairies, or witches, and the like, of which they often fill these fables, senses that, under the tale of her story, according to the strength of her intellect, there is some other sense not to be derided. The content of these women’s stories is also defined in a deliberate manner. The women tell stories that aut oblectare puellas, aut senes ludere, aut saltem Fortune vires ostendere (either delight girls, or mock old men, or at least demonstrate the power of Fortune) (Gen. 14.10.7). Boccaccio’s remarks recall the tales of the Decameron, which also concern “aspri casi d’amore e altri fortunati avvenimenti” (harsh examples of love and other events of fortune) (Dec., Pr. 14). Boccaccio thus proposes that his vernacu­ lar novelle should also be considered a significant example of Christian allegorical literature because they too signify. Boccaccio developed his defense of literature in the Genealogie with the Decameron and his various other Latin and vernacular writings in mind. The specific categories of allegorical literatures discussed recall the

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primary narrative types of both his short story collection and his oeuvre generally speaking. In the Genealogie, Boccaccio reflected on literatures that are fictional, that combine fictional and historical elements, and that are primarily historical (fabula, argumentum, and [almost] historia). In the Decameron, he similarly described the novelle as “o favole o parabole o istorie” (either fables, or parables, or histories) (Dec., Pr. 13), thus overtly signaling the text features fictional, verisimilar (argumentum), and historical narratives.74 Although rhetorical treatises distinguished literary genres according to these categories, medieval writers did not discuss allegory in these terms. By addressing Macrobius’s criticism of fiction, Boccaccio foregrounded the ideological implications of the classification for the Decameron and his other works.75 Consequently, he did not simply defend fiction against the criticisms of humanists, philosophers, or theologians. He carefully underscored that all types of literatures—featuring any combination of fiction and history—signify by means of the same allegorical properties. He thereby underscored the dignity of the different fictional and historical genres that make up the entire corpus of his Latin and vernacular writings, from the Caccia di Diana and Decameron to his De mulieribus claris and Buccolicum carmen.

A L L E G O RY A N D M AT E R I A L I T Y

In his scholarship, Boccaccio defended vernacular and Latin literatures that had been deemed irrelevant, immoral, or unorthodox by promoting their capacity to signify. Therefore, Boccaccio himself did not suggest that his works are intentionally ambiguous, or that their significance depends entirely on the interpretation of individual readers. Nor did he imply that his writings primarily dramatize difficulties related to the construction of meaning. Finally, in his criticism, Boccaccio did not emphasize that Dante’s, Petrarch’s, or his own works question the authority or the semiotics of theological and philosophical fictions. This is not to say that Boccaccio did not consider, for example in his Decameron, matters related to the complex nature of human discourse. But his anxieties about humanist, Dominican, and Neoplatonic critiques of literature reveal that the championing of protodeconstructionist or Ockhamist ideas would have been self-­defeating. When he was writing the Decameron (ca. 1348–60)

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and Genealogie (1359–75), the status of literature across Europe was frequently debated and questioned. Imaginative writing was condemned as a deceptive, a falsifying, and an ambiguous mode of discourse. Boccaccio engaged ideas about allegory to foster the notion that fiction can communicate clearly. He argued that his texts do, in fact, depict constructive (and not merely deconstructive) ideas. His criticism emphasized that readers with varying degrees of education will discover in them notions related to ethics, philosophy, theology, and literature. Indeed, Boccaccio’s theoretical writings provided the assistance that readers would occasionally need to appreciate his texts. Boccaccio also addressed theoretical issues to distinguish his identity as a writer from the authorial reputations of Dante and Petrarch. In his scholarship, Boccaccio highlighted that his cultural contributions concern the expansion of what was recounted in literature and what was considered suitable to convey serious meaning. In his critical works, Boccaccio thus intimated that his experimentation was more diverse than that of his two fellow Florentines. Boccaccio’s ideas about allegory also informed his controversial anthologies of Dante’s works and vernacular lyric poetry. The manuscripts of these texts visually and materially suggest that modern vernacular writers should be considered on par with classical Latin authors. Boccaccio supported this belief by arguing that the essential semiotic properties of ancient Latin and modern vernacular works are similar. By downplaying differences of language and genre, Boccaccio reconceived, materially re-­presented, and anthologized the history of vernacular writing to transcend old and new biases against literature. In particular, he drew on ideas about allegory to counter theological and philosophical critiques of fiction and also Petrarch’s elitist championing of Latin culture. This is why Boccaccio structurally foregrounded ideas about allegory not only in his theoretical writings, for example in the Trattatello and Esposizioni, but also in the paratexts that accompanied his vernacular anthologies. Thus, he strategically situated the poem Ytalie iam, which features key ideas about allegory, at the center of the Chigi codex. On the one hand, Boccaccio’s editorial work promoted vernacular literature among his contemporaries who were to inherit the textual traditions that he established. On the other hand, his theoretical ideas responded to, shaped, and championed ideas about literature that would continue to be debated for centuries. His scholarly texts were also composed to influence those who would

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never read one of his autograph manuscripts. Therefore, Boccaccio’s all-­ embracing cultural vision extended far beyond his original manuscript channels of transmission and his municipal, regional, and peninsular contexts. His cosmopolitan outlook did not focus exclusively on the materials on his desk, but surveyed the geographical and cultural parameters of the entire Mediterranean and European regions. Finally, Boccaccio attempted to valorize the utility and symbolic properties of literature tout court to diffuse criticism of his preferred textual tradition, namely, erotic fiction. In the Genealogie, Boccaccio occasionally addressed matters concerning this controversial and frequently maligned type of literature. Moreover, Boccaccio’s erotic writings were especially provocative because they signified by recourse to the female body, sometimes clothed and sometimes naked but always erotic and sensuous. In the Genealogie, Boccaccio defended in general terms his decision to write texts of a fictional and an erotic nature. In his vernacular writings, he not only theorized his symbolic uses of women’s bodies, but he also championed affective and ethical notions related to the female corpus.

TWO

The Poetics of the Corpus Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (Ameto)

I M AG I N I N G E ROT I C L I T E R AT U R E

In his scholarship, Boccaccio wrote about issues concerning allegory to promote the dignity and utility of erotic vernacular texts. However, he also reflected on allegory and the import of amatory literature in his vernacular writings. Boccaccio highlighted ideas about allegory in his erotic works by repeatedly and overtly addressing the subject of images. For medieval writers, image (imago) was a broad concept and encompassed all species of signs ranging from icon and figure to symbol and representation. In the Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (also called the Ameto after the work’s protagonist; 1341), the shepherd Ameto has a divine vision after gazing upon the images of seven sensuous nymphs (Ameto 42.3–5 and 46–47). Their erotic stories, which concern adultery, rape, and group intercourse, eventually help him interpret their female bodies as representations of the virtues and divine love.

59

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By writing about images, Boccaccio was engaging with a complex nexus of medieval ideas. Medieval thinking about images was influenced by the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and medicine. The brain was thought to be composed of three different cells, or chambers, that hosted the mental faculties: imaginatio or phantasia, ratio, and memoria.1 The­ ories of cognition held that sensory impressions stimulated the imagination, which then formed the images, or phantasms, that were employed in most cognitive acts. The images were subsequently transmitted to the intellect, which drew on these images to form ideas. Finally, ideas with their images were stored in the memory, so that an individual could recall them to the mind’s eye (e.g., acies animi, acies mentis, oculus cordis, oculus mentis) when thinking. With respect to these intellectual processes, writers of diverse stripes debated whether the imagination played a positive or negative role. On the one hand, medieval views of the cognitive faculties were influenced by Neoplatonic concerns about the reliability of the senses.2 Such thinking engendered anxiety that the imagination could be deceived by the senses, passions, and even dreams. On the other hand, later medieval writers were increasingly influenced by Aristotle’s belief that the imagination played a central role in all intellectual activity (see, e.g., Aristotle, De anima 3.7, 431a16–17). Aristotle’s writings inspired the Scholastic notion that the imagination could even invent mental images—independently from the senses—to help one gain knowledge and act morally.3 Moreover, physicians, philosophers, and poets theorized the primacy of the imagination in love and lovesickness.4 Various writers hypothesized that meditating excessively on the image of a beautiful person could damage the imagination and the estimative faculties (virtutes). Contemplating an erotic form could potentially lead a lover to become psychosomatically ill and even die (see Guido Cavalcanti, “Donna me prega”).5 At the same time, it was thought that mental images of a beloved could help an individual understand spiritual matters and experience beatitude (see Dante, Vita nova 2–3 and 24 [1.2–2.2 and 15]). In the Ameto, the introductory and concluding sections of the text foreground matters concerning the imagination and love. Lia, the first nymph to appear to Ameto, sings that she will be understood by “chiunque . . . / che degnerà al mio bel viso aprire / gli occhi del core e ritenermi in lui” (whoever . . . deems it worthy to open the eyes of the heart to my beautiful

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countenance and hold me within) (Ameto 4.46–48). Ameto then imagines the pleasure that he could have with her but worries that his desires might not be satisfied (Ameto 5.6). After listening to the nymphs’ stories, Ameto finally comes to understand their identities, comprehending them with his eyes and within his intellect (Ameto 46.3–4). He then stores the image of them in his memory: “Ma Ameto, con etterno segnale di tutte nello ardente petto segnato, le vedute cose reiterando nella sua mente, in sé biasimando la troppa affrettata partenza” (But Ameto, with the eternal image of each imprinted upon his ardent breast, reviewed in his mind all the things he had seen, disapproving of the rushed departure) (Ameto 48.4). This chapter examines Boccaccio’s symbolic uses of the body and the erotic, which could appear heterodox in the Middle Ages. However, the fact that Boccaccio employed the carnal in his poetics was not controversial in the medieval period. Almost all medieval writers, whether they composed literary, philosophical, or theological works, either emphasized the positive valences of the body or used it as the basis of images in their writings. Why they did so was implicit in the notion of image, which was by definition visual and thus typically carnal in nature. Still, medieval writers did not agree to what extent the body should be used, what kind of erotic images were efficacious, and what could be symbolized by such images. These debates were again indebted to Plato and Aristotle. Neoplatonic writers argued that creation was a corrupted image of the true reality of ideal forms, and posited that one could only obtain certain knowledge by transcending the body and material images.6 Such notions chimed with the Christian belief that humanity’s relation to creation had been debased by original sin. Though also expressing concern about the senses, Scholastic writers were deeply indebted to Aristotle’s view that knowledge largely depended on our sensory experience of the world (again see De anima 3.7, 431a16–17).7 Scholastic theologians and philosophers even came to hypothesize that the intellect necessarily employs images in all its mental operations. Aristotelian thought became especially influential following William of Moerbeke’s twelfth-­century Latin translation titled De anima, of the philosopher’s Greek text on the soul. These notions influenced the eleventh-­and twelfth-­century views of nature as essentially good, ordered, and rational (see Ps. 18 or Wisd. 11).8 This chapter begins by highlighting Boccaccio’s reflection on images and the body in his scholarly writings. In the Genealogie and Esposizioni,

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Boccaccio discussed images to counter criticisms of erotic and fictional writings that had been voiced by Petrarchan-­inspired humanists, Domini­ can theologians, and Neoplatonic philosophers (Gen. 14.2–6, 13, and 19). On the other hand, the later dates and redactional history of these works (e.g., Genealogie, ca. 1359–75) reveal that Boccaccio had a lifelong and sustained interest in images. Furthermore, several notions discussed in the Genealogie and Esposizioni were commonplaces and thus would likely have been familiar to a youthful Boccaccio. He had read several of the most influential medieval writings about images early in his life, around the time when he composed the Ameto. On the other hand, this is not to say that Boccaccio did not change his views about images over a lifetime. A comparison of Boccaccio’s earlier and later writings will reveal that Boccaccio drew on different (increasingly theologically inspired) ideas about images at various stages of his life. While engaging notions related to images to defend his works, Boccaccio also highlighted the types of erotic and carnal symbols featured in his writings. In the Ameto, Boccaccio foregrounded the symbolic dimension of his poetics by differentiating the erotic images present in his text from those centrally featured in the Comedy. The erotic Ameto and Amorosa visione (1342–43), drafted about the same time as the Ameto, are heavily influenced by Dante’s works. Each text has fifty divisions for a total of one hundred, which recalls the one hundred cantos of the Comedy. The Ameto is a prosimetron like the Vita nova; the Amorosa visione has cantos like the Comedy; and the verses of each employ the Dantean terza rima scheme. The plot of the Ameto also recalls the general narrative of Dante’s Christian epic. Ameto, like Dante-­pilgrim, initially finds himself in a wood (Ameto 3.4 and 5.2). The nymphs and their stories eventually help Ameto have a vision of “l’effigie” (the effigy) glimpsed by the pilgrim in the Empyrean (Ameto 42.3–5 and Par. 33.131). These echoes of the Comedy invite readers to compare the Ameto’s erotic images to those present in Dante’s poem. The intertextuality especially prompts readers to consider Boccaccio’s unchaste nymphs in relation to Beatrice’s nymphs, her handmaidens, in Purgatorio 31. The second section of this chapter traces how Boccaccio reflected on his poetics by reference to the cantos of the Earthly Paradise. The concluding cantos of the Purgatorio foreground ideas about the female body and erotic images. Beatrice even criticizes the pilgrim for his excessive attention to her body

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and for having gotten lost in “imagini . . . false” (false . . . images) (Purg. 30.130–31). The third section treats the topic of reading images, a topic bound up with “interpreting” the world (and ethically experiencing the mundane). These issues are highlighted in the story of the first nymph, Mopsa, who represents the liberal arts and teaches Ameto to interpret her body. Mopsa invites a sailor to embrace her to gain wisdom, and she compares him to Ulysses, who was often considered an expert navigator of physical creation. As will be suggested, Boccaccio, like Petrarch, was drawing on Ulysses to engage with Dante’s ideas about (interpreting) mundane experiences. The final section treats matters related to the limits of what can be represented by images. The topic is raised when Ameto’s final vision recalls the pilgrim’s view of the divine-­human effigy in Paradiso 33, a canto explicitly evoked at the end of the Ameto. This chapter suggests that Boccaccio wrote the Ameto to promote the symbolic value of the real or mundane erotic versus the sublimated or chaste erotic. Boccaccio championed the signifying potential of the erotic body—and this is the key point—by making the female body a metaliterary symbol for his writing. Ameto comes to comprehend ethical and spiritual truths by learning to read, and indeed enjoy, the female body. The Ameto thus emphasizes that meaning is revealed not only in an other­ worldly reality or poem, but is also conveyed through mundane experiences and texts. Therefore, Boccaccio’s work engages with theologians, philosophers, and humanists, who were critical of erotic literatures, women’s bodies, and sensual pleasures.

B O C C AC C I O A N D I M AG E S

Boccaccio’s earliest writings do not contain detailed reflections on the general topic of images or on the subject of images in Dante’s writings.9 However, Boccaccio’s Neapolitan works do reveal that he was considering Dante’s poetics from a very young age. In the Filocolo (1333–38), a romance about Florio and Biancifiore’s amorous travails, the narrator concludes the narrative by distinguishing his work from the sublime epics of Virgil, Lucan, Statius, and Dante (Fil. 5.97.4–7). He instead declares that the humble text will be a “confortatore” (companion) of Ovid’s erotic writings (Fil. 5.97.5). Moreover, Boccaccio probably wrote the Teseida delle nozze

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d’Emilia (1340–41 [autograph 1348–50; BML, Acquisti e doni, 325]), a poem about Arcita and Palemone’s battle to wed Emilia, after having read Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia. In the treatise, Dante noted that no one had written a vernacular epic about martial topics (Dve 2.2.10; cf. Tes. 12.84– 86).10 After he returned to Florence, Boccaccio began to more systematically engage with Dante’s ideas about erotic literatures and images.11 The cultures of Florence and Tuscany probably inspired Boccaccio to consider these topics in greater detail. In Tuscany, diverse allegorical and erotic literatures were circulating, from French and Francophone-­inspired personification allegories to amatory lyric poems in peninsular vernaculars.12 The Roman de la Rose (ca. 1230 and ca. 1275), an allegorical dream vision about a lover’s courtship of his beloved, greatly influenced central Italian culture. The poem even inspired Tuscan translations and rewritings such as the Detto d’Amore (ca. 1280) and Fiore (ca. 1283–87). In addition, the Florentine Brunetto Latini (ca. 1220–94), who was exiled in Paris for several years, composed an allegorical-­didactic text that had connoting properties similar to those of the French Roman.13 Brunetto’s Tesoretto, written in Tuscan, treats topics related to nature, the body, love, and sin by means of personifications. In imitation of Sicilian and Provençal poets, Tuscans like Guido Guinizzelli (1235–76) and Guido Cavalcanti (1258–1300) also wrote lyrics about the nature and effects of love. In the Purgatorio, Dante dubbed this literary tradition the “dolce stil novo” (sweet new style) (Purg. 24.57) and suggested that he was its culmination. Throughout his writings, Dante frequently contemplated matters concerning love literature and allegory. For example, in the Vita nova, he discussed topics related to personification in ancient literature and contemporary love poetry (Vn 25.3–8 [16.3– 8]). Moreover, the Dante commentators reflected extensively on allegory in the Comedy with respect to a wide range of textual issues.14 The failure to interpret the Ameto in relation to this literary context, especially in relation to the philo­sophical and theological notions that informed erotic allegorical writing, may have engendered contradictory readings of the Ameto. Modern readers have interpreted the text either as a celebration of secular culture and natural desires contra the theological Dante or as a Dante-­inspired criticism of erotic yearnings.15 A survey of Boccaccio’s theoretical engagement with philosophical and theological thinking about images will clarify the Ameto’s allegory and reflection on Dante.

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In the Genealogie, Boccaccio drew on late antique theological concepts to defend the presence of controversial carnal or obscure symbols in literature. He invoked a well-­known discussion of images in the Greek Pseudo-­ Dionysius’s treatise on angels. Pseudo-­Dionysius’s ideas were authoritative because the late fifth-­or early sixth-­century follower of Proclus was confused with Paul’s convert mentioned in the New Testament (Acts 17:34). His text also circulated widely in Latin translation. In the De caelesti hierarchia (De cael.), Pseudo-­Dionysius discussed why material and base images appear in the Bible (De cael., chaps. 2–3). He explained that these images were less likely to promote anthropomorphism and argued that carnal images effectively communicate meta­physi­cal concepts. Boccaccio quotes: Insuper perscrutentur quid scripserit Dyonisius Ariopagita, Pauli discipulus et Christi martir egregius, in suo Ierarchie celestis libro. Ex intentione quippe dicit, prosequitur atque probat divinam theologiam poeticis fictionibus uti, inter alia ita dicens: “Et enim valde artificialiter theologia poeticis sacris formationibus in non figuratis intellectibus usa est, nostrum, ut dictum est, animum revelans, et ipsi propria et coniecturali reductione providens, et ad ipsum reformans anagogicas Sanctas Scripturas” et alia multa, que ad hanc sententiam subsequuntur.16 (Gen. 14.18.19; and cited in Espos. 1.1.102) Let them see what Dionysius the Areopagite wrote, the disciple of Paul and great martyr of Christ, in On the Celestial Hierarchy. On this topic, he states and argues approvingly that holy theology uses poetic fictions: “In a highly artful manner theology uses holy poetic symbols for otherwise not representable concepts revealing, as was said above, our soul, and providing it with an appropriate and a conjectural abstraction, and representing to it the anagogical Holy Scriptures,” and many other things, which follow these remarks. Pseudo-­Dionysian notions influenced interpretations of erotic symbols in both secular and sacred literature. With respect to biblical hermeneutics, his remarks guided perceptions of Solomon’s sensuous and meticulous descriptions of his Shulamite bride in the Song of Songs (Song of Sol.

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4 and 6). Exegetes termed the descriptive technique in singulis membris because each body part was described from the head downward.17 Interpretations of the erotic relationship between the bride and Solomon were relatively similar and consistent throughout the Middle Ages.18 The relationship was typically interpreted as the individual soul longing for God or as the Church yearning for Christ. Boccaccio similarly reflected on discussions of images in Augustine’s writings. In his critical works, Boccaccio cited De doctrina christiana, De civitate Dei, and Confessiones, and also the bishop’s treatises on lying and heresy.19 In De doctrina christiana (De doc. chr.), Augustine implicitly endorsed all kinds of images, even mundane ones, when he discussed things and signs (signa). The bishop of Hippo explained that humans should use things to understand God (uti), and that in this context humankind can also enjoy them (frui) (De doc. chr. 1.2–4).20 Augustine later added that God used enigmatic symbols in scripture because humans enjoy contemplating images (De doc. chr. 2.6). He adduces as an example a chapter of the Song of Songs in which the Church is seemingly praised as a pulchra . . . femina (beautiful woman) (De doc. chr. 2.6.7; cf. Song of Sol. 4). He explains that though one does not necessarily learn anything because of the presence of figurative language, it nevertheless adds a pleasurable dimension to a reader’s contemplation of the Bible. The bishop also notes that such obscurities can prompt readers to search more diligently for meaning. However, in the Confessiones (Conf.), Augustine was quite critical of the sensual aspects of secular writing and the utility of corporeal images. He described himself as having been bewitched by the eroticism of women and the pleasures of pagan literature, notably Dido in the Aeneid, until he converted to Christianity (Conf. 1.13 and 8.12; cf. Aen. 4).21 Boccaccio acknowledged that Augustine could be critical of fiction. He even admits that some might say that Augustine’s arguments have been misappropriated in the Genealogie: Et, ne ampliori utar sacrorum hominum circa hoc attestatione, nolo fastidium ducant hi audire quoniam idem velim de obscuritatibus poetarum sentiri, quod de divinis ab Augustino sentitur. (Gen. 14.12.12) And, so as not to cite the broader authority of sacred men about this issue, I do not wish anyone to be irritated by hearing that I want to

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be understood of the obscurities of the poets what Augustine says about the divine writings. Nonetheless, he repeated the bishop’s ideas about obscure images to defend carnal symbols in secular literature. In fact, Boccaccio communicated his disagreement with writers such as Augustine by drawing on hermeneutic ideas about scripture to defend secular texts.22 Boccaccio also engaged with ideas about carnal images in late antique philosophical writings. He countered Macrobius’s and Boethius’s supposed criticisms of erotic and carnal images, which were inspired by Neoplatonic concerns about the transitory nature of creation (Gen. 14.20; and Espos. 1.1.107–11).23 He was also familiar with and quoted Martianus Capella’s (fl. 410–20) Neoplatonic-­inflected prosimetron, which features ambivalent ideas about bodily symbols.24 In the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (De nupt.), Satire recounts that Mercury married Philology (“Word-­love”). For their wedding, Philology is offered the Liberal Arts as gifts, but a debate ensues between the narrator and Satire. Satire insists that the Liberal Arts cannot go “naked” and argues that they must be clothed within images and fables: certe loquentur illae quicquid fuat docendum, habitusque consequentur asomato in profatu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . haec nempe ficta vox est, et devius promissi es; cur ergo non fateris ni figminis figura nil posse comparari? (De nupt. 3.222) Let them indeed offer their own lessons, and may they be clothed in incorporeal utterance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now you trick me and have not kept your promise; why not admit that nothing can be written if not by means of imagery [figminis figura]?

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The Liberal Arts are then presented in a chaste “clothed” but “incorporeal” corporeal manner. For example, the elderly female Grammar covers her body with a gown that reveals her Greco-­Roman pedigree (De nupt. 3.223 and 229). She also wields a knife for pruning the defects of children’s tongues and mouths (De nupt. 3.223–27). Later medieval Chartrian and Scholastic notions pertaining to images also influenced Boccaccio’s writings. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, these currents of thought were inspired by Aristotelian commentaries that arrived in Europe as a result of trade with the East. The Latin translations of Aristotelian texts engendered new appreciation of the body, nature, and carnal images.25 Writers at the so-­called School of Chartres believed that the physical universe was an encrypted physical image of the ultimate spiritual realities. In their didactic-­allegorical poems, Chartrians employed personifications of the liberal arts, virtues, and vices, and also striking images. Bernardus Silvestris’s (ca. 1085–1178) Cosmographia deals with the creation of the world; Alan of Lille’s (ca. 1117–1203) De planctu naturae treats the fallenness of nature and humankind’s perverted sexuality; and his Anticlaudianus concerns nature’s failure to create a Christ-­like man. Though informed by similar ideological premises, these writings occasionally present differing ideas about the body. Bernardus asserted that the relationship between the body and human soul was harmonious.26 In the Cosmographia (Cos.) (ca. 1143–48), he discussed what would become an influential distinction between the universe as megacosm (world soul in creation) and the individual person as microcosm (soul in a body). Bernardus argues that humanity’s dual nature will allow a person to comprehend the universe: Mens, corpus—diversa licet—iungentur ad unum, Ut sacra conplacitum nexio reddat opus. Divus [homo] erit, terrenus erit, curabit utrumque— Consiliis mundum, religione deos.27 (Cos. 2.10.17–20) Mind and body, though different, will be joined as one, so that a mysterious union will make the work harmonious. The race [of humans] will be divine and earthly, caring for both parts, gaining wisdom from the world and communing with the gods.

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Alan of Lille shared Bernardus’s optimism about creation and often used the descriptio corporis in his works.28 However, he also reflected on the Neoplatonic idea that body and spirit are in tension, and encouraged readers to transcend carnal images.29 For his part, Boccaccio was familiar with Bernardus’s poem from a young age. He probably copied the Cosmographia at Naples (ca. 1338–48 [autograph; BML, 33.31]).30 In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio also drew on Bernardus’s notion of the mega-­and microcosm to elucidate Virgil’s allegorical role as Reason: E ne’ detti libri ne dimostra il detto Bernardo il maggior mondo esser questo il quale noi abitiamo e che noi generalmente chiamiamo “mondo,” e il minor mondo esser l’uomo, nel quale vogliono gli antichi, sottilmente investigando, trovarsi o tutti o quasi tutti gli accidenti che nel maggior mondo sono. (Espos. 2.2.31) In these books, Bernardus explains that the megacosm is the one in which we live and that we commonly call “world.” The microcosm is man himself, in whom the ancients, through ingenious research, identified all or almost all of the accidents that exist in the megacosm. He adds that Dante said Virgil came from Limbo, or the edge of megacosmos, to signify that reason comes from the head, which helps humans distinguish “cose nocive dall’utili” (harmful from helpful things) (Espos. 2.2.32–33). Boccaccio similarly drew on Scholastic concepts about imagination and cognition when writing about love in his scholarship. He recalled Scholastic notions to elucidate the myth of Cupid in the Genealogie (5.22.11– 17 and 9.4.6–8) and to exposit Dante’s encounter with the lustful sinner Francesca in the Esposizioni (5.1.160–67).31 In these discussions, Boccaccio referred to key passages of Aristotle’s De anima that prompted Scholastic theologians to theorize the primacy of images in cognition (e.g., 3.7, 431a16–17, or 3.4, 429a17 and 29; cf. Espos. 5.1.164). In his commentary on Aristotle’s text, Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) engaged these and similar passages to argue that all types of thinking require images.32 Boccaccio may have learned about the De anima from Dino del Garbo’s

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commentary on Cavalcanti’s “Donna me prega.”33 His discussion of love employs Scholastic technical terms: Est igitur hic, quem Cupidinem dicimus, mentis quedam passio ab exterioribus illata, et per sensus corporeos introducta et intrinsecarum virtutum approbata, prestantibus ad hoc supercelestibus corporibus aptitudinem. . . . Que quidem aptitudo agit ut, quam cito talis videt mulierem aliquam, que a sensibus exterioribus commendatur, confestim ad virtutes sensitivas interiores defertur, quod placuit; et id primo devenit ad fantasiam, ab hac autem ad cogitativam transmictitur, et inde ad memorativam; ab istis autem sensitivis ad eam virtutis speciem transportatur, que inter virtutes apprehensivas nobilior est, id est ad intellectum possibilem. Hic autem receptaculum est specierum, ut in libro De anima testatur Aristoteles. (Gen. 9.4.6–8) This is what we call Cupid, a certain passion of the soul born from exteriors, and introduced through corporeal senses and approved by the internal faculties with the celestial bodies endowing it with the capability of doing so. . . . This functions so that as soon as one sees some woman, received through exterior senses, if pleasing her image is soon carried to the interior sensitive powers; and first it comes to the fantasy, and from there handed over to the cognition and then to memory. From those sensitive faculties, it is handed over to the most noble of the cognitive faculties, namely, the possible intellect. It is here that one finds the receptacle of the ideas, as Aristotle explains in the De anima. These remarks demonstrate that Boccaccio understood medieval ideas about how images affect the soul and human behavior, the key concept underwriting the modi tractandi. Finally, Boccaccio’s views of images were indebted to ideas expressed in treatises on poetry, memory, and preaching. Manuals dedicated to the art of writing poetry (artes poetriae) theorized the role of images in terms drawn from epideictic rhetoric.34 They taught readers that images could be used to blame and praise, to affect an audience to respond positively or negatively. The manuals devoted special attention to the description

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of bodies, or descriptio corporis, also called descriptio superficialis or extrinseca, in contrast to the description of a person’s character, termed descriptio intrinseca (e.g., Matthew of Vendôme, Ars versificatoria, 1.38–92; on the types of descriptio, see 1.42–43 and 74).35 The treatises specify that a body should be described from the head down with a series of similes, but with only oblique references to the genitals (the descriptions of the Ameto’s nymphs are instead highly erotic).36 Treatises about memory also emphasize that striking carnal images can aid mental recall and comprehension. Without such images the mind could be distracted, and one’s thoughts could drift to mundane or erotic topics, a problem termed curiositas or fornicatio.37 Preachers too were advised to use sermo corporeus (carnal speech), corporalia (bodily representations) or exempla (examples) to help the uneducated learn, a concept that was indebted to a popular Gregorian justification for the presence of visual art in churches.38 In the Decameron, Boccaccio recalled late medieval ideas about homiletics. For example, he implied that his short stories were corporeal embodiments of Christian truths by framing the Decameron with references to when the Word was embodied prior to the Resurrection. The narrator begins Day 1 of the Decameron by discussing the date of Christ’s incarnation (Dec. 1, Intr. 8). He concludes the text by reflecting on the metaliterary implications of artistic images of Christ’s crucifixion (Dec., Conc. 6). These Christological references imply that Boccaccio’s short stories draw on the erotic body to depict meaning in a manner that approximates Christ’s symbolic uses of the body. In fact, in the closing sentences of the “Conclusion,” Boccaccio explicitly likens the Decameron to a woman’s sensuous body. The narrator affirms that the text will not deceive anyone because the stories declare openly on their brow, namely, explain in the rubrics, the topics they treat: “elle [le novelle], per non ingannare alcuna persona, tutte nella fronte portan segnato quello che esse dentro dal loro seno nascoso tengono” (they [the short stories], so as not to trick anyone, all carry marked on their brow that which they hold hidden in their breast) (Dec., Conc. 19). When writing about images, Boccaccio seems to have attempted to engage as many traditions related to the subject as possible. This may explain why he wrote a text about love. Medieval contemporaries, whether discussing love, epistemology, or ethics, wrote about the role of images in similar terms. In medical, epistemological, and rhetorical treatises, it was hypothesized that the sensory data resulting from images stimulated the

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mind to evaluate what should be pursued or avoided. In the De amore (ca. 1180s), Andreas Capellanus offered the following highly influential explanation of the impact that images have on a lover: Amor est passio quaedam innata procedens ex visione et immoderata cogitatione formae alterius sexus, ob quam aliquis super omnia cupit alterius potiri amplexibus et omnia de utriusque voluntate in ipsius amplexu amoris praecepta compleri.39 (De amore 1.1.1) Love is an inborn suffering that results from the sight of, and uncontrolled cognitive reflection on, the image of the opposite sex. This causes each person to desire above all else the embraces of the other person, and by common desire to fulfill all of love’s precepts in the other’s embrace. Therefore, the interrelated nature of these discourses allowed a writer of erotica to evoke diverse Scholastic, philosophical, and medical notions pertaining to images. Moreover, with respect to ethics, Venus could supposedly damage the imaginative faculty in a way that would produce moral failings and pestiferos . . . furores (plague-­ridden rage) (Gen. 3.22.11–12). Or, as the narrator of the Decameron explains, love could also engender gratitude and compassion (Dec., Pr. 2–8). In the Ameto, Boccaccio recalled these theological, philosophical, ethical, and literary ideas while reflecting on images in Dante’s works.

C H A S T E O R E ROT I C B O D I E S

The title Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine prompts readers to compare the work to Dante’s Comedy. The second part of the title foregrounds differences between Boccaccio’s text and Dante’s poem.40 Throughout his career, Boccaccio debated whether the Comedy should have been classified within the comedic genre. In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio objects that the Comedy was not a true comedy, because of its subject matter, style, and narrative properties. He explains that a comedy normally involves base matters, such as animal husbandry and erotic relationships, whereas the Comedy concerns exalted, exceptional, and divine topics:

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Dicono adunque primieramente mal convenirsi le cose cantate in questo libro col significato del vocabolo, per ciò che “comedìa” vuole tanto dire quanto “canto di villa,” composto da “comos,” che in latino viene a dire “villa,” e “odòs,” che viene a dire “canto”: e i canti villeschi, come noi sappiamo, sono di basse materie, sì come di loro quistioni intorno al cultivare della terra, o conservazione di loro bestiame o di loro bassi e rozi inamoramenti e costumi rugali; a’ quali in alcuno atto non sono conformi le cose narrate in alcuna parte della presente opera, ma sono di persone eccellenti, di singulari e notabili operazioni degli uomini viziosi e virtuosi, degli effetti della penitenzia, de’ costumi degli angeli e della divina essenzia. (Espos., Acc. 18) They say, first, that the subjects treated in this work are not in keeping with the sense of the word “comedy,” which means something like “village song” (from the compound “komos,” which means “village” in Italian, and “odos,” which comes to mean “canto” or “song”). Village songs, as we well know, deal with base subjects, such as those relating to their cultivation of the land, animal husbandry, sordid and uncouth love affairs, and rustic traditions. None of these topics is in any way compatible with the subjects treated in any part of the present work, which in fact deals with exceptional people, the singular and noteworthy acts of both sinful and virtuous men, the workings of penitence, the nature of angels, and the divine essence. Boccaccio adds that the stylistic register of a comedy should be “umile” (humble), while Dante’s poem features a “sublime” (sublime) register and style (Espos., Acc. 19). He also notes that comedic authors do not typically speak about themselves in the first person, and that the plot of a comedy should not involve multiple narratives and stories (Espos., Acc. 21). Finally, he argues that whereas comedies typically feature a variety of fictional and verisimilar narratives, the Comedy contains only truth: “la sustanziale istoria del presente libro, . . . , è, secondo la catolica fede, vera e stata sempre” (the substantive story of this work . . . is and has always been true according to the Catholic faith”) (Espos., Acc. 22). Boccaccio concludes that the Comedy can be considered a comedy only because it features the genre’s standard thematic trajectory, from wretchedness to happiness.

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Therefore, the title Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine highlights the work’s base and erotic material, elements that, in Boccaccio’s opinion, were excluded from Dante’s poem.41 The complete title’s resonances also encourage readers to compare the Ameto’s erotic nymphs to a group of nymphs described in the Purgatorio. Near the end of the Ameto, the nymphs identify themselves with phrases spoken by Beatrice’s nymphs in the Earthly Paradise. Both groups of female figures symbolize the virtues: Noi siam qui ninfe e nel ciel siamo stelle; pria che Beatrice discendesse al mondo, fummo ordinate a lei per sue ancelle. (Purg. 31.106–8; emphasis added) We are nymphs here and in the sky we are stars; before Beatrice descended into the world, we were appointed to be her handmaidens. come di noi ciascuna qui lucente di chiaro lume vedi, tanto bella quanto null’altra al mondo oggi vivente, così nel ciel ciascuna appare stella lucida e chiara di tanto sereno quanto Titan en la stagion novella. E ne’ dì primi dentro al divin seno, per vertù vera del suo primo amore di somma beninanza sempre pieno, nascemmo, a dar del suo alto valore chiarezza vera al mondo che dovea avvilupparsi dentro al cieco errore. (Ameto 45.4–15; emphasis added) as you see each of us here shining with a bright light, as beautiful as no other creature today living in the world, so in the sky each appears a star, clear and shining and as serene as Titan in the new season. For we were born in the first days within the divine

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bosom through true virtue of his first love, always full of supreme charity, to bestow true clarity of his lofty worth upon the world, which has wound itself in blind error. Furthermore, these echoes of the Comedy highlight that the conclusion of the Purgatorio deals with matters concerning representation and symbolism. In Purgatorio 30, Beatrice addresses ideas about images when she scolds the pilgrim for having failed to understand her body as a spiritual symbol. While Dante awaits the arrival of his beloved, he hears a verse intoned from the Song of Songs (“Veni, sponsa, de Libano!”; Purg. 30.10– 12; and Song of Sol. 4:8), the biblical book that most overtly draws on erotic images for symbolic purposes. Beatrice then highlights how the pilgrim failed to understand the significance and meaning of her body. She explains that while alive her physical presence guided Dante, but then laments that when she died he started “imagini . . . seguendo false” (following . . . false images) (Purg. 30.131, and generally 30.109–35). Beatrice continues that her death should have taught Dante to look beyond the physical world and its sensual, bodily images: Mai non t’appresentò natura o arte  piacer, quanto le belle membra in ch’io  rinchiusa fui, e che so’ ’n terra sparte;  e se ’l sommo piacer sì ti fallio  per la mia morte, qual cosa mortale  dovea poi trarre te nel suo disio?  Ben ti dovevi, per lo primo strale  de le cose fallaci, levar suso  di retro a me che non era più tale.  Non ti dovea gravar le penne in giuso,  ad aspettar più colpo, o pargoletta  o altra novità con sì breve uso. (Purg. 31.49–60) Never did nature or art present to you such beauty as did the lovely members in which I was enclosed, and now they are scattered in earth; and if the highest beauty thus failed you with my death, what mortal things should later have drawn you to

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desire it? After the first arrow from deceptive things, you should have risen up after me, for I was no longer such. Your wings should not have been weighted down, to await more blows, by either a young girl or some other new thing of such short duration. Throughout the Comedy, the body is often presented in a positive manner, and it frequently symbolizes ideas about poetics, morality, and spirituality. For example, in Ante-­Purgatory and Purgatory, the souls yearn for their bodies, and the penitents marvel at the pilgrim’s embodied state (Purg. 1.85–90; 2.67–81; 2.106–23; 3.79–99; 26.1–30 and 43–60). In the Earthly Paradise, the allegory of the Church Triumphant also depicts key events of providential history by featuring bodily images of the books of the Bible (Purg. 29.82–154). One implication of the pageant is that the poem employs carnal symbols because God used the body to signify. At the same time, the cantos dedicated to Ante-­Purgatory and the Earthly Paradise address potential problems related to humankind’s attachment to the body. These cantos underscore the types of misunderstandings that can arise from bodily—in particular from highly erotic—imagery. The souls in Ante-­Purgatory are scolded for their excessive bodily desires, and the pilgrim ultimately fails to see the spiritual significance of Beatrice’s (dead) body. Beatrice also criticizes how the pilgrim was seduced by other women and their bodies, for example, by the “Donna gentile” in the Vita nova (Purg. 31.43–45 and 58–60; cf. Vn 36–39 [25–28]). By alluding to Dante’s Earthly Paradise and nymphs, Boccaccio evoked a diverse range of positive and negative valences associated with the erotic body in the Comedy. Modern readers too have considered how the Earthly Paradise episode addresses questions about textuality and embodiment.42 They have reflected on how Dante grappled with tensions related to the corpus in these cantos. In this section of the Purgatorio, Dante seems to revise his earlier views, which were expressed in the Vita nova, about the erotic (textual) body. His previous work is recalled rather explicitly when Beatrice discusses the origins of the pilgrim’s “vita nova” (new life) (Purg. 30.115) Therefore, Boccaccio was engaging with one of the most programmatic sections of the Comedy. This is perhaps why he also carefully reflected on the cantos of the Earthly Paradise in the Amorosa visione.43 Whereas Dante’s poem treats nuanced concepts pertaining to the body, the Ameto foregrounds primarily positive ideas about our embodied

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reality. Boccaccio initially highlighted matters pertaining to the utility of the erotic corpus through the work’s narrative structures and models. One of the most probable sources for the vernacular prosimetron is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which Boccaccio began reading, copying, and imitating in Naples.44 The multiple narrators of Ovid’s epic may have inspired Boccaccio’s decision to depict multiple female narrators in the Ameto. More specifically, the nymphs are modeled on the Pierides, who challenged the Muses to a singing contest. Ovid recounts that the women sang of the gods’ cowardice during their wars with the giants, and they are named in Emilia’s story about pride (Ameto 21.2–3; cf. Metam. 5.294–678; and Gen. 11.2.1). Arachne’s storytelling may also have inspired the nymphs’ tales, and the Roman poet narrates a story about her immediately following his discussion of the Pierides. As Arachne depicted the adulteries of the gods on her loom in a competition with Minerva, so the nymphs recount tales about infidelity to the shepherd (see Metam. 6.1–145; and Gen. 2.3.2). The Pierides and Arachne challenged through their art forms the narrative capabilities of the divine, and they were punished for their hubris by being changed into magpies and a spider. By contrast, the Ameto’s nymphs never suffer any similar fate or negative bodily punishment. Apuleius’s Metamorphoses also inspired the narrative structures of the Ameto. As we noted in chapter 1, Boccaccio promoted Apuleius in his later scholarly works because he had partially modeled his fictional writings on Apuleius’s erotic text. Boccaccio could recall passages of the Metamorphoses because he had read and annotated Apuleius’s writings in his youth (1330s; BML, 29.2).45 The Metamorphoses offered a youthful Boccaccio an example of a spiritual conversion inspired by a series of erotic episodes. Like his peers, he interpreted the work as a Neoplatonic allegory about the soul longing for the divine (Gen. 5.22). In the Ameto, the ancient Latin novel is evoked both explicitly and implicitly. The part of the descriptio corporis dedicated to the nymphs’ hair recalls Lucius’s erotically charged praise of the servant Photis’s hair (Ameto 12.7– 8; and Meta. 2.8–9). Agape’s encounter with Venus also draws on Apuleius’s version of the Cupid and Psyche myth.46 Pomena, who is the third nymph to tell a tale, even names Lucius when she describes her flower garden (Ameto 26.18). Moreover, the multiple narrators of Apuleius’s text may have inspired Boccaccio’s decision to feature various female narrators in the Ameto. Boccaccio may have even intended to recall Lucius’s narrative “voyeurism” at the end of the text. As the ass, Lucius clandestinely

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witnesses the actions of those around him, so Boccaccio-­narrator reveals that he is spying on Ameto and the nymphs: . . . posto m’era ad ascoltare i lieti e vaghi amori, nascosamente, delle ninfe belle, que’ recitanti, e de’ loro amadori. (Ameto 49.3–6) I had situated myself, hidden, to listen to the happy and charming loves of the beautiful nymphs, who recounted stories of these and their lovers. Ameto’s final ritualistic cleansing may also have been partially inspired by Lucius’s baptism when he converts to the sect of Isis-­Osiris. Ameto, like Lucius, even transforms from being a beast into a man (Ameto 46.5; and Meta. 11.12–19).47 These narrative structures implicitly foreground the symbolic efficacy of a carnal and erotic poetics, but the Ameto’s literary form also does so. In fact, the prosimetric form of the Ameto invites readers to contrast Boccaccio’s views about the body to characterizations of the body in Neoplatonic works. Neoplatonic authors like Boethius and Alan of Lille sometimes voiced ambiguous or critical ideas about the body in texts of poetry and prose. Their prosimetra also frequently depicted a transcendence of the body and erotic imagery. Dante too had experimented with the prosimetric form in both the Vita nova and the Convivio. His texts also occasionally display elements that are characteristic of Neoplatonic writings, specifically, narrative and thematic transitions from erotic to more spiritualizing concerns. In the Vita nova, Dante-­lover’s youthful encounters with Beatrice are described in explicitly sensual terms. The appearance of Beatrice initially stuns the narrator’s physical senses: “lo spirito animale, lo quale dimora ne l’alta camera ne la quale tutti li spiriti sensitivi portano le loro percezioni, si cominciò a maravigliare molto” (the animal spirit, which dwells in the high chamber into which all the sensitive spirits carry their perceptions, began to marvel strongly) (Vn 2.5 [1.6]). His dreams also contain erotically ambiguous imagery. For example, a naked baby Beatrice eats the narrator’s heart (Vn 3.4–6 [1.15–17]). Yet,

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at the end of the narrative, the lover turns his attention away from these worldly concerns, and from women such as the Donna gentile. The text concludes with a poem about how the lover’s spirit will unite with Beatrice in Heaven: “Oltre la spera che più larga gira / passa ’l sospiro ch’esce del mio core” (Beyond the sphere that turns widest there passes the spirit that leaves from my heart) (Vn 41.10–12 [30.10–12]). In apparent harmony with these Neoplatonic concepts, the Ameto appears initially to be a work critical of the (female) body. Boccaccio-­ narrator introduces the Ameto with a reflection on reading and gender that denigrates erotic literature. He explains that some read histories for moral reasons, namely, to seek guidance about what to flee and what to follow (Ameto 1.2–3). Others, he adds, read amatory fictions for more superficial reasons, specifically, to delight in thinking about ancient love affairs: E alcuni sono che, dal biforme figliuolo feriti di Citerea, chi per conforto e qual per diletto cercando gli antichi amori, un’altra volta col concupiscevole cuore transfugano Elena, raccendono Didone, con Isifile piangono e ingannano con sollicita cura Medea. (Ameto 1.4) And there are some who are wounded by the biformed son of Cytherea, so in seeking the love stories of the ancients (some for consolation and some for pleasure), they kidnap Helen of Troy a second time with lustful desire, or inflame Dido once again, or weep with Hysipyle, and with ready zeal dupe Medea. Contemporary readers could not but have been struck by the oddness of this characterization of reading. The readers described by the narrator do not read according to the classical and medieval Horatian commonplace, in order to be entertained and to discover useful instruction (Ars poetica, ll. 333–44).48 Moreover, in the Decameron, Boccaccio-­narrator also explicitly associates reading for utility and reading for pleasure with two different genders.49 In the “Conclusion,” the narrator notes that educated male readers need little assistance with reading, and that these men find it easier to discover utility in shorter works (Dec., Conc. 20–21). He then states that uneducated (mainly female) readers enjoy longer works, but that they require more help to understand a text (Dec., Conc. 21). In his scholarly

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works, Boccaccio also specifies that both male and female readers occasionally need assistance (see Gen. 15.12.5). Such comments suggest that gender has hermeneutic resonances in Boccaccio’s writings. They imply that women and men represent specific types of readers and reading. In the Ameto, the narrator’s apparent warning about erotica also recalls the remarks of Francesca da Rimini, who, in Inferno 5, is damned for having read a text with an erotic component only “per diletto” (for delight) (Inf. 5.127). Francesca explains that she and her lover, Paolo, were inspired to commit adultery by a passage of a romance about Lancelot’s adulterous relationship with Guinevere (Inf. 5.127–38). Boccaccio-­narrator recalls Francesca by repeating her remarks that there is nothing worse for one suffering than to recall past happiness: “il piangere accompagnato non rilieva il caduto, né gli si può per indugio tor tempo, né le memorie delle felicità passate gli essaltati sostengono” (weeping does not raise the fallen, and one cannot give them time by delaying, and memories of past happiness do not sustain those who were once blessed by Fortune) (Ameto 1.5; cf. Inf. 5.121–23). By echoing Francesca’s comments, Boccaccio encouraged readers to remember the warnings in Inferno 5 about feminine reading practices and erotica. Nevertheless, despite these various dangers associated with erotic literatures, Boccaccio-­narrator boasts that he will be praised for writing an erotic text: “i cui effetti [dell’ Amore] se con discreta mente saranno pensati, non troverrò chi biasimi quel ch’io lodo” (no one who reads about its effects [of love] with a discerning mind will find anything to criticize in what I praise) (Ameto 1.5). Therefore, this reflection on historic and implied readerships actually champions female reading habits and characterizes erotic literature positively.50 The Ameto also counters Neoplatonic skepticism about the symbolic efficacy of the body by featuring narrators who are embodied. Whereas Martianus’s De nuptiis or Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus feature chaste personifications, the Ameto instead has erotic human protagonists. The Neoplatonic female personifications of the liberal arts, who narrate allegories about their respective subjects, are also models for Boccaccio’s nymphs. However, unlike the chaste figures in Neoplatonic writings, the Ameto’s storytellers are not chaste embodiments or “clothed in incorporeal utterance.” The Ameto’s nymphs are sinful, unfaithful, and unchaste, and readers eventually discover that they are real women from around the Italian peninsula.51 The emphasis on the nymphs’ historicity and eroticism

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signals a polemic with the incorporeal, unreal, and ultimately ahistorical narrators of Neoplatonic texts. Boccaccio’s narrators embrace the taint of the body and history, and exploit it to narrate notions related to virtue, morality, and the divine. The Ameto also defends symbolic uses of the body by reference to the fact that Neoplatonic writers themselves drew on diverse types of carnal images. By recalling Neoplatonic ideas about the veil or covering (in Latin, velamen or integumentum), the narrator evokes a philosophical justification for using the body. The etymologies of these Latin terms imply that meaning should be “clothed” in a physical covering, specifically, in corporeal narratives and images. In the Ameto’s opening poem, the narrator recalls this commonplace when he prays that his text will convey truth within a physical “scorza” (shell) (Ameto 2.25). He asks for help in revealing Venus within a shell so that a sharp mind might understand her: metti nel petto mio la voce tale, quale e’ sente il poter della tua forza, sì che ’l mio dire al sentir sia equale, e più adentro alquanto che la scorza possa mostrar della tua deitate, a che lo ’ngegno s’aguzza e si sforza. (Ameto 2.22–27; emphasis added) Put in my breast your voice, to grow strong as it feels the force of your power, so that my speech may reveal more than the mere shell of your deity within, for so does my mind strive and yearn. The narrator’s remarks are a Neoplatonic-­inspired correction of the tradition’s hostility toward or ambiguous characterizations of the body. In other words, Boccaccio drew on Neoplatonic thought about the symbolic potential of the physical “veil” to attenuate Neoplatonic criticisms of carnal images in literature. In addition, Ameto’s reactions to the nymphs recall theological ideas about the positive value of bodily images and the utility of the visual broadly speaking. Ameto first stares intently at Lia’s body and hears a poem sung by her. That Ameto gazes upon Lia’s body while listening to

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a poem suggests that her female form symbolizes the literary text and its content. While Ameto carefully views her body, he praises her poem about Venus: “rimirandola tutta con occhio continuo, tutta in sé la loda, e insieme con lei la voce, il modo, le note e le parole della udita canzone” (gazing upon every part of her with his eyes, he praises all of her within himself, along with her voice, tone, notes and the words of her song) (Ameto 5.3–4). Ameto then asks Lia to reveal the identity of Love, and she sings about concepts related to earthly and celestial eros. While she performs, Ameto stares intently at another nymph—at every part of her body, from the hair down (Ameto 9.13–20). Whenever Ameto stops looking at this nymph, Lia stops singing, a fact that highlights that the beginning and the end of her discourse is symbolized by the contours of the nymph’s body (Ameto 10.1). The same occurs when the shepherd Teogapen, etymologically “Love of God,” sings a poem that foreshadows what the nymphs symbolize (Ameto 11–13.1).52 After Teogapen’s poem, two shepherds have a poetic tenzone about utility and pleasure. Alcesto wins the competition by singing about how he raises his sheep on a mountain for profit, whereas Achaten sings about how he raises sheep in a valley and enjoys himself (Ameto 14.103–5).53 (The tenzone again proposes a division between the Horatian dulce and utile.) In each instance, Ameto fails to comprehend the real meaning behind the literal sense of the poems. At the same time, he cannot peer past the superficial exterior of the nymphs’ bodies to see spiritual beauty: E quinci, dal composto corpo alle parti inferiori discendendo, più che il piccolissimo piede non se li mostra. Ma lei avendo diritta veduta e la sua altezza servata nella sua mente, imagina quanto di bene si nasconda ne’ cari panni. (Ameto 9.20)54 Descending along the decorous body to the lower parts, no more than a small foot is revealed. But having seen her erect and retaining her full height in his mind, he imagined how much beauty was hidden under her precious garments. Ameto cannot yet understand the allegories of the female bodies, or metaphorically strip away the veils from those bodies, to understand the meaning concealed by them.

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The detailed lines about the nymphs’ appearances recall the in singulis membris descriptive technique of the Song of Songs, medieval imitations of Songs in Chartrian texts, and theoretical remarks about descriptio in poetic manuals. The characterization of Ameto as rude evokes artistic and homiletic commonplaces about how uneducated male and female readers learn most effectively through bodily images. Ameto’s attraction to the nymphs evinces theological notions about how humans are drawn to the divine through the emotions, or affectus, a distinction also indebted to the modi tractandi. The symbolic and affective nature of carnal images was theorized in different terms and for multiple purposes by diverse writers from Pseudo-­Dionysius to the Scholastics. Boccaccio did not, however, merely evoke these concepts; he signaled the meta­literary significance for his poetics. He highlighted the self-­reflexive resonances of these concepts by making the body, the erotic female body, a symbol of the literary text. In the Ameto, Boccaccio employs the female body as his primary symbol to depict ideas concerning signification and ethics. Boccaccio’s championing of female bodies was, in fact, an acutely self-­conscious meditation on that which was often gendered as female. Some fourteenth-­century Dominican theologians and Neoplatonic philosophers were skeptical that female bodies or carnal experiences could signify ideas about God, ethics, or Christian spirituality. Writers critical of female bodies were also characterizing them as unstable, heretical, and even demonic—as part of a general denigration of the present world and creation. The Ameto instead promotes the symbolic efficacy of female bodies by making them the privileged medium through which Ameto understands or, more precisely, experiences ethical and spiritual truths. The Ameto thus redeems that which was being condemned in diverse contexts and for various literary, philosophical, and theological reasons. Moreover, Boccaccio drew on authoritative concepts to justify a text that was, in reality, more erotic than other writings that had been defended by reference to these same notions. Boccaccio was championing what diverse medieval writers believed to be problematic. He was also more insistently promoting what Dante had dealt with in highly complex and, in Boccaccio’s view, occasionally confusing terms. In the Genealogie, Boccaccio later explained that he was seducing his readers with his representations, just as David and Christ had done through their own narratives (Gen. 14.16.2 and 14.16.8–9).55 By rewriting the initial cantos of the Comedy in the introductory sections of the Ameto, Boccaccio further signaled

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to contemporaries why women’s bodies and female textual traditions were effective in moving readers. In the Comedy, a series of divine figures, culminating in Virgil, who was usually interpreted by medieval commentators like Boccaccio as Reason, comes to help the pilgrim (Espos. 1.2.148–54; and Inf. 2.43–126). In the Ameto, the erotic nymphs assist Ameto, a change that highlights how much more Boccaccio’s representations are erotic, desirable, and appealing to the senses and emotions. In medieval terms, the Ameto juxtaposes the cognitive value of masculine reason to female eroticism. Boccaccio thereby asserted that his texts more effectively combine the delightful and the useful, in contrast to a tradition that had sometimes separated them, as dramatized in the homoerotic tenzone between Achaten and Alcesto. Therefore, Boccaccio’s championing of the feminine promotes (erotic) pleasure in literature, in part by characterizing it as an essential component of human education and spirituality. Like Ameto, readers enjoy viewing the sensuous nymphs. The lengthy descriptions encourage the reader to dwell upon their superficial beauty, and do not permit one to ignore their eroticism while searching for an allegorical moral. Augustine, who also defended images by reference to the aesthetic pleasure they afforded, and Aquinas, who believed that images in literature only stimulated the senses, would not have agreed with Boccaccio. Neither Augustine nor Aquinas would have considered the overt erotic nature of the Ameto’s images to be acceptable. Augustine too reflected on the pleasures that might result from images of women. However, the images contemplated by him were classified in rather generic terms as beautiful, and not as seductive, arousing, or erotic. Nor would Augustine have approved of the fact that the women in Boccaccio’s text engage in unchaste, adulterous behavior. He criticized his own youthful fascination with the account of Dido and Aeneas’s love affair in the Aeneid. Nevertheless, the Ameto’s defense of the cognitive value of female bodies and erotic images has not been completely realized. Neither Ameto nor Boccaccio’s readers have yet understood what the nymphs’ corpora represent. In the metaphorical and metaliterary terms established by the Ameto, readers must eventually learn to peer past the veils that cover the nymphs to see their naked forms. That is to say, their erotic presence must be interpreted so that notions about ethics and spirituality may become manifest. Consequently, the opening story of the Ameto addresses matters concerning the allegorical interpretation of female bodies.

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The first nymph, Mopsa, symbolizes wisdom: she explains that she lived with the goddess Pallas, listened to Apollo’s harp, and spoke with the Muses on Parnassus (Ameto 18.7–8). She recounts that one day she saw the uneducated Affron—whose name means “senseless” in Greek—sailing through rough waters (Ameto 18.12–16).56 Mopsa pleas that if Affron will come to shore, she will reveal past events, future actions, and the mysteries of the “case degli iddii” (houses of the gods) (Ameto 18.24–29). Affron, however, ignores her appeals to his “ingegno” (mind), so she attracts him with an “atto di dissoluta” (act of a dissolute woman) (Ameto 18.33). She demonstrates how she teaches knowledge by revealing her intimates. She lifts her gown over her ankles and subsequently over her shoulders to show off her “vago seno” (attractive breast) (Ameto 18.34–35). Affron then comes to shore to enjoy Mopsa’s embrace, which makes him the wisest in the kingdom. Her story prompts readers to consider issues related to allegory by recalling Quintilian’s theoretical discussion of the trope.57 After defining allegory, Quintilian offered an example of an allegorical passage from Horace’s poems: O navis, referent in mare te novi fluctus: o quid agis? Fortiter occupa portum.58 O ship, new waves will carry you out to sea. What are you doing? Be strong and come back to port. Quintilian interprets Horace’s poem as an allegory about the ship of state and political turmoil at Rome. Though the Mopsa episode does not deal with politics, it does recall the rhetorician’s example. As in Horace’s poem, so in the Ameto a voice calls out to a figure who is about to shipwreck. Affron, however, avoids crashing by engaging with Mopsa’s erotic body. Mopsa’s allegory suggests that intercourse with the liberal arts is required to strip bare the secrets of literature and creation. It also emphasizes that humans do not learn only by means of intellectual or abstract arguments. Medieval theorists of cognition had explained that a physical embodiment of an abstract idea or argument assists human understanding. In accord with this notion, Mopsa eventually abandons any attempt

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to reason with the sailor. Instead, she teaches Affron—“he who is senseless”—with her body, namely, a visual and highly sensual representation. Mopsa’s striptease also promotes enjoyment in literature by combining the utile and dulce, which were separated in the Ameto’s proem and in the homoerotic tenzone. Only when Affron views Mopsa as an erotic object to be enjoyed does he have intercourse with her. Finally, Boccaccio’s positive depiction of the liberal arts introduces a polemic with the views of Augustine, Martianus, and Alan of Lille. These writers theorized that the liberal arts taught the prerequisite skills for acquiring higher levels of knowledge, but they were nonetheless skeptical of those who applied them to mundane and secular topics.59 Mopsa’s pedigree implies that almost any kind of literature can be instructive provided it is interpreted allegorically. The name Mopsa, which has no feminine antecedent, was probably inspired by the male Mopsus, who was an exceptional hunter and a prophet (Ovid, Metam. 12.455–58, and Statius, Thebaid 3.516–21).60 These valences of Mopsus may have inspired Boccaccio to cast Mopsa as an allegorical personification who will teach past and future events. Mopsus also appears as a young but accomplished singer in the fifth of Virgil’s Eclogues. He intones along with Menalcas a song that has Christological connotations: Exstinctum Nymphae crudeli funere Daphnin flebant (vos coryli testes et flumina Nymphis), cum complexa sui corpus miserabile nati atque deos atque astra vocat crudelia mater.61 (Ec. 5.20–23) The nymphs were weeping for Daphnis, killed by a cruel death (you hazels and rivers are the nymphs’ witnesses), when his mother held the wretched body of her child in her arms and cried out to the gods and cruel stars. Virgil’s bucolic poetry probably influenced the pastoral aspects of the Ameto, but Mopsus’s lines about Daphnis also informed the prosimetron’s allegory. The dead Daphnis in his mother’s arms seems to prefigure Mary holding her crucified son. A reader informed by Mopsa’s training in reading would have no problem stripping away the integumentum of pagan

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myth to discover the Christian truth. But again the gender inversion from male to female, Mopsus to Mopsa, is ideologically significant. Not a male Mopsus-­seer or Virgilian Reason teaches allegorical reading, but an erotic female who strips off the literal sense of Virgil’s poem.62 The gendered inversion from Mopsus to Mopsa also signals a polemic with the typical medieval iconographic tradition of depicting the liberal arts. Martianus and Alan represented the arts as virginal female personifications, whose bodies were covered by gowns with representations of famous authors or rhetorical figures. Contemporary writers, painters, and sculptors also depicted Grammar as a woman holding a whip and endowed with a large chest, one breast covered and one uncovered.63 In these representations, Grammar was iconographically connected to the mother tongue. She suckled, or developed a child’s linguistic skills, during adolescence. She then physically weaned the child from his mother tongue, or corrected his linguistic faults, with her whip. The weaning from Grammar was usually emblematic of a young man’s transition from the private, maternal, and domestic spheres to the public, patriarchal, and governmental spheres. Aeneas, for example, had to abandon his lover Dido, and also his wet nurse and grammar teacher, Gaeta, to found Rome (Aen. 4.219–78 and 331–61; and 7.1–7). In contrast, the Mopsa allegory reimagines the reader’s relationship to the liberal arts in erotic, rather than in chaste or maternal, terms. Mopsa uncovers her privates, carries no whip, and does not ask that Affron ever depart from her feminine embrace. Her breast— an apparent pun with “seno,” coming from “senno,” or “wisdom,” from the female “chest”—provides the skills to gain wisdom, not a separation from the erotic body. Continuing to embrace her makes Ameto the wisest public official in the masculine world of politics and governance. Such details render her vernacular body much more erotic with respect to the typical Latin tradition. Indeed, Boccaccio implied that the episode also concerned vernacular learning by characterizing Affron as being initially rude (i.e., not Latin literate; e.g., Ameto, 18.37). By reflecting on these matters, Boccaccio perhaps engaged Dante’s ideas about grammar, language, and education.64 Dante too theorized the dignity of the vernacular by reference to feminine and bodily notions. In De vulgari eloquentia, he explained that children learn the vernacu­ lar because of their natural capacity to imitate their nurses’ speech, whereas Latin is an artificial language, which is learned through study

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(Dve 1.1.2–4). In the treatise, Dante sought to obscure and transcend the maternal, natural properties of non-­Latin idioms (e.g., Dve 1.6.2). The naturalness of the vernacular, he explains, engendered varieties of speech and semiotic confusion (Dve 1.9.6–10). He instead promotes a masculine version of the vernacular termed vulgare illustre (illustrious vernacular), that is, a refined, trans­regional, peninsular language (Dve 1.17.1 and 2.6– 7). In the Comedy, this male vernacular was then recalled as the idiom of stilnovistic poetry (e.g., Purg. 24.40–63 and 26.91–117). However, Dante asserted that he had surpassed this linguistically rarified and conceptually limited tradition. He embraced the fluid and feminine aspects of the vernacular because of their Christian connotations. He defended his vernacular poetics by recalling ideas about the Bible’s sermo humilis (humble speech); about the maternal resonances of Christ; and about the need for scripture to be translated into new contexts. In Paradise, Adam even cele­ brates the shifting nature of human speech by noting that Nature has no preference for a particular idiom: “Opera naturale è ch’uom favella; / ma così o così, natura lascia / poi fare a voi secondo che v’abbella” (It is a natu­ral operation that humankind speaks, but whether in this way or that, Nature allows you to do as it may please you) (Par. 26.130–32). In Paradiso 27, Beatrice also redeems the figure of Aeneas’s wet nurse and grammar teacher, Gaeta, who was left behind by her pupil. She denounces those who as youths take nourishment from their mothers only to abandon them later (Par. 27.130–35). Given Boccaccio’s familiarity with De vulgari eloquentia and the Comedy, he would have been sensitive to these notions. Perhaps developing Dante’s ideas, Boccaccio casts his (protagonist’s) relationship to the vernacular exclusively in erotic rather than in maternal terms. Mopsa is not a nourishing woman but a female instructor who carnally pleasures Affron. Therefore, whereas Dante figured the subject of grammar as a nursing body, Boccaccio figured it as a sexualized one. Still, by embodying vernacular pedagogy in Mopsa, Boccaccio recalled a concept that was important for Dante too. Boccaccio was merely reminding readers of the vital role of enjoyment in education. He may have highlighted this notion because Dante foregrounded the generative and curative resonances of the vernacular, thereby potentially obscuring its pleasurable dimension. In addition, Boccaccio recalled traditions related to allegory and grammar to distinguish his views about these topics from concepts inherent in

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a second nexus of passages in the Comedy. The Mopsa episode engages ideas about images and carnal knowledge associated with Ulysses, who is punished among the false counselors (Inf. 26). Ulysses’s interactions with the pilgrim have implications for issues concerning reading, experience of the world, and the erotic, which are also the primary subjects of the Ameto.65 By reflecting on Dante’s Ulysses, Boccaccio was addressing one of the key metatextual topics of the Comedy. Though scholars have studied in detail Dante’s and Petrarch’s ideological uses of Ulysses, they have rarely discussed Boccaccio’s engagement with the classical voyager.66 Dante-­pilgrim learned that Ulysses was damned, in part, because his explorations of the world were not motivated by spiritual reasons, but rather by superficial curiosity. Ulysses first recounts his stay with Circe by overtly recalling Aeneas’s voyage: “mi diparti’ da Circe, che sottrasse / me più d’un anno là presso a Gaeta, / prima che sì Enëa la nomasse” (I departed from Circe, who held me back more than a year there near Gaeta, before Aeneas gave it that name) (Inf. 26.91–93). Aeneas departs from Gaeta in the Aeneid, but Dante’s Ulysses enjoys the erotic Circe, a kind of anti-­nurse or anti-­Grammar.67 The allusion to Aeneas juxtaposes Ulysses’s unholy voyage to Aeneas’s and the pilgrim’s divine travels. Unlike pious Aeneas, who cared for his father and son, Ulysses abandoned his family to experience the world: né dolcezza di figlio, né la pieta del vecchio padre, né ’l debito amore lo qual dovea Penelopè far lieta, vincer potero dentro a me l’ardore ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto e de li vizi umani e del valore. (Inf. 26.94–99) neither sweetness of son, nor compassion for my old father, nor the love owed to Penelope, which should have made her glad, could conquer within me the ardor that I had to gain experience of the world and of human vices and of worth. The sailor implored his small crew to join him on a voyage replete with sensual experiences:

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a questa tanto picciola vigilia d’i nostri sensi ch’è del rimanente non vogliate negar l’esperïenza, di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente. (Inf. 26.114–17) to this so very brief vigil of our senses that remains, do not deny the experience, following the sun, of the world without people. Encouraging his crew to undertake the journey, Ulysses implores them that they were not made to live as beasts but to acquire knowledge: “fatti non foste a viver come bruti, / ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza” (you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge) (Inf. 26.119–20). The crew then sailed past the geographical boundaries of the medieval known world, past the Pillars of Hercules marking the limits of the Mediterranean, toward Mount Purgatory. But before they could land, a mysterious (probably divine) Another caused them to shipwreck (Inf. 26.141–42). Ulysses is recalled at key moments throughout the Comedy. When the pilgrim successfully reaches the shores of Purgatory, verses allude to the sailor’s failed voyage. The narrator sings of the “navicella” (small ship) of his mind, an image reminiscent of Ulysses “compagna / picciola” (small crew) (Purg. 1.2; cf. Inf. 26.101–2, 114, and 122). On the ledge dedicated to envy, Guido del Duca explains that the Tuscan communes have been reduced to a beast-­like state, as though “Circe li avesse in pastura” (Circe has put them out to graze) (Purg. 14.40–43). In Purgatorio 19, the canto about the hoarders and wasters of goods, the pilgrim also dreams of the Siren who attracted Ulysses. When the pilgrim sees a hideous woman, his gaze seems to transform her body into a sensual, attractive form. The woman introduces herself as the Siren who made Ulysses drift off course: “Io son,” cantava, “io son dolce serena, che ’ marinari in mezzo mar dismago; tanto son di piacere a sentir piena! Io volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago al canto mio; e qual meco s’ausa, rado sen parte; sì tutto l’appago!” (Purg. 19.19–24)

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“I am,” she was singing, “I am the sweet Siren who enchants the sailors on the deep sea, so full of pleasure am I to hear! I turned Ulysses from his wandering voyage to my song; and whoever becomes used to me, rarely departs, so wholly do I satisfy him!” A mysterious woman then corrects the pilgrim’s gaze by having Virgil strip off the Siren’s clothes, thereby revealing the ugly reality of her disgusting body (Purg. 19.25–33). Her female figure may symbolize the nature of excessively or unholy mundane experiences: “L’altra [donna] prendea, e dinanzi l’apria / fendendo i drappi, e mostravami ’l ventre; / quel mi svegliò col puzzo che n’uscia” (The other [woman] he seized and opened in front, tearing her clothes, and showed me her belly, which awakened me with the stench that issued from it) (Purg. 19.31–33). In the Earthly Paradise, remarks about how the constellation Orsa minore helps ship captains come to port again recall Ulysses’s nautical journey (Purg. 30.1–7). The canto thus highlights differences between Ulysses’s failure to reach shore and the successful conclusion of the pilgrim’s (poetic) voyage, which was undertaken in Purgatorio 1. Scholars have often noted that these characterizations of Ulysses have few antecedents. In classical and medieval texts, Ulysses was typically represented in a positive light. Writers thought that he was an expert navigator who gained wisdom from his erotic and bodily experiences. Ovid recounted that Ulysses saved his crew from Circe’s potions, and then learned about his future travels from her (Metam. 14.223–319). In Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae (De cons.), Ulysses symbolized the individual who could safely and sanely deal with carnal and even bestial matters (De cons. 4.3m.1–26).68 In the later commentary tradition, William of Conches (ca. 1090–post 1154) and Giovanni del Virgilio (fl. 1300–1327) also considered Ulysses a clever man who gained wisdom from Circe.69 Boccaccio recounts these commonplace ideas about Ulysses and his para­ mours in his Latin compilations, the De mulieribus claris (1361–62) and Genealogie.70 He notes that though Circe turned Ulysses’s crew into beasts, Ulysses himself acquired vital information by having a relationship with her (Gen. 11.60.7 and De mul. 38.4). Ulysses even visited the afterlife, returned to the living, avoided the Sirens, and navigated around Scylla and Charybdis (Gen. 11.60.7–8). Boccaccio knew that according to tradition Ulysses, though aided by a different kind of female guide than the pilgrim, had accomplished in large part what Dante-­pilgrim later did. Not

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Beatrice but the erotic Circe led Ulysses to the otherworld and back and helped him navigate the dangers posed by the Sirens. Informed by standard medieval views of Ulysses, Boccaccio’s version of the sailor’s story overturns the negative depiction of the voyager in the Comedy. The Mopsa episode questions the damnation of Ulysses’s earthly, mundane voyage by recasting Ulysses as a successful navigator of the world. Affron’s “picciola barca” (small boat) recalls Dante’s warning that his readers in a “piccioletta barca” (small boat) must follow him closely, otherwise they risk shipwrecking like Ulysses’s “compagna / picciola” (little company) (Ameto 18.12; Par. 2.1; and Inf. 26.101–2, respectively). The opening phrases about Mopsa’s Apollonian and Parnassian pedigree also evoke references to Ulysses in the Paradiso, ones that involve similar symbols for wisdom: Minerva, Apollo, and the Muses (Ameto 18.7–8; and Par. 2.7–9). The Mopsa story then calls to mind Ulysses’s general encounter with Scylla and the Sirens. Mopsa declares that she will not jump into the water to save Affron because she could be transformed into a monster, as Scylla was (Ameto 18.17).71 A man sailing past women reminds readers of Ulysses’s navigation around Scylla and the Sirens (but in the Comedy, Ulysses was thrown off course by the Siren). Moreover, Mopsa’s stripping is modeled on the episode of Ulysses and the Siren in Purgatorio 19. Whereas Dante’s Siren seduces Ulysses from his “cammin vago” (wandering voyage), Mopsa removes her garments to reveal her “vago seno” (attractive breast) (Ameto 18.34–35).72 In the fourteenth century, vago and vaghezza had a diverse range of connotations. Vago could mean “wandering,” “charming,” “desirous,” “confusing,” and “uncertain,” and was often associated with the visual. The image of Mopsa’s vago seno attracting a sailor evokes the adjective’s full range of possible meanings. Mopsa, however, does not have an ugly chest like the Siren’s but a highly sensuous one. The Mopsa episode then underscores differences between the conclusion of Ulysses’s voyage in Inferno 26 and the results of Affron’s travels in the Ameto. Whereas Dante’s Ulysses was swallowed by the sea and ended up in Hell, Mopsa warns Affron that without her he too will end up swallowed by the sea: “farò [te] dallo aperto mare con la tua nave inghiottire” (I will have [you] swallowed up by the open sea with your boat) (Ameto 18.30). Finally, when Affron gains knowledge from Mopsa’s embrace, Mopsa names Ulysses and likens herself to Circe: “Le quali voci, . . . , non altrimenti mi fecero lieta che fosse il narizio duca già ne’ porti della figliuola del Sole, di Cileno conosciuto l’avvento a sua salute” (These

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words, . . . , made me as happy as the Neritian leader [Ulysses], who was already in the port of the daughter of the Sun, when he recognized Cyllene, who had come for his safety) (Ameto 18.36–37). The metapoetic importance of Affron/Ulysses is underscored by the fact that he is recalled, like Dante’s Ulysses, at key moments throughout the text. Most importantly, Ameto’s final divine vision of Venus calls to mind Ulysses and issues related to allegorical reading. Mopsa, like all the nymphs, follows her adulterous tale with a poem that elucidates the meaning of the narrative. She intones that she will teach the eye to see the eternal beauties of Paradise, “rendendo quinci gl’intelletti sani” (by making the intellects healthy) (Ameto 19.31). The phrase is an obvious citation of Inferno 9. In this canto, the pilgrim and Virgil are blocked by the Furies outside the walls of Dis, and they fear the impending arrival of Medusa. The narrator asks the reader to interpret the episode, and by extension the women in the episode: “O voi ch’avete li ’ntelletti sani, / mirate la dottrina che s’asconde / sotto ’l velame de li versi strani” (O you who have healthy intellects, gaze on the doctrine that is hidden beneath the veil of the strange verses) (Inf. 9.61–63). In the Ameto’s conclusion, the nymph Lia recalls these verses and this episode again when she requests that readers interpret allegorically: O voi ch’avete chiari gl’intelletti, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . deh, rivolgetevi alquanto ad udire il mio parlare e attenti notate il ver ch’ascoso cerca discovrire. (Ameto 39.1–9) O you who have clear intellects, . . . turn yourselves a bit to hear my speech, and note attentively the hidden truth it seeks to uncover. The reader and Ameto must allegorize the nymphs as Dante-­poet asked his readers to do with the Furies and Medusa, erotic figures who could physically harm the pilgrim. Allegorical reading then helps Ameto gain the wisdom that Dante’s Ulysses failed to acquire. Whereas Ameto was previously an “animale bruto” (brute animal), he now transforms into a man (Ameto 46.4). By using the adjective “bruto,” Boccaccio signals a final

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difference between Affron/Ameto and Dante’s Ulysses. In Inferno 26, Ulysses encouraged his men not to live as “beasts” (bruti) but to seek virtue and knowledge (Inf. 26.119–20). Though Dante’s Ulysses failed in his voyage, Ameto—no longer a beast—sees that the nymphs represent the virtues and divine love. Boccaccio’s engagement with Dante’s Ulysses champions an optimistic view about how amatory and mundane experiences promote knowledge. The depiction of Ulysses as a sailor who enjoys women without shipwrecking has significant hermeneutic implications. It redeems the epistemological value of the varieties of carnal knowledge that were characterized as sinful in the Comedy. According to the Mopsa episode, the liberal arts can teach readers to interpret any kind of erotic body and any type of amatory text in a profitable manner. Or, in the metaphoric terms of the Ameto, the passage emphasizes that good readers can potentially have intercourse with diverse sensual bodies and (vernacular) erotic texts. Boccaccio thus clarifies that well-­trained readers do not necessarily need to avoid, but rather can enjoy, carnal experiences and amatory literary traditions.

T H E R E V E L AT I O N O F T H E B O DY

The concluding sections of the Ameto engage with Dante’s ideas about how images signify and what they can symbolize. These topics are treated in stories about the theological virtues (love, hope, faith), which by definition concerned believing in and yearning for the metaphysical, spiritual, and unseen.73 The issue of depicting the divine arises when Ameto wonders how to relate his experience to others (Ameto 31.9–11). Agapes offers Ameto a solution by recounting a story that draws on analogies between carnal and spiritual experiences. The nymph explains that she was forced to marry an aging man and laments that his body can no longer adequately pleasure her (Ameto 32.8–21). Her minute description of his decrepit body (descriptio corporis) recalls biblical and philosophical texts that employed carnal images to communicate ideas about spiritual matters (Ameto 32.9–12). The following lines are emblematic of her extended descriptio: Egli ha ancora, che più mi spiace, gli occhi più rossi che bianchi, nascosi sotto grottose ciglia, folte di lunghi peli; e contiuo son

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lagrimosi. Le labbra sue sono come quelle dell’orecchiuto asino pendule e sanza alcuno colore, palide. (Ameto 32.10–12) He yet has, what disturbs me more, eyes more red than white, hidden under cavernous brows, which were thick with long hairs; and they were continually tearing. His lips were colorless, pale, and drooping, like those of the long-­eared ass. Her husband, in fact, never has any sexual or spiritual “compassion” on Agapes, who prays to Venus for mercy: “O pietosa Venere, . . . , presta le misericordiose orecchi a’ prieghi miei” (O compassionate Venus, . . . , lend your merciful ears to my prayers) (Ameto 32.29 and cf. 15). By implication, the aging body and impotence of Agapes’s husband represents envy, the vice opposed to compassion in medieval culture. By using erotic images and narratives to symbolize virtue and vice, Agapes’s narrative suggests that “authors” like Ameto should signify spiritual concepts by exploiting the analogic resonances of the body. The episode then contrasts Agapes’s encounter with divine love to one aspect of Dante-­pilgrim’s experience of God. Agapes has a vision that recalls the pilgrim’s ascension to Paradise, but, unlike the pilgrim, she never successfully leaves earth. Agapes initially feels as though she is ascending to Heaven, and even seems to glimpse the “aiuola” (small threshing floor) viewed by the pilgrim (Par. 22.151 and 27.86): se non che subitamente io mi vidi in uno lucente carro, tirato da bianche colombe, portare per lo cielo; e chinati gli occhi alle cose basse, mi si scoperse il picciolo spazio della gimbosa terra e l’acque a lei ravvolte in forma di chelidro. (Ameto 32.33) But instantly I saw myself in a shining cart, drawn by white doves, carried through the sky. And turning my eyes toward the sights below, I saw a small stretch of the uneven earth with waters binding her in the shape of a serpent. Nevertheless, she clarifies that Love descended to meet her on earth. Agapes explains that Venus came to her just as she had come to Aeneas,

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on the coast near Carthage: “io vagabunda m’andava, e della via incerta e della fortuna futura, come ne’ liti africani ad Enea, cotale, infra le mor­ tine, mi si mostrò la chiamata dea” (while I went wandering there, uncertain of the way and of my future destiny, the invoked goddess appeared to me among the myrtle, just as she had to Aeneas on the African shores) (Ameto 32.36). Venus’s descent to Agapes is also reminiscent of how God “condescended” to humanity by signifying metaphysical notions in carnal images and bodies, for example, in the Song of Songs. The description of Venus, the personification of compassion, is described from the head down, as the Shulamite bride was (Ameto 32.37–38). The episode thus implies that Ameto can communicate his spiritual experience by employing carnal and earthly images in a manner akin to how the Bible does. Furthermore, the passage begins to introduce the notion that embodied humans encounter the divine in this world, not only in Paradise or through a miraculous experience of the afterlife. Boccaccio continues to emphasize the primacy of the body in humanity’s quest for knowledge by rendering the Agapes episode more carnal and erotic than the philosophical, theological, and literary sources that inspire the passage. First, there are notable differences between Agapes’s narrative and the Neoplatonic myth of Cupid and Psyche, which was interpreted as a story about the individual soul yearning for union with God (Gen. 5.22.11–17). Whereas in Apuleius’s version Psyche cannot see Cupid, Agapes repeats three times that she does see the youthful god (Ameto 32.42–47). Second, though Solomon discusses his relationship with the Shulamite bride in erotic terms, Agapes actually sees Venus naked and overtly enjoys her erotic embraces: per l’ora già calda [la dea] s’avea levato da dosso il sottile velo, e entrata nel chiaro fonte. . . . Le sante braccia di Citerea m’avvinsero più volte il candido collo; e i suoi baci, non simili a’ mondani, non una volta sola, ma molte gustai, e già incominciai a lodarmi del preso consiglio e a sentire de’ passati rincrescimenti del noioso marito alcuna ricreazione. (Ameto 32.49–50) Because the hour was already hot, [the goddess] had removed her light veil and stepped into the clear fountain. . . . The holy arms of Cytherea circled my white neck many times; and not once but

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many times I tasted her kisses, unlike mundane ones. I was now commending myself for the counsel followed and was feeling some diversion from the tediousness of my irksome husband. Finally, the earthly episode is more erotic—in one crucial sense—than the celestial ascent described in the Paradiso. The pilgrim repeatedly experiences desire in the Comedy and is drawn to God by means of his yearnings (for Beatrice). However, Dante never consummates his physical desires with another body during his otherworldly journey. By contrast, Agapes does fulfill her desires with a (female) figure in the Ameto. The eroticism of the Agapes episode thus promotes more directly the symbolic utility of earthly love with respect to the Dantean intertext. Agapes’s concluding poetic hymn then emphasizes that terrestrial Venus both complements and illuminates spiritual experiences: E l’una parte [di Citerea] inverso il ciel si stende; e così fatto caldo sale a quello che del suo lume tututto l’accende; ma l’altra, poi ch’è divisa da ello, alla terra declina sì fervente che quanto prende del mondo fa bello, riscaldando ciascuna fredda mente, dimostrando il valor di Citerea, mal conosciuto alla moderna gente. E di quel caldo tal frutto si crea, che se ne acquista conoscere Iddio e come vada e venga e dove stea. Di salire a’ suoi regni anche ’l disio s’aguzza molto, . . . (Ameto 33.13–26) One part [of Venus] stretches to the sky; and with such heat climbs upward and wholly ignites it with its light; while the other part, which begins from it, bends so fervently toward the earth that it beautifies all that it touches in the world, warming every cold spirit, and manifesting the power of Cytherea, which is not well known to modern people. And such fruits are created by that heat, that from it we acquire knowledge of God, and how he

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comes and goes, where he abides. And to climb to his realms the desire also becomes more intense, . . . Therefore, Boccaccio does not imply that readers should sublimate terrestrial Venus or transform her into spiritual love to attain salvation. The poem intimates that any such sublimation is not only physically impossible, but spiritually flawed.74 Several readers have proposed that Boccaccio’s erotic writings encourage a transcendence of eros. Instead, these sections of the text affirm that terrestrial and celestial Venus can successfully be integrated and harmonized. In particular, they propose that mundane eros can illuminate the presence of beauty and God here on earth and lead readers to Paradise. After signaling differences between the Ameto and the Paradiso, Boccaccio reflects on matters related to the depiction of love in the Vita nova. Fiammetta’s narrative about hope that follows Agapes’s story addresses the kinds of erotic narratives present in Dante’s vernacular prosimetron (poetics). Her tale also prompts readers to consider the types of desires that inform its carnal symbolism (ethics). Fiammetta begins her tale by stating that she may be the illegitimate daughter of King Robert of Anjou and was potentially conceived after the king violated her mother (Ameto 35.42–45). Despite the bodily violence, her mother gave birth physically to Fiammetta and allegorically to hope: “Ma, onde che il violato ventre, o da questo inganno o dal proprio marito quello medesimo giorno, seme prendesse, io fui nel debito tempo frutto della matura pregnezza” (Yet whether the violated womb took seed from this deceit or from her husband that same day, I was in due time the fruit of the ripened pregnancy) (Ameto 35.46). Fiammetta’s opening remarks propose that the topic of her story will concern the imperfect and tainted body. The protagonists of that story are Caleone and Fiammetta, who reprise their roles as stand-­ ins for Boccaccio and Maria d’Aquino from the Filocolo.75 The details of their relationship, however, are calqued from passages and events that concern the body in Dante’s Vita nova. Caleone explains that Fiammetta had originally presented herself to him when he was a young man. As Beatrice appeared before Dante (Vn 2.1–3 [1.2–4]), so Fiammetta appeared before him like an image—“agli occhi della [sua] mente” (before the eyes of [his] mind) (Ameto 35.74). Like Beatrice, she was also dressed humbly and appropriately for her age:

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Per la quale [città] così andando, agli occhi della mente si parò innanzi una giovane bellissima, in aspetto graziosa e leggiadra e di verdi vestimenti vestita, ornata secondo che la sua età e l’antico costume della città richiedeno; e con liete accoglienze, me prima per la mano preso, mi baciò. (Ameto 35.74–75) As I went about it [the city] in this way, a beautiful maiden appeared before the eyes of my mind; graceful and pretty in aspect and dressed in green, as the ancient custom of her city demands. With a merry welcome she first took me by the hand and kissed me, and I her. Caleone then admits that he has had relationships with other ladies, a fact that recalls Dante-­lover’s relationship with the so-­called “donne-­schermo” (screen-­ladies) (Vn 4.1–7.2; 9.3–6; 12.3–8 [2.3–13; 4.3–6; 5.10–15]). Caleone has also betrayed Fiammetta with “donne-­schernitrici” (women-­ mockers) named Pampinea and Abrotonia.76 He now suffers from erotic nightmares just as the narrator had terrifying visions in the Vita nova. However, whereas Dante saw Beatrice and Love, Caleone sees his tormentors taunt him: “amendune, mirandomi fiso con atto lascivo e con parole abominevoli dannando i miei dolori, mi schernivano” (both of them looked at me fixedly, and condemning my anguish with dissolute gestures and abominable words, they mocked me) (Ameto 35.86). Caleone explains that he begged the ladies to leave him in peace, and declares that he now honors them in his poetry (Ameto 35.88). He informs Fiammetta that his female tormentors responded that they would eventually lead him to a woman (present before him), who “signoreggerà la [sua] mente” (will rule [his] mind) (Ameto 35.91). These remarks recall how Beatrice and Love ruled over Dante’s soul (e.g., Vn 2.7–9 [1.8–10]). The association of Dante-­lover with Caleone raises doubts about Dante-­ character’s feelings for Beatrice in comparison to Boccaccio-­ narrator’s love for Fiammetta. In the Ameto, Boccaccio-­narrator ack­ nowledges his erotic feelings for Fiammetta, and in the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio-­pilgrim physically embraces her (AV 46.16–60). By contrast, the allusions to the Vita nova in the Ameto suggest that Dante-­lover struggled to suppress erotic desires. In the Trattatello and Esposizioni,

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Boccaccio also emphasized that Dante continually battled the “fierissima” (most fierce) passion of love (Tratt. §§29 and 172–74; and Espos., Acc. 33). In the Ameto, these echoes of the Vita nova highlight that Dante’s love for Beatrice was not only inspired by an appreciation of her Christ-­like overtones. Rather, the allusions to Dante’s prosimetron imply that his love for the sublime woman also stemmed from frustrated carnal desires. The implication is that Dante might have employed sublimated and chaste erotic images in the Vita nova out of a fear of the earthly, tainted, or violated body (like Fiammetta’s or her mother’s). In other words, Boccaccio implies that the narrative of the Vita nova occasionally conceals the human body behind chastened images of Beatrice or Love. In the Vita nova, Dante directly and overtly engaged with the reality of humanity’s embodiment in diverse chapters (e.g., Vn 2–5, 7, 22, 23, etc. [1.2–2.9, 2.12–18, 13, 14]). Nevertheless, in the Ameto, Boccaccio suggests that sections of Dante’s prosimetron may obfuscate humanity’s fallenness, imperfections, and embodied reality. Therefore, Boccaccio reflected on how Dante’s youthful work might affect readers’ feelings about their own erotic relationships. He interrogated how readers might interpret a text whose narrator initially proclaims that Beatrice seemed not to be the daughter of a man but of God (Vn 2.8 [1.9]). In the work’s conclusion, the lover also yearns for otherworldly union with his beloved’s spirit.77 Finally, Lia and Ameto are the protagonists of the prosimetron’s final tale, which serves as a frame for the Ameto by introducing and concluding the other narratives. The account of their relationship allegorizes the notion of faith, defined conventionally in the Middle Ages as “a belief in the unseen.”78 Their love affair instead highlights that faith might be aided by many things seen in the present world. Boccaccio elucidates this point by contrasting the bodily and mundane images of the Ameto to the celestial images present in sections of the Paradiso. At the conclusion of their love affair, Ameto sees Venus in a Trinitarian image of light and fire. The passage recalls ideas about faith and revelation in the credo recited by Dante in Paradiso 24 and 31:79 e credo in tre persone etterne, e queste credo una essenza sì una e sì trina, che soffera congiunto “sono” ed “este.”

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De la profonda condizion divina ch’io tocco mo, la mente mi sigilla più volte l’evangelica dottrina. (Par. 24.139–44; emphasis added) And I believe in the three Persons eternal, and these I believe to be an Essence so one and so trine that it supports both are and is. About the profound nature of God on which I touch now, my mind is sealed numerous times by the teachings of the Gospels. Oh trina luce che ’n unica stella scintillando a lor vista, sì li appaga! guarda qua giuso a la nostra procella! (Par. 31.28–30; emphasis added) O triple light, that in a single star, flashing in their sight, fulfill them so, gaze down here at our tempest! Io son luce del cielo unica e trina, principio e fine di ciascuna cosa: deh, qual men fu, né fia nulla, vicina? E sì son vera luce e graziosa, che chi mi segue non andrà giammai errando in parte trista o tenebrosa, ma con letizia agli angelici rai mi seguirà nelle divizie etterne, serbate lor d’allor ch’io le creai. (Ameto 41.1–9; emphasis added) I am the light of the sky, one and triune, beginning and end of all things; pray, what was ever, or will be, my equal? And so true and gracious a light am I, that he who follows me will never go erring in a sad or shadowy place, but happily will follow me to the angelic rays in eternal blessings, which were reserved for him, when I created them.

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Ameto, however, cannot comprehend the Dantean-­inspired image of our divine effigy: “Ma del divino viso l’effigie e de’ belli occhi co’ suoi non poté prendere” (Nevertheless he could not grasp with his eyes the image of the beautiful eyes and the divine face) (Ameto 42.4). After Ameto expresses confusion about these images, Venus requests that the erotic nymphs reveal themselves. She explains that they will help Ameto see because their “opere” (works) represent the divine (or as much of it as humans can grasp) in the world: O care mie sorelle, per le quali le vie a’ regni miei son manifeste a chi salire a quei vuol metter ali, l’opere vostre licite e oneste, diritte, buone, sante e virtuose, di loda degne, semplici e modeste, svelin le luci oscure e nebulose d’Ameto, acciò che diventi possente a veder le bellezze mie gioiose, acciò che e’, quanto all’umana gente è licito vederne, sappia dire tra’ suoi compagni poi, di me ardente. Vedete lui che tutto nel disire di ciò ch’io parlo si dimostra acceso. (Ameto 43.1–14; emphasis added) Now my dear sisters, through whom the ways to my realms are manifest to whoever wants to don wings to ascend, may your works, lawful, and honest, upright, good, holy, and virtuous, worthy of praise, simple and modest, reveal the dark and cloudy eyes of Ameto, so that he may acquire the power to see my joyous beauties, so that, as much as is permitted to humankind to see, he might know how to speak of me to his companions, burning with desire. You see him all in desire inflamed by what I speak about. The nymphs respond by re-­embodying the allegory of the entire text while cleansing Ameto in a fountain:

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Mopsa con veste in piega raccolta, gli occhi asciugandoli, da quelli levò l’oscura caligine che Venere gli toglieva. Ma Emilia, lieta e con mano pietosa, sollecita, a quella parte dove la santa dea teneva la vista sua, il suo sguardo dirizzò di presente; e Acrimonia agli occhi, già chiari, la vista fece potente a tali effetti; ma poi che Adiona l’ebbe di drappi carissimi ricoperto, Agapes, in bocca spirandoli, di fuoco mai da lui simile non sentito l’accese. Di che, egli vedendosi ornato, bello, con luce chiara ardente, lieto al santo viso distese le vaghe luci. (Ameto 44.2–3) Then Mopsa, drying his eyes with her dress gathered together, removed the dirty fog that had hindered him from seeing Venus. Then with a pious hand the joyful Emilia immediately directed his glance toward the place where the holy goddess held her sight; and with his eyes already cleansed, Acrimonia made his vision capable of sustaining such effects. Then when Adiona had covered him with precious garments, Agapes breathed into his mouth, igniting him with a fire, the like he had never before known. And finding himself splendid and beautiful and shining with bright light, he happily lifted his eager eyes toward the holy countenance. His baptism and rebirth recall the pilgrim’s own baptismal cleansing in the Earthly Paradise (Purg. 31.91–111). The episode then evokes an image—the Argonauts’ voyage to recover the Golden Fleece (Par. 2.16– 18)—used by Dante-­poet to describe the disorientation that the reader might feel while experiencing Paradise. The poet also recalled the myth when the pilgrim glimpses the divine at the end of the voyage: “Un punto solo m’è maggior letargo / che venticinque secoli a la ’mpresa / che fé Nettuno ammirar l’ombra d’Argo” (One point alone is greater forgetfulness to me than twenty-­five centuries to the enterprise that made Neptune marvel at the shadow of the Argo) (Par. 33.94–96). Boccaccio-­ narrator similarly refers to the myth at the end of Ameto’s journey: “né altrimenti, quella ineffabile bellezza mirando, ebbe ammirazione che gli achivi compagni veduto bifolco divenuto Giansone” (nor in wondering at that ineffable beauty was his admiration otherwise than that of the Greek companions when they saw Jason become a ploughman) (Ameto 44.4). Ameto then tries a second time to look at the Dantean-­inspired “effig[i]e”

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(effigy in each text) but still fails to comprehend it (Ameto 44.6; and Par. 33.127–32). These images that confused Dante-­pilgrim are replaced by a vision that the humble shepherd can grasp, the erotic nymphs themselves. Ameto now understands what they symbolize and how they function as images: Quindi i canti de’ pastori, che solamente l’orecchie di lui aveano dilettate, quanto sieno utili al cuore sente con sommo frutto. Similemente vede che sieno le ninfe le quali più all’occhio che allo ’intelletto erano piaciute, e ora allo ’ntelletto piacciono più che all’occhio; discerne quali sieno i templi e quali le dee di cui cantano e chenti sieno i loro amori. (Ameto 46.3) Then with supreme benefit he recognized how useful were the songs of the shepherds, which had then only pleased his ears. Similarly, he discovered that whereas the nymphs had pleased more his eye than his intellect, they now delighted his intellect more than his eye; and accordingly he discerned which were the temples and the goddesses of whom they sang and of what nature their loves were. Ameto celebrates by singing a poem about divine order in the world that echoes concepts from Boethius’s programmatic poem about universal order: O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas (O You who govern the world with perpetual reason) (De cons. 3.m9):80 O diva luce che in tre persone e una essenza il ciel governi e ’l mondo con giusto amore e etterna ragione, dando legge alle stelle e al ritondo moto del sole, prencipe di quelle, si come discerniamo in questo fondo. (Ameto 47.1–7; emphasis added) Divine light, which in three persons and one essence governs the heavens and the earth with a just love and eternal order, giving law to the stars and to the round movement of the sun, ruler of them, as we perceive here below.

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Boccaccio evinces the Neoplatonic commonplace about the world being an image of the divine to disassociate himself from aspects of the contemplative tradition that were hostile toward creation. The image of the world that Ameto has seen “in questo fondo” (here below) is, in reality, quite different from that which diverse contemplatives claimed to have seen from on high, at the conclusion of their epistemological ascents. The closing sections of the Ameto recall deliberately the pilgrim’s travels in the Paradiso. However, Boccaccio does not evoke passages of the Paradiso for purposes of imitation. Boccaccio’s Dantean intertextuality highlights differences between his narrative and that of his fellow Florentine. His rewriting of passages of the Paradiso—and this is the key— eliminates the transcendent elements of the canticle’s poetics. He replaced Dante-­pilgrim’s paradisiacal narrative with a mundane one. Boccaccio thus encouraged debate about whether a poetics based on a celestial narrative, “incorporeal” corporeality, and idealized eroticism can embody meaning. The prosimetron reveals that humble, occasional, or typical readers, such as Ameto, may struggle to grasp aspects of Dante’s poem. In the opening of the Paradiso, Dante-­poet himself had cautioned that all but the most sophisticated of his readers would be confused (Par. 2.1–6). Boccaccio was, therefore, adapting Dante’s text for readers of more humble or standard hermeneutic abilities. He was also composing a text for readers who seemingly desired a more pleasurable literary experience. Finally, by engaging the Paradiso, Boccaccio drew attention to the more carnal, embodied nature of his own poetics. And Ameto’s final vision proposes that such a poetics can represent a diverse range of spiritual concepts. Whereas Dante-­pilgrim had occasion to glimpse aspects of the divine effigy in Paradise, Ameto has a divine vision after a voyage in the present world. Though never transcending humankind’s bodily limitations or erotic desires, he nevertheless enjoys and contemplates an image of God.

T H E S I G N I F I C A N C E O F T H E B O DY

In the Ameto, Boccaccio championed the efficacy of carnal images in the construction and communication of meaning. More specifically, the Ameto suggests that the female body has a particular capacity to signify a broad range of theological, philosophical, and literary concepts. Boccaccio defended the symbolic efficacy of the female form by reference

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to positive ideas about the (feminine) body in Neoplatonic philosophy, in the Bible and in theological texts, and in treatises about literature. He also drew on these notions to counter other Neoplatonic, theological, and poetic traditions that were skeptical of the cognitive value of the body. This broad debate informed Boccaccio’s reflection on Dante, and especially his engagement with passages of the Comedy that themselves deal with the body and utility of literature. Bolstered by various traditions, Boccaccio clarified passages of the Comedy that could be (mis)interpreted as downplaying the utility of the (female) body in humankind’s search for meaning and relationship with God. Furthermore, Boccaccio’s literary engagement with the body prompted him to consider how God used the body to signify, both in the Bible and in creation. In the Ameto, he was inspired by images of the female body in the Song of Songs, and by Pseudo-­Dionysian and Augustinian concepts that influenced allegorical interpretations of the female body in the Bible. In the Amorosa visione, Decameron, and Corbaccio, he later complemented the bodily poetics that resulted from this reflection by striving to imitate God’s other semiotic uses of the body. Boccaccio also drew on philosophical and theological ideas about images to underscore the importance of the body in humankind’s earthly search for knowledge. The Ameto highlights that humans—indeed all humans—can embody ethical and spiritual ideas for one another. In the vernacular prosimetron, meaning is not embodied by ancient or famous persons, or a perfect woman from heaven, or inspired prophets and poet-­ theologians. Instead, normal flesh and blood humans, with all their faults, imperfections, and earthly desires, embody meaning. These (images of ) real persons signify in ways that inspire diverse types of readers, even the humble and rustic Ameto. By extension, therefore, the Ameto reminds readers that each individual participates in and affects the unfolding of salvation history and revelation. The work suggests that all humans, when motivated by compassion and love, can improve their fellow citizens’ lives and communities. Consequently, the text encourages readers not to focus exclusively on otherworldly, celestial, and eternal matters, but to engage earthly and domestic issues. The Ameto does not only address theological and philosophical matters, but prompts readers to love one another and perform daily acts of compassion. Boccaccio thus endeavored to demonstrate that serious literature could treat issues related to the mundane,

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the domestic, and the quotidian. In composing the Ameto, Boccaccio was inspired by, but also expanded upon, Dante’s own attempts to broaden the thematic scope of vernacular writing to encompass these topics. Boccaccio continues to consider both the poetic and spiritual import of the body in his subsequent vernacular writings.

THREE

The Ethics of the Corpus Amorosa visione

B O C C AC C I O’ S V I S I O N O F DA N T E

After writing about images in the Ameto (1341), Boccaccio composed a text dedicated to the topic of ethics. Since literature was classified under the philosophical category of ethics in the Middle Ages, the subject was a recurring concern for medieval authors.1 Boccaccio foregrounded ideas about ethics in the Amorosa visione, which was written in 1342 or 1343.2 In the vernacular poem, a first-­person narrator dreams that a celestial woman commands him to enter a gate that leads directly to heaven (AV 2.64–88). The dreamer instead chooses to view five mundane triumphs— of Wisdom, Wealth, Glory, Love, and Fortune (AV 3.10–36). Each triumph consists of images of both historical figures and literary characters, who appear alive in their bodies before the dreamer. After viewing the triumphs, Boccaccio sees his beloved Fiammetta and then enjoys her embraces (AV 45.10–27 and 46.22–60).

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By featuring a dreamer who desires the physical world, the Amorosa visione engages debates about the role of the body in humanity’s quest for salvation. As noted in chapter 2, medieval writers ranging from Boethius and Augustine to Bernardus Silvestris and Dante reflected extensively on discussions related to the ontological status of the body. These included questions about whether the body was spiritually helpful or harmful; whether it enabled the soul to flourish or was a temporary prison for the spirit; and whether creation was a faithful or a false image of the ultimate spiritual realities. Various writers repeated Neoplatonic-­inflected beliefs about how the individual person needed to purify or transcend the body to acquire true spiritual knowledge. Other authors, like those indebted to Pseudo-­Dionysius and the Franciscans, affirmed that the body was the privileged medium in and through which humans encounter the divine. This chapter assesses Boccaccio’s engagement with these controversial and perennial discussions in light of his vision that begins and ends with the pilgrim indulging his desires. Boccaccio also reflected on ethical notions concerning the body to differentiate his mode of writing about the body from Dante’s. As he did in the Ameto, Boccaccio puts the Amorosa visione in dialogue with the Comedy by recalling both formal aspects and key episodes of the poem. The structural divisions of the Amorosa visione and the poem’s rhyme scheme call to mind Dante’s Christian epic. The number of divisions of the Amorosa visione and of the Ameto equal the one hundred cantos of the Comedy, and the terza rima verses of the Amorosa visione are grouped into cantos. The plot of the dream vision is also reminiscent of the general narrative of the Comedy. Boccaccio-­narrator finds himself lost in a landscape that recalls geographical elements of Inferno 1 and 4 (AV 1.7–33 and 52–60; and Inf. 1.1–30 and 4.112–51). The vision concludes in a garden that is modeled on the Earthly Paradise, where Beatrice criticizes Dante-­ pilgrim’s reactions to her (deceased) body (AV 40.22–27, and generally 40–41; and Purg. 28.34–42 and 30.121–35). These echoes of the Comedy have led scholars to interpret the poem as they have the Ameto. Diverse scholars have proposed that the Amorosa visione champions the dignity of secular culture and natural desires in polemic with Dante’s Christian poem, while others have argued that the Comedy inspired the poem’s allegory about the dangers of carnal desires.3 Readers have also considered the symbolic implications of the work in relationship to the Comedy’s

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allegory. It has been hypothesized that Boccaccio wrote an overtly erotic allegory to parody the Comedy’s poetics and truth claims, and also the generic conventions of visionary literature.4 The first section of this chapter refines previous readings by addressing the ethical implications of Boccaccio’s decision to depict a mundane journey in contrast to Dante’s otherworldly voyage. The second section explores the relationship between the dreamer’s bodily desires and the symbolic aspects of Boccaccio’s poetics. Boccaccio prompted comparison of the allegorical dimension of his and Dante’s visions by organizing the poem according to images of mundane triumphs. Dante-­pilgrim saw in the Earthly Paradise the image of the Church Triumphant, an allegorical pageant of figures representing the books of the Bible and salvation history (Purg. 29). Boccaccio also drew and reflected on the “ekphrastic” poetics of the speaking and moving images of the Purgatorio, which were defined by the poet as “visibile parlare” (visible speech) (Purg. 10.95). The final section concerns the implications of the poem’s conclusion. In an edenic-­ like space, Boccaccio-­ pilgrim does something that Dante-­ character never did in the Earthly Paradise, namely, he embraces his lover (AV 45.10–46.60). The celestial guide herself endorses his actions by declaring that a relationship with Fiammetta is necessary for his spiritual happiness (AV 48.55–63). This chapter suggests that Boccaccio wrote the Amorosa visione to emphasize that humans cannot transcend the physical world or their erotic desires, as diverse contemplatives and philosophers wished. The final harmonious relationship between the pilgrim, his beloved, and the celestial guide implies that humans can integrate their carnal and spiri­tual needs while living in creation. The Amorosa visione thereby emphasizes that the body helps readers during their search for knowledge and their quest to satisfy spiritual yearnings. Therefore, the chapter proposes that these posi­ tive views of the body influenced why Boccaccio employed the female gender and erotic bodies in his poetics. The Amorosa visione suggests that erotic narratives and images assist the cognitive faculties, both because readers enjoy them and because humans necessarily learn while embodied. Finally, Boccaccio addressed these issues to reflect on Dante’s manner of writing about them in the Comedy. Dante highlighted that his text promoted many of the aforementioned notions. Like the Amorosa visione, Dante’s poem also features diverse (shade-­)bodies that signify. At the same

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time, Boccaccio contrasted the horizontal, mundane nature of his pilgrim’s voyage to Dante-­pilgrim’s vertical, celestial journey. He also endeavored to depict in a more overt manner protagonists who experience and enjoy human eros. Boccaccio underscored these differences between the Comedy and the Amorosa visione to suggest that his poem—in virtue of not depicting a transcendent narrative—deals more immediately with various aspects of earthly reality. He also attempted to clarify misunderstandings related to the body that could arise from Dante’s otherworldly, transcendent journey.

T H E E T H I C S O F T H E B O DY

The Amorosa visione begins with three acrostic sonnets, which are composed of the initial letters of each terza rima in the subsequent poem. In the sonnets, the narrator explains that the erotic text concerns the topics of images and ethics.5 The first two sonnets highlight the novel nature of the images described in the poem: Mirabil cosa forse la presente vision vi parrà, donna gentile, a riguardar, sì per lo nuovo stile, sì per la fantasia ch’è nella mente (AV ll. 1–4) A wondrous thing to behold, perhaps, the present vision will seem to you, noble lady, as much for its new style, as for the phantasy stored in my mind Et però volend’i’ perseverare pur nello ’nmaginar vostra biltate, cerco con rime nuove farvi i’ onore. Questo mi mosse, donna, a compilare la Visione, in parole rimate (AV ll. 9–13)

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And so, wishing to persevere even now in imagining your beauty, I seek with new rhymes to do you honor. Thus was I moved, to compile the Vision in rhymed words The first sonnet also introduces the utility of the work, namely, the ethics of these new images. The ethics concern ideas in medieval culture about the potential tension between physical and metaphysical, body and spirit. Boccaccio-­narrator introduces this subject as one of the primary topics of the poem by dedicating the vision to a woman alternatively called “madama Maria” (Lady Maria) and “Cara Fiamma” (Gentle Fiamma) (AV ll. 11 and 15). These names respectively evoke the chaste Madonna and Boccaccio’s literary beloved, Fiammetta. However, the dedication does not specify whether the relationship between the two women, who have diverse spiritual and erotic connotations, is harmonious or not. In the third sonnet, the narrator concludes the introductory poems by quoting the Horatian commonplace that reading serves as a source of moral instruction and enjoyment (Ars poetica, ll. 333–44). The last sonnet mentions the utilitarian and pleasurable aspects of reading but does not address how they are related to each other: “Se in sé fructo o forse alcun dilecto / porgesse a vo’ lector, ringratiate / colei” (If, reader, it yield you fruit or perhaps some delight, give thanks to her) (AV ll. 13–15). The earliest cantos of the Amorosa visione recall the opening cantos of the Inferno, and several lines evoke the verticality of Dante’s journey from Hell to Paradise.6 As the pilgrim’s “via era smarrita” (way was lost) (Inf. 1.3), so Boccaccio-­dreamer’s mind is “smarrita” (lost) (AV 1.7–8). The dreamer finding himself alone on abandoned shores evokes the shore and desert of Inferno 1 (AV 1.22–24; and Inf. 1.23 and 64). As Dante-­pilgrim attempted to ascend a hill, so a celestial Lady wants to guide the dreamer up away from worldly pleasures: “ ‘Lascia,’ diss’ella, ‘adunque i van diletti / e seguitami verso quell’altura / ch’opposta vedi qui a’ nostri petti’ ” (“Then abandon,” she said, “vain delights and follow me toward that height you see situated before us”) (AV 1.49–51; and Inf. 1.31–36). She then entreats him to enter a “nobile castello” (noble castle) (AV 1.59); Dante himself had entered a castle in Limbo, where he encountered the wise pagans (Inf. 4.106–51).7 The guide also describes the upward path with phrases that

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evoke the pilgrim’s ascent through the planetary spheres of Paradise to the Empyrean: . . . come noi sem di soglia in soglia per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace com’a lo re che ’n suo voler ne ’nvoglia. (Par. 3.82–85; emphasis added) . . . how we are arranged from threshold to threshold though this kingdom, delights the entire kingdom, as well as the king who enamors us of his will. puoi tu veder così di soglia in soglia giù digradar, come io ch’a proprio nome vo per la rosa giù di foglia in foglia. (Par. 32.13–15; emphasis added) you can see, following from threshold to threshold going down, how I with the name of each go about the rose downward from petal to petal. “Ir si conviene qui di soglia in soglia con voler temperato, ché chi corre talor tornando convien che si doglia.” (AV 1.82–84; emphasis added) “It is proper to proceed from threshold to threshold with a tempered will, for he who runs sometimes must turn back in grief.” Moreover, inscriptions appear above the path favored by the guide and above the path chosen by the dreamer, just as writing appears above the entrance to Hell in the Comedy (AV 2.64–69 and 3.16–21; and Inf. 3.1–9). Boccaccio-­pilgrim also swerves to the left as Dante does, a move likely inspired by the concept of the Pythagorean Y, which associated the left

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with worldliness and sin, and the right with sanctity (AV 3.64–4.6; and Inf. 1.28–30).8 In the second canto, the narrator recalls a poem by Dante that dramatizes tensions between erotics and ethics, body and spirit, worldly and otherworldly. Boccaccio models the second line of an invocation to Venus on the first line of Dante’s allegorical-­doctrinal canzone “Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete” (O you who move the third heaven by intellection) (AV 2.2).9 The poem features two women with opposing mundane and spiritual resonances. Dante included and interpreted the poem in the Convivio (book 2), but Boccaccio probably did not have firsthand knowledge of the treatise.10 Boccaccio did, however, copy on three different occasions “Voi che ’ntendendo” along with fourteen other allegorical-­ doctrinal poems by Dante.11 The poems were included in his three Dante anthologies. In “Voi che ’ntendendo,” the narrator addresses two women, but they seem to compete for his attention. Dante laments that a woman in heaven attracts his soul, but now another lady fascinates him: Suol esser vita dello cor dolente un soave penser che sse ne gìa molte fiate a’ pie’ del vostro Sire, ove una donna glorïar vedea, di cui parlav’a mme sì dolcemente che l’anima dicea: “I’ me n vo’ gire.” Or apparisce chi lo fa fuggire e segnoreggia me di tal vertute che ’l cor ne trema che di fuori appare. Questi mi face una donna guardare e dice: “Chi veder vuol la salute, faccia che gli occhi d’esta donna miri, sed e’ non teme angoscia di sospiri.” Trova contraro tal che lo distrugge l’umil pensero che parlar mi sole d’un’angela che ’n cielo è coronata. (ll. 14–29) The life of my sorrowing heart used to be a gentle thought, which would often go to the feet of our Lord, where it saw a lady in

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glory about whom it would speak so sweetly to me that my soul would say: “I wish to go there too.” But now one appears who puts it to flight, and lords it over me with such power that the trembling in my heart is made visible. This newcomer makes me look at a woman, and says: “Let him who would see bliss, gaze into the eyes of this lady, provided that he does not shrink from grievous sighing.” The humble thought that used to speak to me of an angel crowned in heaven now meets an adversary who destroys it. Dante himself allegorized the other lady of the lyric poem and Vita nova as Philosophy in the Convivio (2.2–15).12 The interpretation was intended to deemphasize her eroticism, which impeded the authorial persona’s relationship with his beloved. In the Amorosa visione, the narrator recalls Dante’s poem when he asks Venus to help him complete the journey and then recount it: O somma e graziosa intelligenzia che muovi il terzo cielo, o santa dea, metti nel petto mio la tua potenzia: non sofferir che fugga, o Citerea, a me lo ’ngegno all’opera presente, ma più sottile e più in me ne crea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poi che condotto m’ha a questo soglio costei, che cara seguir mi si face, menami tu colà ov’io ir voglio. (AV 2.1–6 and 13–15; emphasis added) O supreme and gracious intelligence, you who move the third heaven, o holy goddess, put in my breast your power: do not allow, o Cytherea, the genius necessary for the present work to escape me, but make it subtler and increase in me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . After she led me to this threshold, the one who gently makes me follow her, may you lead me there where I want to go.

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Unlike in Dante’s poem, the narrator requests that both ladies assist him, Fiammetta (“donna gentile”; “costei”) and Venus (“santa dea”; “Citerea”) (AV 1.1–11 and 2.1–18). Therefore, Boccaccio recalled the poem to foreground differing modes of writing about erotics and ethics in Dante’s works and in his own writings. Whereas Dante depicted nuanced tensions related to eros and the body, Boccaccio wrote more directly about the goodness of bodily reality and desires. In Dante’s works, the protagonist-­ lover sometimes struggled with his desires for two women who have distinct mundane and spiritual resonances. By contrast, Boccaccio-­narrator does not experience such an existential tension. Boccaccio then dramatizes a transcendence of the potential tension between the mundane and celestial in works like Dante’s “Voi che ’ntendendo” in the following cantos. He attenuates the tension through a series of textual and ideological reversals of the Comedy. The celestial guide enjoins Boccaccio-­pilgrim to proceed through a narrow gate on the right that leads upward to immediate salvation. The gate is probably inspired by New Testament passages about the extreme difficulty of traveling the “narrow path” to salvation: intrate per angustam portam quia lata porta et spatiosa via quae ducit ad perditionem et multi sunt qui intrant per eam quam angusta porta et arta via quae ducit ad vitam et pauci sunt qui inveniunt eam (Matt. 7:13–14) Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. contendite intrare per angustam portam quia multi dico vobis quaerunt intrare et non poterunt (Luke 13:24) Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.

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Boccaccio-­dreamer, however, in an apparent reversal of the roles between guide and student, rejoinders that no one ever took the narrow path:13 Non fummo guari andati che la pia donna mi disse: “Vedi qui la porta che la tua alma cotanto disia.” Nel suo parlar mi volsi, e poi che scorta l’ebbi, la vidi piccioletta assai, istretta ed alta, in nulla parte torta. A man sinistra allora io mi voltai volendo dir: “Chi ci potrà salire o passar dentro, ché par che giammai gente non ci salisse?” (AV 2.34–43) We had hardly gone on at all when that pious lady said to me: “Behold, here is the gate that your soul desires so much.” Hearing her words, I turned and, having made it out, I saw that it was very small, both narrow and high, and in no place crooked. I turned to my left then, wanting to say: “Who is able to climb up there or pass within? It seems a place though that people have never climbed before.” He instead wants to enter through a wide gate that leads to worldly pleasures, but the guide warns that life is short and should not be wasted on frivolous things: “Il corto termine alla vita posto / non è da consumare in quelle cose / che ’l bene etterno vi fanno nascosto” (The brief term set to life should not be spent on those things that keep the eternal good hidden from you) (AV 2.55–57). The guide begs him to go through the narrow door and urges him to obey the writing that calls for a transcendence of the negligent body: Alzai allora il viso, e vidi: “Questa piccola porta mena a via di vita; posto che paia nel salir molesta, riposo etterno dà cotal salita;

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dunque salite su sanza esser lenti, l’animo vinca la carne impigrita.” (AV 2.64–69) Then I raised my gaze and saw: “This little gate leads to the way of life; though the climb may seem difficult, such climbing grants eternal repose; climb on up, then, without being slow; may your spirit conquer the slothful flesh.” She adds that while in the world humans cannot truly “veder quanta / sia la chiarezza del Fattor sovrano” (see how great is the brightness of the sovereign Maker) (AV 2.80–81). The episode recalls Dante-­ pilgrim’s experience on the shores of Mount Purgatory. There the pilgrim encounters the negligent souls, who are supposed to ascend the mountain quickly, thus correcting their previous disregard for spiritual matters. The pilgrim, however, stands with the other souls who are “tutti fissi” (all transfixed) (Purg. 2.118). They are overwhelmed by the sensuality of Dante’s erotic poem “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,” which is intoned by the poet Casella (Purg. 2.106–17). The episode foreshadows the pilgrim’s excessive attention to Beatrice’s body in the Earthly Paradise, where he is chastised for staring “troppo fiso!” (too fixedly!) (Purg. 32.9). While he and the others listen intently, Cato warns the souls to hurry and strip off the slough that prevents them from viewing God: Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti a le sue note; ed ecco il veglio onesto gridando: “Che è ciò, spiriti lenti? qual negligenza, quale stare è questo? Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio ch’esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto.” (Purg. 2.118–23; emphasis added) We were all fixed and attentive to his notes; and here was the venerable man, crying: “What is this, laggard spirits? What negligence, what standing still is this? Run to the mountain to shed the slough that keeps God from being manifest to you.”

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By alluding to the negligent souls, Boccaccio recalls one of the passages of the Comedy that features potentially confusing concepts about the body and creation. The pilgrim’s encounter with Casella is emblematic of other episodes in the opening cantos of the Purgatorio. Sinners are constantly reminded of the transitory nature of their bodies and criticized for their improper attachments to physical creation. For example, the negligent Manfredi describes how his body and bones have been scattered around the river Verde (Purg. 3.124–32). His remarks underscore  that erotic and bodily desires must be tempered, for all earthly things are transitory, ephemeral, unstable, and thus potentially misleading and often distracting. By contrast, Boccaccio-­narrator more overtly clarifies that humans should cherish and enjoy the things of the world. He specifies that lighter things in the terrestrial realm should be experienced before heavier things in Heaven: “Ver è, donna gentil, ch’i’ ho veduti,” risposi, “scritti i don, però vedere vorrei provando qua’ son posseduti. Ogni cosa del mondo a sapere non è peccato, ma la iniquitate si dee lasciare e quel ch’è ben tenere. Venite adunque qua, ché pria provate deono esser le cose leggieri ch’entrare in quelle c’han più gravitate.” (AV 3.28–36) “It is true, gentle lady, that I have seen,” I answered, “the inscribed gifts; still, I would like to see how it feels to possess them. It is not sinful to know about everything in the world, but one must forswear evil and hold to what is good. Come here then, for first the light things must be experienced before we enter into those that have more weight.” Virgil instead tells Dante-­pilgrim that the beginning of his journey will be heavy because of the weight of his sins, but adds that it will become lighter as his soul is purified:

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Ed elli a me: “Questa montagna è tale, che sempre al cominciar di sotto è grave; e quant’om più va sù, e men fa male. Però, quand’ella ti parrà soave tanto, che sù andar ti fia leggero com’a seconda giù andar per nave, allora sarai al fin d’esto sentiero.” (Purg. 4.88–94) And he to me: “This mountain is such that it is always more heavy to begin below; and the more one ascends, the less it gives pain. Thus, when it will seem to you so easy that it is light to go up as though floating along in a boat, then you will be at the end of the path.” Most significantly, Boccaccio-­pilgrim announces to the guide that he has no wings to carry him upward on a journey. His remarks echo what Virgil and Dante-­pilgrim say about having wings for the ascent of Mount Purgatory: . . . dond’io: “Ben sapete,” volto alla donna, “che io non ho penne a poter su volar, come credete, né potrei sostener questi travagli a’ quai dispormi subito volete.” (AV 3.71–75) And I: “Well do you know,” turning toward the lady, “that I have no wings to be able to fly up, as you seem to believe, nor could I sustain these travails to which you desire now to dispose me.” “Or chi sa da qual man la costa cala,” disse ’l maestro mio, fermando il passo, “sì che possa salir chi va sanz’ala?” (Purg. 3.52–54)

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“Now who knows on which side the slope is less steep,” my master said, staying his steps, “so that one who goes without wings can climb it?” Vassi in Sanleo e discendesi in Noli, montasi su in Bismantova e ’n Cacume con esso i piè; ma qui convien ch’om voli; dico con l’ale snelle e con le piume del gran disio, di retro a quel condotto che speranza mi dava e facea lume. (Purg. 4.25–30) One can go up to Sanleo and descend to Noli, one can climb to Bismantova or up the Cacume with one’s feet, but here one must fly, I mean with the swift wings and the pinions of great desire, following that guide who gave me hope and light. In fact, Dante-­pilgrim does receive winged assistance at crucial moments in the Comedy. Geryon helps the pilgrim descend into the Malebolge (Inf. 17.106–36), and Lucia carries him up to the beginning of Purgatory proper from Ante-­Purgatory (Purg. 9.52–63). Boccaccio-­dreamer never grows celestial wings nor obtains divine assistance to ascend a mountain. Instead, he remains grounded throughout his journey.14 The differences between these passages of the Amorosa visione and the Purgatorio imply a correction of several Neoplatonic and contemplative ideas about salvation. Various readers thought that Neoplatonic writings like Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae and Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii encouraged a transcendence of carnal images and mundane matters. The Amorosa visione instead enjoins readers to embrace the here and now, and emphasizes that humankind’s journey is horizontal, not vertical. The dreamer even announces that humans have the right to experience everything in the world, provided they explore terrestrial reality in an ethical fashion: “Ogni cosa del mondo a sapere / non è peccato, ma la iniquitate / si dee lasciare” (It is not sinful to know about everything in the world, but one must forswear evil) (AV 3.31– 33). His remarks boldly characterize in a positive light the mundane

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curiosities of Dante’s Ulysses, who was damned for wanting “a divenir del mondo esperto” (to become expert of the world) (Inf. 26.98). Moreover, the idea that the totality of earthly experiences are appropriate for those who pursue them ethically recalls scriptural passages about the goodness of creation: quia omnis creatura Dei bona et nihil reiciendum quod cum gratiarum actione percipitur (1 Tim. 4:4) For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving. divitibus huius saeculi praecipe non sublime sapere neque sperare in incerto divitiarum sed in Deo qui praestat nobis omnia abunde ad fruendum (1 Tim. 6:17) As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. omnia licent sed non omnia expediunt omnia licent sed non omnia aedificant (1 Cor. 10:22–23) All things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial. All things are lawful, but not all things build up. quia in ipso condita sunt universa in caelis et in terra visibilia et invisibilia sive throni sive dominationes sive principatus sive potestates omnia per ipsum et in ipso creata sunt (Col. 1:16)

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For in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. Therefore, Boccaccio emphasized, in the metaphoric terms of his poem, that humans cannot take the short or narrow path in the postlapsarian world. He elucidated this same concept years later in his commentary on Dante’s Comedy: “vizi . . . gli hanno tolta la corta salita al monte, cioè al luogo della sua salute. E ‘corta’ dice, per ciò che agli uomini, li quali in istato d’innocenzia vivono, è il salire a questo monte leggierissimo” (vices  .  .  . have deprived him of the short way up the mountain, namely, to the place of his salvation. He says “short” because to those who live in a state of innocence the ascent up this mountain is most light) (Espos. 2.2.39–40). The dreamer not only underlines that readers cannot travel the short path, but his championing of low things polemically draws on the important theological concept of lightness. In medieval culture, agility or lightness (agilitas) was thought to be one of the four properties of the resurrected, glorified body (the others were impassibilitas, claritas, and subtilitas, “incorruptibility,” “glory,” and “subtlety” [i.e., a spiritualized or perfected nature]; cf. 1 Cor. 15:42–44; Matt. 13:43; and Wis. 3:7).15 The dreamer insists that light or agile things are down in the world, thereby implying the purity of those very things. Moreover, whereas Dante-­ pilgrim feels a sinful heaviness while embodied, Boccaccio’s protagonist feels light in his body. Boccaccio elucidated both the positive and the mundane connotations of lightness by using the celestial concept to champion the dignity of the terrestrial sphere. The notion of lightness was also fundamental for Boccaccio’s reflection on Dante and the body in the Decameron. He recalls the theological resonances of weight in a story about Dante’s “primo amico” (first friend) (Vn 24.6 and 25.10 [15.6 and 16.10]), the Florentine love poet Guido Cavalcanti (1258–1300). In Decameron 6.9, Cavalcanti, who is “leggerissimo” (most light), eludes a group of revelers who surround him in a cemetery by easily hopping over a tomb (Dec. 6.9.12).16 The tale recalls that the pilgrim saw Cavalcanti’s father punished in a tomb with the Epicureans, who heretically believed that the soul dies with the body (Inf. 10.13–15). Their ensuing conversation intimated that Guido too would soon be punished in Hell for being an Epicurean (Inf. 10.52–72 and 109–114). As noted by scholars,

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Boccaccio’s story redeems Cavalcanti by associating him both with Christ (who escaped from the tomb) and with lightness or agility (which was characteristic of the resurrected body). Boccaccio thereby corrected the “volgare” (vulgar) (Dec. 6.9.9) opinion that Cavalanti was a heretic, and he defended the bodily experiences that were implicitly criticized in the condemnation of the Epicurean love poet. By evoking the notion of lightness in the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio was introducing a reflection on Dante that would be recalled and expanded upon in later writings.

T H E P O E T I C S O F T H E B O DY

The first four triumphs, those of Wisdom, Glory, Wealth, and Love, address matters concerning how a writer should depict humanity’s mundane reality. When Boccaccio-­pilgrim enters the left gate, he finds himself in a chamber adorned with visual representations, the first of which is Wisdom (AV 4.19–30). Wisdom is surrounded by the seven liberal arts and by figures such as Aristotle and “pudico e casto” (discrete and chaste) Boethius (AV 4.34–39, 42, and 82–83). Given the geographical and structural placement of Wisdom within the vision, the episode evokes at least two key metaliterary episodes in the Comedy. The passage calls to mind the “nobile castello” (noble castle) of pre-­Christian writers in Limbo who welcome the pilgrim (Inf. 4.106, and generally 106–47). It also evokes the first ledge of Purgatory dedicated to the proud, where the poet theorizes the visual depictions of sin and virtue witnessed by the pilgrim during his journey. These images are programmatically defined as “visible parlare” (visible speech), an example of the rhetorical trope ekphrasis, that is, a vivid verbal description of a painting, sculpture, building, or landscape (Purg. 10.95, and generally 28–96).17 The echoes of these two episodes in the triumph of Wisdom highlight differences between the corporeal poetics of the Amorosa visione and the carnal poetics of the Comedy. In the Comedy, the ekphrastic poetics are discussed after the pilgrim entered a gate where an angel marks seven P ’s for the sins he will expurgate (peccati in Italian; peccata in Latin). After Lucia carries him to the first ledge, Dante-­pilgrim views marble slabs with life-­like, aural/visual examples of humility.18 The art witnessed exceeds the creative abilities of humans, and even that of Nature herself:

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Là su non eran mossi i piè nostri anco, quand’io conobbi quella ripa intorno che dritto di salita aveva manco, esser di marmo candido e adorno d’intagli sì, che non pur Policleto, ma la natura lì avrebbe scorno. (Purg. 10.28–33) We had not yet moved our feet up there, when I saw that the inner bank, which rising straight up permitted no ascent, was of white marble and adorned with such carvings that not only Polyclitus but even Nature would be put to scorn there. Subsequent verses emphasize the divine nature of the images by highlighting that no example of this art exists on earth: “Colui che mai non vide cosa nova / produsse esto visibile parlare, / novello a noi perché qui non si trova” (He in whose sight nothing is new produced this visible speech, novel to us because it is not found here) (Purg. 10.94–96). After the pilgrim witnesses the punishment of the proud, his dialogue with one of the penitents reveals the self-­reflexive nature of these divine poetics. The pilgrim speaks with Oderisi da Gubbio, who is remembered for his contributions to miniatures in manuscripts (Purg. 11.79–84). The account of their discussion may serve to highlight the connection between text and image in Dante’s (seemingly novel) poetic uses of ekphrasis. Oderisi then chides those who take pride in their art because new artists will always supersede previous ones: Credette Cimabue ne la pittura tener lo campo, e ora ha Giotto il grido, sì che la fama di colui è scura. Così ha tolto l’uno a l’altro Guido la gloria de la lingua; e forse è nato chi l’uno e l’altro caccerà del nido. (Purg. 11.94–99) Cimabue believed that in painting he held the field, and now Giotto has the cry, so that the fame of the first is darkened.

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Just so, one Guido has taken from the other the glory of our language, and perhaps he is born who will drive them both from the nest. In his example, the new writer appears to be none other than Dante, whose work may endure longer than other human creations because it is inspired by God. As Giotto has surpassed Cimabue in the art of painting, so Dante implies that he has surpassed Guido Cavalcanti and Guido Guinizzelli in writing poetry. Boccaccio could have inherited a poetics inspired by ekphrasis from many sources.19 Virgil recounts that Aeneas saw scenes from the Trojan War on Juno’s temple at Carthage, and on his shield the future of Rome is foreshadowed (Aen. 1.453–93 and 8.626–731). Martianus Capella and Alan of Lille described scenes and persons on the gowns of the Liberal Arts (e.g., Anticlaudianus 3.164–267).20 And Nature’s palace in the Anticlaudianus has murals of writers and other figures that may have inspired the murals of the Amorosa visione (Anticlaudianus 1.119–206). These antecedents probably influenced the Amorosa visione, but Boccaccio also deployed the trope of ekphrasis to engage with Dante. Boccaccio signals his debts to Dante by elucidating the nature of his visual poetics by reference to Giotto, just as Dante himself had done in Purgatorio 11. When the dreamer sees Wisdom with a book in her hand, he describes the image in a manner that underlines the self-­reflexive implications of his remarks: Humana man non credo che sospinta mai fosse a tanto ingegno quanto in quella mostrava ogni figura lì distinta, eccetto se da Giotto, al qual la bella Natura parte di sé somigliante non occultò nell’atto in che suggella. (AV 4.13–18) I do not believe that human hand was ever extended with so much genius as every figure there was manifest distinct, unless by Giotto, from whom beautiful Nature hid no resemblant part of herself in the act on which he sets his seal.

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Boccaccio-­dreamer praises Giotto for his human abilities as a painter. Nature herself inspires the artist Giotto, who makes his creations appear life-­like by faithfully depicting the physical world.21 In meta-­artistic terms, these verses imply that Boccaccio, like Giotto, imitates Nature in his (textual) creation. Moreover, Boccaccio’s use of ekphrasis differentiates his poetics from Dante’s, even though both writers appear to draw on the trope in similar ways. In Purgatorio 10 and 11, the poet highlights that aspects of the Comedy’s visual poetics are otherworldly and divine. In Amorosa visione 4, Boccaccio emphasizes that the poetics of his poem are grounded primarily in the natural and the human. Throughout the Comedy, Dante also employed literary tropes and symbols of an earthly and a mundane nature. Still, Boccaccio engages with Dante’s depiction of Giotto to suggest that his text signifies more systematically by reference to earthly reality. Finally, Boccaccio’s promotion of the human does not imply a secular ideological agenda or even a disinterest in spiri­tual matters. It underscores that his poetics, which like Dante’s treat spiri­tual matters, are connected to the physical world and the human body. The passage signals that Boccaccio’s writing is fully grounded in corporeal and historical reality. Boccaccio also implies that his art has surpassed Dante’s, just as Dante had claimed that his art surpassed others’ creations. In the Amorosa visione’s metaphoric terms, Boccaccio suggests that he as artist has perhaps gone lower and farther than Dante has. Differences between the two authors’ literary voyages are highlighted when the dreamer sees Dante among the representatives of Wisdom. Dante-­pilgrim too had met his authorial models when he became “sesto tra cotanto senno” (sixth among so much wisdom) (Inf. 4.102), that is, when Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and Virgil welcome him into their company. The pilgrim then eventually ascended to Paradise, a journey that was precluded to these pre-­Christian writers. When he first encounters Dante, Boccaccio-­pilgrim struggles to find words to describe the vision before him: “riguardando, vid’io di gioia pieno / onorar festeggiando un gran poeta, / tanto che ’l dire alla vista vien meno” (looking on, full of joy I saw such joyous honors bestowed upon a great poet that the telling falls much short of the sight) (AV 5.73– 75). He then sees Dante crowned with the Apollonian laurel, an image designed to appeal to early humanists who were interested in classicizing and Latin cultures:

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Aveali la gran donna mansueta d’alloro una corona in su la testa posta, e di ciò ciascun’altra era lieta. E vedend’io così mirabil festa, per lui raffigurar mi fé vicino, fra me dicendo: “Gran cosa fia questa.” Trattomi così innanzi un pocolino, non conoscendol, la donna mi disse: “Costui è Dante Alighier fiorentino, il qual con eccellente stil vi scrisse il sommo ben, le pene e la gran morte: gloria fu delle Muse mentre visse, né qui rifiutan d’esser sue consorte.” (AV 5.76–88) That great, serene lady had placed on his head a crown of laurel, which made all others feel joy. And seeing so wonderful a celebration, I drew near to make him out, saying to myself: “What a great thing this must be.” Having thus drawn myself a bit forward without recognizing him, I heard the lady say: “This is Dante Alighieri the Florentine, he who, with excellent style, for your sake described the highest good, the torments, the damnations: he was the glory of the Muses while he lived: nor here do they decline to be his consorts.” As he will do later in the Trattatello (Tratt. §§17–19, 156–62, and 219), so in the Amorosa visione Boccaccio promotes Dante as a vernacular poet deserving of the laurel crown. Nevertheless, the dreamer’s remarks preceding this celebration of Dante highlight the potential limits of his predecessor’s art. The lament that Dante cannot be described underscores the impossibility of describing a celestial voyage. For his part, Dante-­narrator often noted that he was incapable of recounting the most difficult parts of his otherworldly travels—“molte volte al fatto il dir vien meno” (often the telling falls short of the fact) (Inf. 4.147), and “Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio / che ’l parlar mostra, ch’a tal vista cede” (From here onward my seeing was greater than speech

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can show, which gives way before such a sight) (Par. 33.55–56).22 Therefore, Boccaccio’s use of the trope at this key moment in the vision is not an occasional imitation of the Comedy. It deliberately foregrounds the fundamental problem related to Dante-­pilgrim’s journey and the poet’s account of it. Dante-­poet himself often repeated that a description of the otherworld is challenging. Boccaccio-­pilgrim encounters similar difficulties when describing the celestial Dante before him. By implication, Boccaccio’s vision does not rise to examine what cannot ultimately be seen, nor does his tongue attempt to speak that which cannot be described. Boccaccio then qualifies the influence that Dante has exerted on him by implying that Dante is only one of his many literary models. When Boccaccio-­dreamer stands in awe before Dante, the guide enjoins him to move on: “Che pur miri? forse credi / renderli col mirar le morte posse? / E’ c’è altro a veder che tu non vedi!” (Why do you keep gazing? Do you think perhaps you can give him back his dead powers by staring? There are other things to see that you have not seen yet!) (AV 6.23–25). The guide’s rebuke of the pilgrim suggests that Boccaccio needs a broader artistic experience, the kind that he will receive by going on a literary journey. Indeed, he highlights the broad nature of his cultural and textual interests by modeling the triumphs of the Amorosa visione on the so-­ called triumph of the Church, but then altering the model to reveal his grander vision. The pilgrim sees the images of the triumph in the Earthly Paradise, the liminal space between the world and heaven.23 The narrator describes the triumph of the Church by contrasting it to ancient Roman military triumphs: Lo spazio dentro a lor quattro contenne un carro, in su due rote, trïunfale, ch’al collo d’un grifon tirato venne. Esso tendeva in sù l’una e l’altra ale tra la mezzana e le tre e tre liste, sì ch’a nulla, fendendo, facea male. Tanto salivan che non eran viste; le membra d’oro avea quant’era uccello, e bianche l’altre, di vermiglio miste. Non che Roma di carro così bello

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rallegrasse Affricano, o vero Augusto, ma quel del Sol saria pover con ello. (Purg. 29.106–17) The space amid the four of them contained a triumphal chariot with two wheels, which was drawn harnessed to the neck of a griffin. He extended upward his two wings, between the center stripe and the three and three, so that he harmed none of them by splitting it; his wings rose higher than could be seen. His members were gold as far as he was a bird, the others white mixed with crimson. Not only did Rome never gladden Africanus or Augustus with so glorious a chariot, but that of the Sun would be poor beside it. The triumph consists of a pageant of bizarre figures that represent the Bible and salvation history. The seven candelabra represent the gifts of the Holy Spirit; the twenty-­four elders, the books of the Old Testament; the four animals, the Gospels; the chariot, the Church; and the griffin, Christ. The triumph concludes in Purgatorio 32–33 with a description of a battle that recalls the apocalyptic imagery of the book of Revelation. An eagle, a giant, and a whore desecrate the chariot, and Dante-­pilgrim hears that another will come to seek vengeance (Purg. 32.109–60 and 33.34–45). The narrator underscores the divine and otherworldly nature of the triumph by noting that the vision puzzled his senses and that some of the objects were otherworldly. The members of the pageant, for example, wear a type of white gown that does not exist in the world: “tal candor di qua già mai non fuci” (back here such whiteness never was) (Purg. 29.66), and the standards were so long that his sight could not grasp them: “Questi ostendali in dietro eran maggiori / che la mia vista” (These banners extended farther back than my sight) (Purg. 29.79–80). Beatrice then enjoins Dante that, though stunned, there should be written, or “at least painted,” within him what has been revealed: “Ma perch’io veggio te ne lo ’ntelletto fatto di pietra, ed impetrato, tinto, sì che t’abbaglia il lume del mio detto,

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voglio anco, e se non scritto, almen dipinto, che ’l te ne porti dentro a te per quello che si reca il bordon di palma cinto.” (Purg. 33.73–78) “But because I see that your intellect has turned to stone and, petrified, is so darkened that the light of what I say dazzles you, I wish too that, if not written, at least painted you carry it back within you for the reason that pilgrims bring their staffs home wreathed with palms.” Beatrice’s request that the vision be painted within the pilgrim concludes the ekphrastic poetics of the Purgatorio and of the episode of the triumph. Boccaccio-­dreamer does not witness an eschatological triumph but a series of earthly triumphs. The guide at the beginning of the dream had emphasized that he would be viewing the mundane and profane. Moreover, although visual images and the body inspire the triumphs in both Dante’s and Boccaccio’s poems, the poetics of the visions are nevertheless different. In the Comedy, the symbolism involves the otherworldly, bizarre, strange, and enigmatic images of apocalyptic literature. In the Amorosa visione, the images are instead composed of flesh and blood embodiments of historical persons or characters from various literatures. The plurality of these historical persons anticipates the medieval contemporaries who appear in the Decameron. The concepts of wisdom, glory, and so on of the Amorosa visione are also depicted and personified in a carnal form, a commonplace of medieval literature. Boccaccio thereby underscores that everything needs to be envisioned carnally, especially abstractions, in accord with medieval epistemological and mnemonic theories. More importantly, he rejects the eschatological poetics that underwrote Dante’s triumph as the most effective means of doing so. The Amorosa visione is also a kind of visual encyclopedia, one that reveals the different scope of Boccaccio’s literary views with respect to Dante’s poem.24 In the Earthly Paradise, the pilgrim’s experience is framed by the narrative of salvation history. Boccaccio-­pilgrim instead has a journey composed of a series of minivisions and triumphs, which are compiled from a world (of books) characterized as more diverse than Dante’s. The different structure of the Amorosa visione also seems to imply that in

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the real world not everything is necessarily subsumed into and framed by the biblical narrative a priori. There are a plethora of narratives competing for readers’ attention, which can be as revelatory as the biblical narrative. These narratives include Dante’s, but they also encompass literatures that, in Boccaccio’s opinion, Dante did not know as well as he himself does. In the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio views image after image of persons from history, the Bible, myth, and fiction, but also from romance and Greek literatures. In the triumph of Wisdom, the dreamer sees ancient and medieval philosophers from Rome and Greece, natural philosophers who made contributions to cosmology, classical Latin and Greek poets and historians, and the vernacular Dante (AV 4–6). In the triumph of Glory, he encounters persons from ancient Latin and Greek history, myth, and the Bible, along with characters from romance poems and Arthurian legend (AV 7–12). In the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio underscores the broad nature of his literary interests by having the dreamer pass by the celestial Dante, merely one figure in literary history representing one type of litera­ture among many as equally important and revelatory. In the Genealogie, he later theorized more explicitly the broader nature of his cultural vision. The vast scope of Boccaccio’s reading may also have struck Petrarch, and perhaps prompted him to imitate the Amorosa visione in the Triumphi. Petrarch’s poem has also been interpreted as an attempt to reflect upon, define, and order a world of books.25 Boccaccio’s vision seems to connote a second and perhaps necessary correlative with respect to the Dantean model. In the Amorosa visione, an overarching moral “order” is lacking.26 During his ascent up Mount Purgatory, the pilgrim is guided by the depictions of virtue and vice on every ledge (God’s glossae on reality). Boccaccio eliminates this moral and geographical structure from his text, thereby implying that obvious divine glosses do not exist in the world. This is not to say, as often has been, that Boccaccio is an ideological relativist or a secular humanist. The Amorosa visione foregrounds the moral implications of the literatures viewed by the dreamer and emphasizes the possibility of seeing the divine in creation. Like Ameto, Boccaccio-­character learns about virtue and vice from visual representations. He also deduces meaning from the actions of the protagonists before him. The dreamer even gives examples of ethical exegesis by interpreting his own experiences. In other words, Boccaccio offers himself as a model to the reader for his or her education, just

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as the textual examples appear before the pilgrim for his edification. In the triumph of Wealth, for example, Boccaccio-­dreamer sees “nuovi Farisei” (new Pharisees) alongside the poor (AV 14.2, and generally 13 and 14). He then encounters his father and discusses the value of money (AV 14.40–45). Boccaccio explains that he would like to have wealth, and adds that preachers who unilaterally condemn it do not understand its practical, moral, or spiritual value:
 Hai lasso, quanto nelli orecchi fioco risuona altrui il senno del mendico!
 né par che luce o caldo abbia ’l suo foco,
 e ’l più caro parente gli è nimico; ciascun lo schifa, e se non ha moneta
 alcun non è che ’l voglia per amico.
 Unque s’ogni uomo pur di quello asseta, mirabile non è, poiché virtute
 sanza danari nel mondo si vieta;
 il cui valor se fosse alla salute
 di quel pensato che uom pensar dee, non le ricchezze sarian sì volute.
 Ma io mi credo che parole ebree
 parrebbono a ciascun chiaro intelletto il dir che le ricchezze fosser ree,
 avvegna che in me questo difetto piuttosto che in altro caderia, tanto disio d’averne con effetto. Né da tal desiderio mi trarria alcun, tanto il pregar mi par noioso che di danar sovvenuto mi sia. 
 (AV 14.64–84) Alas, how indistinct in the ears of another resounds the wisdom of the mendicant! Nor does it seem that his fire has light or heat, and the dearest parent is inimical to him; all shun him, and if someone has no money no one wants him as a friend. Therefore, if anyone thirsts for that lady it is no wonder, since

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virtue without money is prohibited in the world; if only its value for salvation were considered in the manner in which it should, wealth would not be as sought after. But I believe that saying wealth is evil would seem Hebrew words to anyone of clear understanding, although such a fault would more likely be mine than someone else’s, so eager am I to possess it. Nor will anyone draw me forth from such a wish, so noxious is it to beg to have the aid of money. The dreamer offers a nuanced reflection on the problems that a lack of money can create. He writes an interpretation grounded in his idiosyncratic experience, not a dogma imposed universally. Throughout his writings, Boccaccio rarely depicts in such clear terms one of his character’s moral reflections “in action.” Boccaccio concludes his reflection on matters related to textual signification by highlighting the complementary nature of the visual poetics of the Amorosa visione and the bodily poetics of the Ameto. He recalls the symbolic properties of the Ameto in abbreviated form to foreground the ideological relationship between the two texts. The narrator introduces concepts pertaining to mental and artistic images during the triumph of Love (AV 14.85–15.39). After seeing Cupid, the dreamer meets an angelic woman who may come from Cyprus, the island associated with Venus. She is introduced with the descriptio corporis technique of the Song of Songs, Neoplatonic writings, and the artes poetriae (AV 15.43–69). At the end of the canto, several verses emphasize that the passage is about poetic images, one of the declared topics of the Amorosa visione: A rimirar contento questa onesta donna mi stava, che in atti dicesse parea parole assai piene di festa, come lo ’mmaginar par che intendesse. (AV 15.85–88) I was content to wonder at this lady, who in her acts seemed to be speaking words full of celebration, as my imagination seemed to understand.

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The dreamer then learns that the erotic image comes from above and signifies compassion, mercy, pity, and love, just as Venus explained to Agapes in the Ameto: Costei pareva dir negli atti soi: “Io son discesa della somma altezza e son venuta per mostrarmi a voi. Il viso mio, chi vuol somma bellezza veder, riguardi, là dove si vede accompagnata lei e gentilezza. Ò pietà per sorella e di merzede fontana sono: Iddio mi v’ha mandata per darvi parte del ben che possiede.” (AV 16.1–9) From her demeanor, this lady seemed to say: “I have descended from the supreme height and have come myself to you. My face, he who wishes to see the highest beauty, look, there where she is seen accompanied by grace. O compassion is my sister, and of mercy I am the source: God sent me to you to give you part of the goodness he possesses.” The woman declares herself to be a container, or “vasello” (vase), for God’s love: “Cortese e lieta son di lui vasello” (I am a gentle and an elated vase for him) (AV 16.16). The phrase also recalls the Neoplatonic notion of a physical wrap or covering for ideas. The word “vasello,” in fact, had resonances ranging from a concave receptacle to the human body, in general, and the female genitalia, in particular.27 The entire passage thus underscores that the female body symbolizes ethical and spiritual ideas, just as the female text embodied meaning in the Ameto. Though the poem depicts an optimistic view of the body and creation, it also addresses what limits should be placed on readers’ experiences. The issue is introduced when the dreamer encounters Ulysses among the representatives of Love (AV 27). Love is the last of the triumphs before Fortune, and the episode marks an important textual and ideological division in the poem. The dreamer’s description of Ulysses recalls the fatal end to the sailor’s journey in Inferno 26. As noted in chapter 2 herein, Boccaccio

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understood that the episode was central to Dante’s engagement with a range of topics related to acquiring worldly knowledge. Boccaccio-­ dreamer signals that Dante’s Ulysses was punished for trying to experience the world and for exceeding the boundaries established by God: . . . tenend’io le luci fisse [in Penelopè], fra me voleva quanto fosse il disire di que’ [Ulisse] che mai non cre’ ch’a lei reddisse, e quanto volle del mondo sentire, ché per voler veder trapassò il segno dal qual nessun poté mai in qua reddire, io dico forza usando né suo ingegno. (AV 27.82–88) . . . having fixed my eyes [on Penelope], feeling within me how great was her desire for him [Ulysses] whom she believed would never return to her, and how great was his desire to have experience of the world, because to want to see it he trespassed the sign from which no one has ever been able to return, I say by using force or one’s genius. The verses also refer to another soul in the Comedy, who erred because he too “trespassed the sign,” but who, unlike Ulysses, resides in Heaven. Adam explains that his sin consisted not merely of tasting the tree but of “il trapassar del segno” (the going beyond the sign), a transgression implicit in the act itself: “Or, figliuol mio, non il gustar del legno / fu per sé la cagion di tanto essilio, / ma solamente il trapassar del segno” (Now, my son, not the tasting of the tree in itself was the cause of so long an exile, but only the going beyond the mark) (Par. 26.115–17).28 The allusion to Adam suggests that Ulysses’s actions were sinful because of their excessive nature, but that the actions in and of themselves were not damning. Adam explains there was nothing wrong with tasting; rather, his sin consisted of symbolically trespassing God’s sign. The characterization of Ulysses in the Amorosa visione also turns on the metaphoric and literal notions of transgressing limits and boundaries, boundaries ostensibly determined by God, who damned Ulysses along with the false counselors (Inferno 26). Boccaccio recalls both Inferno 26 and Paradiso 26 in

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Amorosa visione 27—the numbers are striking—where Boccaccio “places” Ulysses in his own poem. In the Amorosa visione, Ulysses has succeeded in crossing the textual and ideological boundaries established by Dante. He has apparently advanced a canto, from 26 to 27. Moreover, he has symbolically shifted from being numbered among the damned to being characterized as a clever explorer and an adept lover. The implication is that humans can taste, touch, and feel “the world” provided they do not sin. By addressing this issue, Boccaccio was engaging recurring debates in the Middle Ages about the ethics of curiositas.29 Like Dante, Boccaccio was interested in questions pertaining to what kinds of knowledge were ethical to pursue and for what ends. By recalling Dante’s Ulysses, Boccaccio suggests that readers too can cross the more conservative moral and epistemological boundaries depicted or established by Dante in the Comedy. Boccaccio had already promoted a similar view in his Filocolo, whose protagonists endured a long emotional and erotic adventure. The wanderings of Florio and Biancifiore—recalled by name in the Amorosa visione—and their experiences of earthly desire were ultimately sweet, happy, and even pedagogically useful (AV 29.31– 36). At the end of the triumph of Love, the dreamer thus lauds love as a positive force that engenders happiness and virtue: Invidiosi alcuni dicon mattezza esser seguir con ragion quello stile che dà questo signor di gentilezza, lo qual discaccia via ogni atto vile: piacevole, cortese e valoroso fa chi lui segue e più ch’altro gentile. Superbia abatte, onde ciascun ritroso o di vil condizione esser non puote di sua schiera, e quinci invidioso va ischernendo que’ cui e’ percuote. (AV 29.79–88) The envious call it madness to pursue with intent the way of life that this lord of gentleness offers, he who drives away every base action: pleasant, courteous, and full of valor he makes the one who follows, and, above all noble. He conquers

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pride, for which no rude person or one of vile behavior can possibly figure among his followers, and thus the envious person goes mocking those who are moved by him. Though indebted to stilnovistic commonplaces, Boccaccio’s praise of love is a defense of the twisted and nonlinear path. It is a celebration and redemption of humankind’s desires to wander and explore, inclinations that were often characterized negatively in the Middle Ages. For example, treatises on memory associated such mundane yearnings with pagan culture and fornicatio.30

T H E I N T E G R AT E D C A R N A L- ­S P I R I T UA L VOYAG E

The final triumph of Fortune presents a negative view of worldly things and the memento mori motif typical of medieval visionary literature. The guide attempts to convince the pilgrim that everything terrestrial is vane, transient, worthless (AV 30.13–39 and 43–65). She argues that his attachment to the world results from his intellectual failings, namely, he has not studied well or comprehended the images before him: “Tu t’abagli te stesso in falsa erranza / con falso immaginar, per le presenti / cose che son di famosa mostranza” (You blind yourself in much error with false imagining for the present things that are but ostentatious show) (AV 30.40–42, and generally 34–42; emphasis added). She then encourages the dreamer to change his opinion by showing him the room dedicated to Fortune (AV 31). The guide develops her argument by drawing examples from different passages of the same books already witnessed by the dreamer. The fact that she antithetically engages the same images previously viewed implies that one’s attitude impacts how one reads, positively or negatively. Whereas many of the figures seen before were joyful, these are now wholly wretched: “Color con festa e con gioconditate / parevan tutte con be’ vestimenti, / costor con doglia e con avversitate” (Those seemed to celebrate with joy, in rich raiments; these were with sadness and adversity) (AV 31.10–12). Responding to the dreamer’s desire for wealth, she also discusses the episode of the rich man at length. She points out that a wealthy individual constantly tries to amass more, fears others, and

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cannot be satiated by temporal goods (AV 32–33). Her unilateral moralizing contrasts with Boccaccio-­character’s nuanced moral interpretation of the value of wealth. She even argues that God will exact vengeance against those who love the world and now appear happy: “Intento ora ti volgi a riguardare / la vendetta di Dio, che non oblia / mai fallo alcun che si debbia purgare” (Attentively now turn to see the vengeance of God, who never forgets any fault that must be purged) (AV 36.1–3). As proof, she cites examples of those who supposedly suffered the consequences of God’s vengeance. She names Pompey, Caesar, and Nero, but also Cicero and Ovid, who frighten the pilgrim so much that he begs that the vision end (AV 36–37.21 and 36.22–33). In contrast to the guide, the dreamer cannot or will not endorse a hateful renunciation of the world. Boccaccio underscores the protagonist’s inability to transcend the world by having the pilgrim immediately turn his attention to a sensuous garden, his curiosity to explore aroused yet again. In the garden, the pilgrim sees a fountain with statues and depictions that have engendered debate about their allegorical significance (AV 38 and 39).31 The multicolored marble fountain features four ladies, who probably represent the four cardinal virtues. The four female figures hold a vase with three other women, one black, one white, one red, from whom three streams emanate (the white and red water verdant gardens; the black’s riverbed is desolate; AV 39.1–69). Scholars have interpreted the three female figures as representations of three different kinds of love. Threefold classifications of love appeared in many medieval texts, and Boccaccio draws on one in the Filocolo (Fil. 4.44.4–9). The white figure seems to symbolize spiritual or honest love, the red erotic, and the third sinful or utilitarian love. In the Filocolo, Fiammetta criticized the second and third types of love, whereas Boccaccio-­ Caleone defended erotic love as the origin of all virtue and art (Fil. 4.45). In the beginning of the Ameto, the narrator voices a similar idea about the positive effects of eros (Ameto 1.6–12). The differences between these texts reveal that an older Boccaccio was revising passages in his pre-­1340 writings that were critical of the symbolic value and ethical utility of human desires. The pilgrim then follows the stream that symbolizes erotic love, which according to the guide will lead them near to where the spiritual brook leads: “Se ti piace, / andian per questa via, ché più vicino / ne fia

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’l sentier che ci merrà a pace” (If it pleases you, let us go along this road, for then the path will be nearer to that which will lead us to peace) (AV 39.74–76). Critics have often interpreted the dreamer’s choice as evidence of his inability to convert his profane desires to spiritual yearnings (in contrast to Dante-­pilgrim). The dreamer, however, does not fail to convert on account of his own sinfulness. Instead, he does not convert because the act of transcending one’s body and the world is impossible. The pilgrim’s decision implies that the erotic and carnal “path” is the only one open to humankind, and is even the most appropriate because humans are embodied. His choice contradicts the guide’s call to purify every desire in the name of a vengeful god who hates his own creation. In the Comedy, Dante-­pilgrim undergoes a bodily, moral, and spiritual cleansing while ascending Mount Purgatory. The experience recounted does not imply that humans should reject their bodies or desires, but that they must reform their sinful earthly attachments. In the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio complements these Dantean notions by clarifying that humans cannot, in fact, purify themselves completely while in this world. Moreover, his poem fosters an even more crucial notion. The Amorosa visione emphasizes that humans should not feel the need or a desire to convert in such an extreme ascetic manner. The poem then proposes a final moral and spiritual vision that does not characterize the goodness of the body ambiguously. Boccaccio introduces the poem’s ethical dimension just as he did the literary import of the Ameto, through a programmatic rewriting of Dante’s Earthly Paradise. Boccaccio-­dreamer arrives in a verdant meadow where he sees women gathering flowers. The verses of Boccaccio’s poem recall verses in the Purgatorio that describe how Matelda gathers flowers along the banks of Lethe in the Earthly Paradise:32 Hardito con costoro oltre passai, e ’n sulla riva del bel fiumicello io vidi donne ch’io conobbi assai; e riguardando lor con occhio snello, qual gia cantando e qual cogliendo fiori, chi sedea, chi danzava in un pratello. (AV 40.22–27; emphasis added)

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Boldly with them I passed beyond, and onto the bank of a lovely stream I saw women, whom I knew well; and, as I gazed at them with an eager glance, one of them was singing and another gathering flowers, one sat, and another was dancing in a field. Coi piè ristetti e con li occhi passai di là dal fiumicello, per mirare la gran varïazion d’i freschi mai; e là m’apparve, sì com’elli appare subitamente cosa che disvia per maraviglia tutto altro pensare, una donna soletta che si gia e cantando e scegliendo fior da fiore ond’era pinta tutta la sua via. (Purg. 28.34–42; emphasis added) With my feet I stood still, and with my eyes I passed beyond the stream, to gaze at the great variety of the fresh May branches, and over there appeared to me—as sometimes a thing suddenly appears that scatters for wonder every other thought—a solitary lady, who was walking along both singing and choosing flower from flower among those that colored all her way. When Dante-­pilgrim saw Matelda, the poet described her in erotic terms, first emphasizing her violated and then untainted condition. He initially compares her to Proserpina, who while picking flowers was raped by Pluto and taken to the underworld: “Tu mi fai rimembrar dove e qual era / Proserpina nel tempo che perdette / la madre lei, ed ella prima­vera” (You put me in mind of where and what Proserpina was, in the time when her mother lost her and she the spring) (Purg. 28.49–51). A few lines later she is likened to a virgin: “volsesi in su i vermigli e in su i gialli / fioretti verso me, non altrimenti / che vergine che li occhi onesti avvalli” (she turned on the crimson and yellow flowers toward me, not otherwise than a virgin who lowers her modest eyes) (Purg. 28.55–57). By recalling the poet’s description of Matelda, Boccaccio foregrounded how eros was depicted in select passages of the Comedy. These cantos of Dante’s poem

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could potentially engender ambiguity about the dignity of erotic bodies. Matelda, as both violated victim and virgin, is evoked as an emblem of the poet’s apparent preoccupation with chaste and tainted love. Moreover, these echoes of the Comedy in Boccaccio’s poem highlight the types of women and bodies that appear in their respective writings. In the Earthly Paradise, Dante-­pilgrim encounters Matelda, the celestial Beatrice, and seven nymphs. He engages with and is guided by women with either mythical or sublimated erotic resonances. In the Vita nova, Beatrice was presented as a nonmythic, Florentine, contemporary of Dante-­lover. Boccaccio also knew that she was a married woman (Espos. 2.1.84).33 However, neither Dante, in the Vita nova or Comedy, nor Boccaccio, in his writings, presents her as an unchaste, an impure, a flawed, or a typical individual. In fact, in the Vita nova, Dante declared upon first encountering Beatrice that she did not seem to be the daughter of a mortal man but of God (Vn 2.8 [1.9]).34 In Purgatorio 30–31, Beatrice specified that she appeared to Dante with a degree of beauty that transcended any other created by “natura o arte” (nature or art) (Purg. 31.49–51). In his scholarship, Boccaccio discusses Beatrice’s gentility and the chaste, nonerotic nature of her feelings for Dante (Tratt. §§32–35, 37–38; and Espos. 2.1.84–85). In the Comedy, many types of women and bodies signify ideas related to diverse topics. The pilgrim also experiences desire in positive ways, which aid him during his voyage to the Empyrean. However, by engaging with Dante’s Earthly Paradise, Boccaccio proposes a crucial distinction between the Comedy and the Amorosa visione. On the one hand, the echoes of the Comedy do not imply that the poem signifies exclusively by reference to ancient, mythical, or idealized women. On the other hand, they do highlight that the Comedy prominently, deliberately, and extensively features such female figures. By contrast, Boccaccio’s episode does not introduce these types of protagonists. In an edenic-­like space, Boccaccio-­dreamer meets women with historical, sensual, and, overt embodied overtones. He enjoys the sight and erotic beauty of contemporary women from Florence and Tuscany, and then from other regions of Europe (AV 40–43). By depicting such an encounter, Boccaccio’s poem emphasizes the primacy of the body in humankind’s earthly reality and journey. (Dante had proposed a similar understanding of the corpus but did so in different terms.) The Amorosa visione also foregrounds the utility of the body by

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recalling ideas about this topic in the Ameto.35 In the Ameto, contemporary unchaste women rather than mythical, divine, chaste, or ancient figures embody the virtues. In the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio-­pilgrim encounters one of the Ameto’s primary protagonists. He sees Lia, who represented faith and helped Ameto abandon the “volgar uso” (vulgar way) (AV 41.36 and 33–39). The description of another Florentine who was “vaga” (alluring) introduces the encounter: Vaga e leggiadra molto la seguia la ninfa fiorentina, al cui piacere oppongon tai, che non san che si sia, nel viso lei parere un cavaliere, onesta andando sì umilemente ch’oltra dovere me ne fu in calere. Dopo essa, attenta al suon similemente, veniva quella Lia che trasse Ameto dal volgar uso dell’umana gente, in abito soave e mansueto, inghirlandata di novella fronda, con lento passo e con aspetto lieto. (AV 41.28–39; emphasis added) Lovely and very graceful following her came the Florentine nymph, whose beauty is challenged by those who do not know who she is, she seeming a knight in her comportment goes along so humbly in her gait that I was unduly drawn to her. After her, similarly attentive to the sound, came that Lia who drew Ameto from the vulgar way of the human race, in a dress that was soft and meek, she was crowned with a new wreath, and went slowly with a merry countenance. The passage calls to mind both the general narrative and the thematics of the Ameto. The allusion to vaghezza also recalls the work’s poetics, namely, that the female body in virtue of being an erotic, attractive, and affective image can reveal God. In accordance with medieval ideas about cognition, the dreamer notes that the image of the ladies entered his mind:

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Sempre con l’occhio quelle seguitando m’andava io, e dentro lo ’ntelletto la lor bellezza giva immaginando; e di quella prendea tanto diletto in sé, ch’alcuna volta fu che io, a tal piacer, credetti far subbietto alla mia voglia quiveritta il mio libero albitrio: ma pur si ritenne con vigorosa forza il mio disio. (AV 41.73–81; emphasis added) Always following them with my eye I went along, and within my intellect I was imagining their beauty; and that was of so much pleasure to me in itself, that sometimes I believed that I myself had subjected my free will right there to my desire: however, that desire was yet retained with a vigorous effort. The allusion to free will also recalls Dante-­pilgrim in the Earthly Para­dise. Virgil, as the representation of Reason (Espos. 1.2.149–54), gave Dante his blessing to follow his desires after their long spiritual ascent: “Non aspettar mio dir più né mio cenno; libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio, e fallo fora non fare a suo senno: per ch’io te sovra te corono e mitrio.” (Purg. 27.139–42) “No longer await any word or sign from me: free, upright, and whole is your will, and it would be a fault not to act according to its intent: therefore you over yourself I crown and mitre.” But whereas Dante-­pilgrim needed a purgatorial cleansing before obtaining license to use his free will, Boccaccio-­dreamer does not have to purify his desires before indulging his. The concluding sections of the Amorosa visione highlight the symbolic and spiritual value of the erotic body by reference to the Incarnation.

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Christ’s self-­sacrifice was thought to have healed the postlapsarian split between body and spirit, between humanity and God. The Amorosa visione is, in fact, one of Boccaccio’s earliest works in which the value of the body is overtly considered in light of the Incarnation. The implications of the Incarnation are foregrounded when the dreamer sees the lady who was previously before him. An extended circumlocution reveals that she is his beloved Fiammetta, who in reality is Maria d’Aquino, a relative of Thomas Aquinas and the daughter of King Robert of Anjou:36 E com’io seppi, ell’era della gente del Campagnin che lo Spagnuol seguio nella cappa, nel dire e con la mente, a sé faccendo sì benigno Iddio, che d’ampio fiume di scienza degno si fece, come poi chiar si sentio, faccendo aperte col suo sommo ingegno le scritture nascose, e quinci appresso da Carlo pinto gì nello dio regno; faccendo sé da quella, in cui compresso stette Colui che la nostra natura nobilitò, nomar, che poi l’eccesso absterse della prima creatura con la sua pena. (AV 43.46–59) And, as I knew, she was of the family of the Campanian who followed the Spaniard in mantle, speech, and with the mind, making God so benevolent to him, that, as became clear later, he became worthy of a broad river of knowledge, opening, with his sublime genius, what lay hidden in scripture, and then, given a push by Charles, he went to God’s realm. She took her name from her in whom he was generated, who ennobled our nature and then by means of his pain purified the excess of the first creature. Maria-­Fiammetta has been interpreted as a female accomplice of the celestial guide, who will help the dreamer transcend or suppress his desires.37

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By naming Fiammetta-­Maria by reference to the Scholastic theologian, Boccaccio was perhaps evoking a theological justification for controlling the appetites. How she is identified, however, also emphasizes her connection to Mary (another “vase” of God), who gave birth to the incarnated Christ. Boccaccio specifies that Christ did not correct the fundamental nature of human desires, but rather that they can be excessive (AV 43.56– 59). Boccaccio had also named Fiammetta by reference to the Madonna in the Filocolo (Fil. 4.16.4). The allusion seems to imply that the eroticism of the feminine body can be salvific because female and male bodies contributed to humanity’s salvation in the Incarnation. Far from being unaffected by human yearnings, Maria-­Fiammetta, and by extension the Madonna, feels compassion for those who love and suffer:                        . . . e quivi coronata della fronda pennea, con somma cura raggiugnea fior per farsi più ornata, mostrando sé tal fiata piatosa della noia dell’altra a lei narrata. (AV 43.59–63) . . . and there crowned with the leafy branch, with great care she was gathering flowers to make herself more ornate, showing herself full of pity for the grief the other woman was recounting to her. Maria d’Aquino and the Madonna are depicted as feeling compassion for the erotic suffering of others, just as Christ felt pity for humankind’s suffering. The suffering and yearning inherent in erotic desires are thus likened to the spiritual suffering humans feel when a family member dies, which Mary experienced at the Crucifixion. The poem also underscores the symbolic utility of the body by recalling notions pertaining to affective piety.38 In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, contemplative writers around Tuscany and Umbria were inspiring a new artistic sensibility characterized by vivid and detailed depictions of the body. For his part, Francis of Assisi (ca. 1181–1226) dedicated his life to Christ after seeing the disfigured body of a leper, and he himself embodied Christ’s suffering upon receiving the stigmata.39

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Franciscan writers were inspired by Pseudo-­Dionysian, Bernardian, and Bonaventurean ideas about the affective efficacy of bodily images and erotic language in the Song of Songs. They suggested that carnal images could psychosomatically stimulate readers to feel love and compassion for Christ. For example, Francis’s early biographers promoted poverty by depicting an erotic allegorical relationship or mystical marriage between Francis and a personified paupertas.40 Tuscan contemplatives were also encouraging readers to meditate on images of Christ’s passion and the Madonna’s suffering. In the Prologus to the Meditationes vitae Christi (ca. 1305), the author cites the authorities of Francis, Bernard, and Bonaventure while encouraging the Poor Clares to meditate on imagi­narias representaciones (imaginary representations) of Christ’s wounds, acts of self-­sacrifice, and love.41 In Paradiso 11, Franciscan concepts inform Thomas Aquinas’s account of Francis’s lifelong love affair with and mystical marriage to Poverty (Par. 11.43–81).42 He notes that Francis unlocked her “porta del piacer” (gate of pleasure), wedded her, and loved her ever more strongly thereafter (Par. 11.58–63). Aquinas adds that before Francis she had been abandoned, even though she “con Cristo pianse in su la croce” (wept with Christ upon the cross) (Par. 11.72). Scholars have debated whether these expressions of piety were especially or uniquely characteristic of women.43 In late medieval culture, women were often defined by their carnality and eroticism. Moreover, female mystics, such as Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) and Catherine of Siena (1347–80), were some of the most visible and striking practitioners of acts and spiritual exercises that have come to be considered typical of affective contemplation. Some medievalists conclude, therefore, that affective meditation was the purview of women, who in theory could—given their carnality—respond most effectively to Christ’s passion with compassion (etymologically, com + pati = “to suffer with”). Indeed, the proliferation of associations of Christ with ideas about brideship seem to stem from his embodiment of certain qualities, such as compassion, that were gendered female in medieval culture.44 In the late Middle Ages, Christ began to be increasingly associated with maternal elements, a development that in turn informed the spiritual expressions of female contemplatives. By implication, men too were supposed to assume feminine and Christ-­like dispositions when engaging in these forms of contemplation. Scholars have questioned the gendered connotations of affective piety in

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all of its various contexts and iterations, but Boccaccio does maintain that women are more easily moved by bodily images and erotic stories. In the Decameron, the narrator notes that women feel the effects of love more strongly than men do (Dec., Pr. 9–12). He also crucially adds that his opening descriptions of plague-­ridden bodies will most strongly impact women because they are “naturalmente tutte . . . pietose” (all naturally . . . compassionate) (Dec. 1, Intr. 2 and 34). In the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio draws on ideas about the affects of women when recounting a mystical marriage between the pilgrim and Fiammetta. The male narrator himself assumes female dispositions when he becomes the bride of his female beloved.45 In depicting a mystical marriage, Boccaccio was probably inspired by interpretations of the Song of Songs and by Aquinas’s account of Francis in the Comedy. Fiammetta herself is also associated with Aquinas in the Amorosa visione. After returning to Tuscany, Boccaccio was perhaps prompted by his interest in Dante and images to consider pietistic currents about compassion and Christ’s body. In fact, Fiammetta enkindles the Boccaccio-­pilgrim’s heart with a gesture reminiscent of Beatrice eating Dante’s heart in the Vita nova (AV 44.79– 85 and 45.1–9; and cf. Vn 3.4–6 [1.15–17]).46 After she binds and wraps it with her hair, the dreamer declares that he has completely submitted to her.47 In the Vita nova, the narrator never physically consummated his relationship with Beatrice other than by praising her (Vn 18.6–19.3 [10.8–14]). Dante-­poet was self-­consciously engaging in a completely disinterested form of writing that sought no reward. The dreamer instead consummates his relationship with Fiammetta, both in matrimony and erotically. In accord with contemplative ideas about mystical marriage, Fiammetta writes her name on the dreamer’s heart and places a ring on his finger. The description foregrounds the eroticism of the act:48 E così stando parve ch’io vedesse questa donna gentile a me venire ed aprirmi nel petto, e poi scrivesse là entro nel mio cor posto a soffrire, il suo bel nome di lettere d’oro in modo che non ne potesse uscire. La qual, non dopo molto gran dimoro,

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nel mio dito minore uno anelletto metteva tratto di suo gran tesoro; al qual pareami, se ’l mio intelletto bene stimò, che una catenella fosse legata, che infino al petto si distendeva della donna bella, passando dentro, e con artigli presa, come ancora scoglio, tenea quella. (AV 45.10–24) As I stood there I seemed to see this gentle woman come toward me and open me in the breast, and then write there inside my heart, placed to suffer, her beautiful name with letters of gold so that it could never leave from there. She, after not too long of a pause, placed on my little finger a ring that came from her great treasure; to which it seemed to me, if my intellect could grasp it, was bound a little chain, which descended from the breast of the lovely lady, passing within, and held her with its hooks as firmly as an anchor grips a rock. The pilgrim then physically embraces her, thereby receiving her “compassion,” just as Agapes received compassion from Venus in the Ameto (AV 46.22–42). Boccaccio thus employs the body to promote charity in ways that chime with general cultural ideas about how meditating on the body engenders compassion. The pilgrim erotically embraces his female Christ-­like embodied figure, just as female mystics had visions of kissing Christ—the ultimate embodiment of compassion, pity, and mercy. Boccaccio-­dreamer, therefore, does not ascend to the Earthly Paradise to gain spiritual knowledge. His experience suggests that humans can encounter God without ascending to an edenic space or to Paradise. Moreover, whereas Aquinas spoke about Francis’s love for an immaterial personification, Boccaccio’s poem features actual bodies and physi­ cal eroticism. For example, Boccaccio-­pilgrim and Fiammetta touch each other. Bolstered by ideas about the affects, Boccaccio seems to have rewritten the less carnal narrative recounted in the Paradiso. Perhaps inspired by the bodies and eroticism found in Franciscan writings, his allegory is more overtly carnal than Dante’s. In comparison

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to Paradiso  11, Boccaccio engaged more systematically the eroticism inherent in the poetics of contemporary devotional literatures. In the Purgatorio, Dante too of course had described the suffering of diverse (aerial) bodies to promote love and compassion, thus engaging Pseudo-­ Dionysian, Bernardian, and Franciscan concepts. Still, Boccaccio appears to have been concerned about a Franciscan-­inspired narrative in the Paradiso, which featured a saint’s love for an abstract concept. Boccaccio may have had differing views about the role of the body in all varieties of affective medi­tation given that he had returned to Tuscany in 1341. Dante was exiled from Florence in 1300, years before several of the most influential Tuscan texts of an affective nature were written and circulated (e.g., Meditationes vitae Christi; ca. 1305). Boccaccio had the opportunity to consider Umbrian and Tuscan contemplative, mendicant, and popular ideas about the affects that had developed in the decades following Dante’s exile and death. Finally, the concluding sections of the Amorosa visione question the notion that the soul’s salvation depends on its rejection of creation. The last cantos depict an individual who integrates his spiritual and bodily needs. Boccaccio-­character’s salvation depends on the dreamer, Fiammetta, and guide forming a harmonious ménage à trois, which is how the relationship is metaphorically depicted. In other words, the pilgrim embraces his erotic desires for Fiammetta, but within the boundaries established by the celestial guide.49 The guide, in fact, explains that she and Fiammetta are sisters and that they require each other’s assistance (AV 47.64–84; 48.1– 15; and cf. 46.70–88). She then has them join hands in a second ceremony of (symbolic) matrimony: “Tiella per donna tua, né mai divisa sia da lei l’alma tua fin che la vita dal mortal colpo in te non è conquisa. Or qui alquanto per questa fiorita campagna dolcemente ti riposa, sì che poi sie più forte alla salita dove menarti intendo, e la gioiosa donna con noi, acciò che la via del tutto paia a ciascun dilettosa.” (AV 48.55–63)

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“Keep her as your lady, and may your soul never be divided from her until your life is vanquished by the mortal blow. Now here awhile about this verdant countryside rest yourself sweetly, so that you may be stronger for the ascent where I intend to lead you, and the joyous lady will be with us, so that the way seems completely delightful to each.” The guide thus commands that while in a body he should stay with Fiammetta. Their bond will make the final spiritual ascent not only possible but “dilettosa” (delightful) (AV 48.59, 63, and cf. 65–85). Therefore, in the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio depicts an integration and a harmonization of the enjoyable (erotic pleasures) and the useful (Christian ethics). The poem thereby defuses Neoplatonic and contemplative currents that devalued the physical versus the metaphysical, the body versus spirit, and the temporal versus the eternal. In the final verses of the poem, Boccaccio reflected on one more major late medieval and early Renaissance ideological division, that which concerned fiction and history. The potential disjunction between fiction and history was related to the other tensions addressed in the poem. As the metaphysical was sometimes negatively juxtaposed to the physical, so fiction was often negatively juxtaposed to history. Various Dominican theologians and Neoplatonic writers criticized fiction for being a potentially misleading, superficial, and unnatural form of writing in contrast to God’s “writing” in providential history, the Bible, and creation. The narrator addresses these issues by reflecting on what relationship the erotic poem has to reality and how it might impact history. While the pilgrim and Fiammetta sensually embrace, the pilgrim awakes and yearns for Fiammetta again. The ending foregrounds the problematic relationship between dream (fiction) and reality (history), between the poetic image and what it represents. The pilgrim then desires to relive what he fears may only be a dream, a fiction: “a quel loco / veracemente spero che reddita / ancor farò con essenza perfetta, / allor prendendo quella gioia compita” (truly I hope to return to that place, and again will with perfect essence have that joy already felt) (AV 49.78–81, and generally 52–83). Boccaccio-­narrator suggests, however, that in this vision there is no tension between history and fiction. The carnal nature of the poem’s poetics grounds the text in the real world, and thus the text and the world

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are “seamless.” The celestial guide even unexpectedly appears to him in his waking reality (AV 50.1–15), which violates the typical conventions of the dream-­vision genre.50 She declares that if the pilgrim follows her, she will lead him back to Fiammetta. Boccaccio-­narrator then addresses the historical Fiammetta, the dedicatee of the work, and professes that he will follow the guide to where he experienced delight while sleeping. His remarks transcend distinctions between the literary vision and historical reality, Boccaccio-­pilgrim and Boccaccio-­narrator, fictional poem and historical frame: Così adunque vo per pervenire, donna gentile, al loco dove sendo voi ebbi tanta gioia nel mio dormire, tuttor notando quel ch’andrò vedendo dietro a costei per la portella stretta, e di scriverlo oltre ancora attendo. (AV 50.46–51) Thus I go off in order to find, gentle lady, the place where being before I had so much joy while sleeping, always taking note of what I will be seeing behind this woman through the narrow door, and to write it yet I still am waiting. Boccaccio-­character—now narrator and pilgrim—follows the guide in his waking reality. He hopes that he will return to Fiammetta because the vision concerns the real Fiammetta, Maria d’Aquino. Dante-­narrator concluded the Comedy by pondering the love that moves the stars (Par. 33.142–45). Boccaccio-­dreamer instead focuses on his beloved who stimu­ lates him to seek both physical and spiritual compassion. The Amorosa visione concludes by proposing that those who criticize erotic desires and fictions have unorthodox—even hateful—views of creation and the body. In fact, whereas the guide characterized God as vengeful, the narrator recalls the biblical notion that God was a peaceful and compassionate creator (Wisd. 11:24–27): Adunque quello ardor in cui m’invoglio terminerete omai quando vi piace,

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ch’io vi sono entro ognor più ch’i’ non soglio: io v’acomando al Sir di tutta pace. (AV 50.91–94) Thus, whenever it pleases you, you will bring to an end that desire which is kindled in me, for I am in you now ever more than I was accustomed to being: I commend you to the Lord of all peace. The narrator has his desires pacified with Fiammetta to the extent that humans can, and in turn he commends his lady to the “Lord of all peace.” While various individuals in this world feel unsatisfied, ungrateful, and agitated, the narrator and Fiammetta experience love for each other and for God.

B O C C AC C I O’ S V I S I O N O F P E T R A RC H

The title of Boccaccio’s work highlights both the ethical significance and the spiritual import of the poem: Amorosa visione, or Love Vision, or Vision of Love. The title implies that love “triumphs,” reigns over, and affects every aspect of humankind’s embodied experience. The poem proposes that there are not two opposing or contradictory Venuses, a terrestrial and a celestial. It invalidates the notion that carnal desire metaphorically weighs humans down while spiritual yearning lifts us toward God. Instead, the text affirms that there is only one Venus with two complementary dimensions, physical and spiritual. It reveals that once these are properly integrated readers can offer compassion, mercy, and forgiveness to each other. The Amorosa visione characterizes the lack of either type of love as sinful and emblematic of someone who has not interpreted the world or the world of literature correctly to grasp this existential notion. The poem underscores that, if humans interpret the world and literature properly, they will find peace and contentment in their bodies during their earthly voyages. Loving readers will—and this is one implication of the allusions to ideas about women, bodies, and affective spirituality— embrace their own fleeting moments of embodiment. This is the triumph of love as imagined in Boccaccio’s literary vision, the redemption of the self as an autonomous individual in a body and at peace with God.

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Boccaccio also wrote the Amorosa visione to differentiate his mode of writing about humanity’s embodied reality from Dante’s in the Comedy. Boccaccio never intended to suggest that Dante hated the body or that he did not draw on diverse types of bodies for symbolic purposes. However, he expressed concern about potential interpretations of a work that featured an idealized sublime woman, who led the pilgrim to an experience beyond space and time. At the same time, the poem obliquely engages with Petrarch’s ideas about the body. For his part, Petrarch was dramatizing his own ideas about the potential disjunction between the earthly and the celestial, between body and spirit. He was writing about—at least for rhetorical purposes—a perceived tension between his desire for Laura and his love for God, and also his yearning for fame and his disgust for worldly frivolities. Boccaccio had already discussed these aspects of Petrarch’s authorial identity before writing the Amorosa visione in 1342–43.51 A very young Boccaccio penned a Latin epistle to Petrarch that dealt with the dignity of creation (Mavortis milex, ca. 1339–40 [autograph; BML, 29.8]).52 In the letter, the protagonist asked Petrarch to help him curb his desires and endure the vicissitudes of Fortune (Ep. 2.2–8 and 10–12). These are the same themes addressed in both the Amorosa visione and the Ameto. However, the protagonists of these two works enjoy their erotic and mundane experiences while gaining ethical and spiritual knowledge. Boccaccio may also have begun his biography of Petrarch at about the same time as he was concluding the Ameto and beginning the Amorosa visione. Scholars date the composition of the De vita et moribus Domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia to between 1342 and 1350. In the biography, Boccaccio explained that Petrarch was disturbed by his erotic feelings for Laura. Consequently, he tried to downplay the seriousness of Petrarch’s erotic desires by interpreting the poet’s love for Laura allegorically as a yearning for the poetic laurel crown (Vita Pet. §26). Boccaccio also evoked Petrarch’s struggles with erotic and worldly temptations in the Amorosa visione’s opening sonnets. In the last of the three sonnets, the narrator explains that any defects of the work could be due to a combination of a “voler troppo ’nfiammato” (passion excessively inflamed) and stylistic infelicities (ll. 9–10). He adds that such things could hinder his writing: “’l mio fioco / cantar s’imvischa nel proferer broco” (my faint song becomes entangled in its hindered utterance) (ll. 9–10).53 The metaphoric

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notion of being stuck or entangled was a commonplace in the Canzoniere. It was often employed in reference to the poet’s love either for Laura or for the poetic crown (e.g., RVF 34.8, 99.8, 142.29). Boccaccio signaled that these verses were indebted to Petrarch by concluding the sonnet with Petrarchan ideas about the laurel crown. In the final poem of the introductory sonnets, the narrator asks readers to reward his beloved with the ancient sign of literary excellence: “Rendete a llei ’l meritato alloro!” (Give unto her the merited laurel!) (l. 23). These allusions to Petrarch’s literary persona may have inspired Petrarch several years later to rewrite the Amorosa visione for his own ideological purposes in the Triumphi (begun perhaps in 1351–52). In the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio began to differentiate some of his views about literature and ethics from ideas expressed in Petrarch’s writings. In fact, he endeavored to distinguish his authorial persona from Petrarch’s in several crucial ways. The key point is that Boccaccio chose not to dramatize an emotional or a spiritual battle, a psychomachia of a soul never at peace because of its struggles with conflicting desires. Petrarch instead did repeatedly write about such emotional and spiritual discord, if only to resolve it, to ridicule it as an insignificant issue, or even to celebrate it. In the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio did not depict tensions between humanity’s erotic yearnings and desires for spiritual fulfillment. Nor did he dramatize a protagonist struggling with his embodied reality and ethical matters. The Amorosa visione proposes a harmonious understanding of ethics and eroticism, of the embodied self and the self ’s relationship to God. The Amorosa visione thereby asks readers to abandon hateful views of love, and cautions them to not stigmatize or, even worse, punish their bodies. As the poem demonstrates, a complete embrace of the body leads the individual soul to experience a holistic love that truly and deeply brings joy.

FOUR

The Love of the Corpus Decameron

T H E I TA L I A N OV I D

Boccaccio initially reflected on his erotic poetics in the genres of comedy and dream vision, which often featured amatory content. His symbolic uses of eros were thus indebted to tradition, but Boccaccio also addressed the fact that they could be perceived as immoral and even as unorthodox. In the Ameto and Amorosa visione, he countered potential criticisms of his amatory works by affirming their capacity to signify ethical and spiritual meaning. When composing the short stories of the Decameron (ca. 1348– ca. 1360), Boccaccio again considered issues related to the controversial erotic content and poetics of his works. One issue concerned the fact that the genre of short story was not yet canonized in late medieval culture.1 Consequently, contemporary readers might have failed to appreciate the formal or generic properties of the erotic novelle. A second issue stemmed from the fact that early humanists occasionally considered erotica to be juvenile and immoral. For example, Boccaccio knew that Petrarch was 157

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critical of both erotic vernacular texts and amatory experiences. Before drafting most of the Decameron, he had already characterized Petrarch as a humanist writer and scholar who was not interested in erotic vernacular writing. In his vita of Petrarch (ca. 1342–50), Boccaccio downplayed the fact that Petrarch had written vernacular love poems and engaged in what Petrarch himself called the “obscenum” (obscene) act of intercourse (Vita Pet. §§26–30; and Sen. 18.1.6). Boccaccio’s concerns about how the Decameron might be perceived led him to include explicit discussions of the properties of his short stories. On four separate occasions, the narrator of the Decameron addressed literary and moral questions related to the novelle. In these metaliterary sections, Boccaccio also recalled self-­reflexive, metaliterary passages in Ovid’s erotic writings. Boccaccio could evoke specific verses of Ovid’s poems because he began reading, imitating, and acquiring the poet’s works beginning in the 1330s.2 Scholars have identified several sections of the Decameron that are modeled on Ovid’s works.3 Because of his engagement with the Roman poet, Boccaccio has been called “the Italian Ovid.” In the text’s Proemio, the narrator discusses why he addressed the erotic stories to women by echoing remarks from the Heroides concerning how women suffer the effects of love more than men do (Dec., Pr. 9–12; and Her. 19.5–16). In the “Introduction” to Day 4, the narrator names his stories with what was considered an alternate title for the Amores, “senza titolo” (without a title) (Dec. 4, Intr. 3; cf. Espos. 4.1.119). In this section, Boccaccio also characterizes his critics as envious, as Ovid did in the Remedia amoris (Dec. 4, Intr. 2–4; and Rem. 361– 69). Finally, in the “Conclusion” of the work, the narrator defends the content of the Decameron by arguing that he should be permitted to write about carnal and erotic subjects because painters have frequently depicted sexualized bodies (Dec., Conc. 6). His remarks evoke and imitate Ovid’s defense of amatory literature in the Tristia (Trist. 2.521–28). The first section of this chapter explores why Boccaccio recalled Ovid’s erotic poems while reflecting on the properties of his prose stories. It will shed light on Boccaccio’s various allusions to Ovid by reviewing ideas about the Roman poet and his erotic poems in late medieval culture. A survey of contemporary views of Ovid’s poems will reveal that Boccaccio engaged the former’s elegiac works in the Decameron in a self-­ conscious, deliberate, and sustained manner. Boccaccio even alluded to

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Ovid’s elegiac poems in the Decameron in the order that Ovid had supposedly written them. Medieval scholars like Boccaccio believed that the Ovidian corpus consisted of nine works, which were composed in the following order: Heroides, Amores, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, Fasti, Metamorphoses, Ex ponto, Ibis. Though some medieval critics did not mention the Tristia, Boccaccio names the poem when he discusses the poet’s role in Dante’s Comedy: Heroides, Amores, Fasti, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, Metamorphoses, Tristia, Ibis, Ex ponto (Espos. 4.1.119– 22). Moreover, he generally structured the metaliterary sections of the Decameron to recall the chronology of Ovid’s elegiac writings (in order, Heroides, Amores, Remedia amoris, Tristia). Therefore, a global consid­era­ tion of Ovid in the Decameron reveals that Boccaccio did not intend to write a vernacular remedy of love, thus fashioning himself a moralizing critic of desires.4 The systematic nature of Boccaccio’s references implies that he was reflecting on the generic properties of Ovidian elegy in toto. Indeed, his detailed engagement with Ovidian elegy suggests that he was associating his erotic stories with an established and authoritative classical genre. The bulk of this chapter addresses why Boccaccio recalled the elegiac Ovid while highlighting the formal properties of his controversial erotic tales. The following will propose—and this is the key—that Boccaccio evoked the specific passages of Ovid’s poems that detail both the generic characteristics and the metaliterary dimension of his erotic elegies. What scholars have not appreciated is that Boccaccio recalled these Ovidian passages to guide impressions of the signifying properties of the Decameron. In addition, Boccaccio signaled that his imitation of the poetics of elegy was motivated by a nexus of theological, ethical, and affective concepts. In the structurally foregrounded sections of the Decameron, he highlights the theological dimension of his text’s poetics through references to the Incarnation and Crucifixion (Dec. 1, Intr. 8, and Conc. 6). By means of these references, Boccaccio suggested that he employed the erotic poetics of elegy to approximate how God “wrote” with the body. Boccaccio also highlighted that he drew on the body for ethical reasons. His ideas about ethics concern the virtue of compassion: “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti” (It is human to have compassion on those who are suffering) (Dec., Pr. 2). When coupled with the Christological references, these remarks signal that the Decameron features a bodily

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poetics to engender compassion because Christ himself had used the body to promote charity.5 Christ was, in fact, sometimes called the auctor pietatis (author of compassion), and it was thought that he acted compassionately by becoming incarnate. Boccaccio thereby likened his authorial identity as elegiac writer to Christ’s, the divine-­human who “wrote” with the corpus in history. The idea that meditating on carnal images (of Christ) could promote compassion was also inspired by the affective-­somatic expressions of piety common in the central regions of the Italian peninsula. Boccaccio introduced the affective potential of his erotic stories by including remarks about the supposedly unique, compassionate dispositions of women. The narrator specifies that the female dedicatees of the Decameron will be especially moved by his opening descriptions of plague-­ridden bodies because they are “naturalmente tutte . . . pietose” (all naturally . . . compassionate) (Dec. 1, Intr. 2). Boccaccio thus evoked the ethical goal of devotional writing (engender compassion), a thematic component of that literature (suffering bodies), and the gender of piety (female) in medieval culture.6 The introductory sections prompt readers to adopt a “devotional” disposition toward the narrator’s account of diseased bodies. They also encourage readers—and this is key—to continue meditating, in  a similar fashion, on the desiring and suffering bodies described in the Decame­ron’s novelle. Boccaccio thereby adapted concepts associated with affective piety to highlight the emotive dimension of his erotic elegy. He proposed that his short stories are a species of affective writing because both devotional and elegiac works feature sensual elements. In developing this notion, Boccaccio drew on the fact that elegiac writings, like somatic spiri­tual expressions, were associated with the female gender. Finally, Boccaccio categorized his poetics as elegiac to contrast them to Dante’s comedic poetics. The narrator encourages such comparison by appropriating a common contemporary definition of the Comedy’s register as low and humble for the Decameron (Dec. 4, Intr. 3 and 33; and cf. ECG §10). Therefore, this chapter assesses Boccaccio’s understanding of the ideological merits of the elegiac Decameron in relation to Dante’s Comedy. By appropriating this description of the Comedy, Boccaccio was—it will be suggested—affirming that his low, or earthly, writings could be as symbolically efficacious and orthodox as Dante’s sublime, or otherworldly, poem. Indeed, with respect to the Comedy, Boccaccio championed the

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exceptional capacity of his erotic elegiac writings to engender feelings of love, charity, mercy, and forgiveness.

T H E I TA L I A N E L E G I AC OV I D

Even as a youth Boccaccio paid careful attention to Ovid’s works. The number of references to Ovid in Boccaccio’s early writings demonstrates that he was frequently reflecting on the Roman poet.7 However, a youthful Boccaccio did not engage with Ovid’s ideas about elegy or with the poet’s literary uses of the erotic. While in Naples, Boccaccio recalled Ovid’s general reputation as an authority on love and as an author of erotic texts. In the Filocolo (ca. 1333–38), a medieval romance in prose, the protagonists Florio and Biancifiore fall in love while studying Ovid’s Ars amatoria (Fil. 1.45–2.1). In the work’s epilogue, the narrator also says that his humble work does not resemble the epics of Virgil, Lucan, and Statius, but is a “confortatore” (companion) of Ovid’s poems (Fil. 5.97.5 and 4–6).8 Boccaccio appears to have become more interested in the properties of Ovid’s elegiac writings while reading or rereading Dante’s works in Tuscany. After returning to Florence in 1341, Boccaccio first considered the utility of an erotic poetics in the Ameto (1341) and Amorosa visione (1342–43) in relation to Dante’s Comedy. About a year later he then composed his first major experiment in Ovidian erotic elegy. The Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (1344–45) recalls both the generic properties and the thematic elements of Ovid’s Heroides.9 As the female protagonists of the Heroides lament that their lovers have abandoned them, so Fiammetta in the Elegia complains at length that her lover, Panfilo, has left her. Moreover, Boccaccio signaled that he intended to imitate the first of Ovid’s elegiac poems by titling the work Elegia. After (re)reading Dante’s eclogues, Boccaccio experimented again with the elegiac theme of lament in his Latin bucolic poems.10 Dante’s poems may have prompted Boccaccio to introduce elements of elegy in his eclogues because both bucolic and elegiac poetry often featured wretched lovers. For example, in Buccolicum carmen 2 (1346–47), the shepherd-­poet Palemon laments that his lover, Pampinea, has left him because she has found a better shepherd, lover, and poet (Bucc. 2.75–111). Boccaccio then highlights that the poems are inspired by Ovid by having

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the shepherd-­poet declare that the Roman writer was his teacher: Nasilus in silvis docuit me nempe remotis (Ovid instructed me while out in the deep woods) (Bucc. 2.86). The eclogues again reveal that Dante prompted Boccaccio to consider Ovidian elegy, but they also provide evidence that Boccaccio was thinking about Ovid when he began writing the Decameron. The dates of composition of the earliest Latin poems coincide precisely with the fictional date of the elegiac-­inspired Decameron (1348; Dec. 1, Intr. 8). Years later Boccaccio himself suggested that there were similarities between his Ovidian-­inspired experiments in both eclogue and short story. In the Genealogie, Boccaccio explains that his Latin eclogues and vernacular short stories are examples of humble genres with allegorical meanings (Gen. 14.10.6–7). In the late 1340s, Boccaccio seems to have been testing the potential of an elegiac poetics to signify serious meaning in multiple genres and languages. Finally, toward the end of his life, Boccaccio returned to reflect on Ovid and elegy in a work explicitly dedicated to Dante. In his commentary on the Comedy (1373–74), Boccaccio composed a detailed biography of Ovid (Espos. 4.1.116–26). While commenting on the authors who embrace the pilgrim in Inferno 4, Boccaccio discusses Ovid’s childhood, lists his works, and explains that Ovid was exiled for the supposedly immoral content of his erotic poems. Boccaccio also discusses nearly all of Ovid’s extant works (he only omits the Medicamina faciei femineae) but stresses that Ovid was primarily an elegiac poet. Boccaccio even glosses over Ovid’s Metamorphoses by never naming the epic explicitly (Espos. 4.1.121). He instead emphasizes on two occasions that Ovid wrote in elegiac verse, and asserts that “nel quale stilo egli valse più che alcuno altro poeta” (he was better than any other poet in that genre) (Espos. 4.1.121 and 121–22). By celebrating Ovid as an elegiac poet, an older Boccaccio was probably engaging in an act of authorial self-­fashioning. Like the Roman poet, he too had experimented widely with erotic elegy. In his commentary on the Comedy, Boccaccio was characterizing himself as a follower of the elegiac writer Ovid in contrast to Dante, who was inspired and guided by the epic poet Virgil. This reconstruction of Boccaccio’s literary biography sub specie Ovidii reveals at least two things. One, Boccaccio’s engagement with Dante and his poetics prompted him to consider Ovid’s writings, specifically the erotic elegies. In the Decameron, Boccaccio elucidates why he reflected on

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the two authors in tandem. Two, Boccaccio was extremely familiar with Ovid’s writings. The foregoing has shown that he had a detailed knowledge of Ovid’s elegiac poems and of Ovid’s general reputation. Therefore, Boccaccio would have been sensitive to the advantages and disadvantages of recalling Ovid’s writings to guide perceptions of the Decameron. One challenge stemmed from the fact that various readerships may not have fully appreciated the metaliterary dimension of Ovid’s works.11 Ovid was widely read in the fourteenth century. Not only was Ovid a school author, but his erotic poems had also been translated into the vernacular.12 Readers with varying levels of Latin and vernacular lit­ eracy, ranging from the humanist elites to the mercantile and aristocratic classes, from notaries and (non)professional scribes to schoolmasters, were able to read his poems.13 Still, it appears that not all readers understood that Ovid had used erotic love as a metaphor for the artistic process. Ovid had signaled his symbolic uses of the erotic through the programmatic title Art of Love (Ars amatoria). He also highlighted the literary resonances of love in his poems by including overt metapoetic comments (e.g., Her. 19.5–16; Amores 3.1; Rem. 361–96; and Trist. 2.521–28). In several of these passages, his persona lamented that contemporaries did not appreciate the meta-­artistic properties of his works. Moreover, medieval schoolmasters did not focus on these metaliterary passages.14 They discussed Ovid’s works for reasons other than to explicate the symbolic dimension of his poetics. In educational curricula, Ovid’s works were adduced in lessons about Latin grammar and stylistics, ancient customs, myth, and literary composition.15 In late medieval accessus, commentators justified the reading of Ovid’s erotic writings by noting that literature was classified under the philosophical category of ethics. They typically stated that Ovid’s erotic works offered examples of behaviors that should be imitated and avoided.16 In discussing the ethics of his works, commentators added that Ovid may have composed the Remedia to correct his earlier writings about love, or at least interpretations of them.17 Such remarks imply that readers did not completely appreciate the metafictional nature of the poem. Indeed, Ovid himself emphasized that he was not rejecting or refining his earlier writings (e.g., Rem. 361–88).18 This is not to say that readers were ignorant of the symbolic import of the erotic in literature. The fact that writers often cast themselves as adept lovers implies that readers were sensitive to the metaliterary resonances of the erotic.

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Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that readerships did not appreciate in equal measure these aspects of Ovid’s elegies. Consequently, Boccaccio’s, or indeed any medieval author’s, imitations of Ovid’s programmatic statements risked confusing less informed readers. A second challenge for Boccaccio stemmed from contemporary ideas about elegy. Medieval writers had a broader conception of what was elegiac in comparison to antique views of the genre.19 They also defined the genre in terms that differed from those employed by Ovid and his contemporaries Propertius, Tibullus, and Catullus. Readers generally recognized that the (classical) genre dealt with eros. In his treatise on literary theory, Ars versificatoria (Ars vers.) (ca. 1157), Matthew of Vendôme personified elegiac poetry as a wanton, seductive girl. His depiction is inspired by Ovid’s female characterizations of the genre (Rem. 361–88 and Amores 3.1), and by personifications of Lady Philosophy in Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae and the Liberal Arts in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii:20

Quarta pharetratos Elegia cantat amores [citation of Rem. 379)],

favorali supercilio, oculo quasi vocativo, fronte expositiva petulantie, cuius labellula prodiga saporis ad oscula videntur suspirare; que ultima, procedens non ex dignitate sed potius ex inequalitate pedum, tamen in effectu iocunditatis stature claudicantis vindicat detrimentum, iuxta illud Ovidii: In pedibus vitium causa decoris erat [citation of Amores 3.1.10)].21 (Ars vers. 2.8)

The fourth [type of poetry], Elegy, sings of Cupid’s arrows

with lovely brow, an almost seductive eye, and an exposed brow of an impudent girl, whose lips seem to sigh for the lavish taste of kisses. She steps forth last not because she is unworthy, but rather because of the uneven nature of her feet. Still she transcends the default of her limping through the pleasing nature of her stature, as Ovid says:

The defect of her feet is the cause of her beauty.

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These remarks reveal that a sophisticated reader such as Matthew grasped the symbolic role of both the erotic and the body in Ovid’s poetics. In addition, writers sometimes classified elegy as a subcategory of bucolic poetry.22 In his Parisiana poetria (ca. 1231–35), John of Garland noted that the protagonists of both genres complained about lovers or discussed vulgar topics.23 This may explain why Boccaccio recalled Ovid in his eclogues. Beginning in the twelfth century in France, a type of genre termed “elegiac comedy” also flourished. Writings belonging to this genre were often composed in a dialogic or monologic form with elegiac distichs.24 They featured amorous intrigues, acts of seduction, and linguistic echoes of Ovid’s poems. Readers thus reflected on similarities between elegy and comedy, both of which often featured a low(er) style, plebian protagonists, vulgar matter, and the thematics of wretchedness.25 Furthermore, critics recognized that elegiac poems have a unique meter, a hex­ame­ter coupled with a pentameter (elegiac couplets). Matthew of Vendôme stated that elegy was a low yet beautiful genre because of inequalitate pedum (the uneven nature of [her] feet) (Ars vers. 2.8).26 At the same time, medieval readers often downplayed or obscured the vulgar or unchaste depictions of eros in elegiac texts. Writers such as Isidore of Seville attenuated the potentially controversial content of the genre by foregrounding its thematics of lamentation: Elegiacus autem dictus eo, quod modulatio eiusdem carminis conveniat miseris (The elegiac is so called because its mode is suited to those who are mourning) (Etymologiae 1.39.14). Didactic works occasionally highlighted the religious connotations of lamentation by deriving elegy etymologically from Eli, or God, and the Greek eleison, in Latin, miserere (“to feel pity,” “to have compassion”).27 In his Derivationes (Deriv.), Uguccione da Pisa (ca. 1130–1210) explained: Item ab Ely quod est Deus dicitur quoddam verbum grecum, scilicet eleyson, idest misereri, . . . . Et ab eleyson elegus-­a-­um, idest miser (Also from Ely, that is God, is derived the Greek word eleyson, namely, to feel pity. .  .  . And from eleyson, we get elegus-­a-­um, namely, wretched) (Deriv. E 30.15–16).28 Given the pervasiveness of lovesickness in the genre, writers specified that elegy featured the dolores amantium (woes of lovers) and the stilus miserorum (style of the miserable).29 Consequently, diverse texts that dealt with misfortune or featured woeful protagonists could be classified as elegiac. Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, Arrigo da Settimello’s Elegia de diversitate fortunae (1193), and Ovid’s Tristia were mentioned in

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discussions of elegy.30 Like Isidore before him, Dante omits any mention of the potentially vulgar nature of the genre. In the De vulgari eloquentia, he explains that elegiac writing features lamenting lovers and the lowest of linguistic registers (Dve 2.4.5–6). Therefore, in reflecting on elegy, nearly all readers recognized a defining trait of one type of classical elegy. They noted that elegy had been invented by the Greek poet Sappho, who wept for an unrequited love, and they mentioned that Ovid had experimented with the theme of lamentation, in his Heroides, Tristia, and Ex ponto.31 Finally, in medieval culture Ovid was synonymous with elegy, and medieval readers understood that writers such as Ovid, Tibullus, Propertius, and Catullus were part of a similar literary tradition.32 In his writings, Ovid himself had encouraged such an understanding of the genre by naming himself along with these peers (Ars 3.329–34; Trist. 2.427–70 and 4.10.51–55). Perhaps inspired by Ovid’s remarks, both Boccaccio and Petrarch discussed a canon of classical elegists. They mentioned a similar group of ancient love poets (Gen. 14.16.5–6; De rem. 1.69.38; Tr. Cup. 4.19–24).33 Therefore, various readers had potentially conflicting understandings of elegy in the Middle Ages. Still, there were major benefits to recalling passages of Ovid’s writings to influence perceptions of the Decame­ ron’s poetics. Ovid’s writings were in the hands of diverse publics. Readers ranging from the humanists to notaries and clerics would have had a general understanding of Ovid’s texts, recognized allusions, and probably remembered the context of a citation. Since Ovid’s writings were widely known, they were ideally suited to Boccaccio’s needs. All Boccaccio had to do was guide, or potentially correct, readers’ interpretations of texts that were already familiar. Given these circumstances, Boccaccio proved himself a sensitive and an informed reader both of Ovid and of classical elegy. In the Decameron’s overt metaliterary sections, Boccaccio recalled and imitated the self-­reflexive passages in Ovid’s works, and then guided interpretations of those passages.

A FEMALE GENRE

Boccaccio initially elucidated the poetics of his short stories by recalling the literary resonances of gender in premodern culture. In the opening sections of the Decameron, the first-­person narrator alerts readers to

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the symbolic dimension of gender in the novelle by associating them with women. Indeed, he addresses women, discusses the unique dispositions of women, and even dedicates the stories to women (Dec., Pr. 9–13).34 In drawing on perceptions of gender to define his poetics, Boccaccio was engaging commonplace ideas about gender and genre in both classical and medieval literary theory. In the Middle Ages, both languages and literary traditions were associated with specific genders. For example, medieval readers considered vernacular literature a feminine form of writing. It was thought that a male poet had invented vernacular writing because he wanted to address a woman who did not know Latin.35 Therefore, scholars have debated to what extent the dedications to women reflect the reading habits of contemporary women and to what extent they are purely symbolic. In the fourteenth century, women participated in diverse activities related to cultural production and consumption.36 However, scholarship on Boccaccio’s copying practices and readerships suggests that the dedication to women should be understood—in large part—in symbolic and metaphoric terms.37 Boccaccio often copied works like the vernacular Decameron in formats unsuitable for domestic (female) reading. It also appears that few fourteenth-­century women actually read his vernacular or Latin writings. The fact that gender has literary resonances does not, of course, mean that Boccaccio was unconcerned with actual women and female readerships. This chapter will explore how Boccaccio drew symbolically on gender to address perceptions of women in the fourteenth century. Boccaccio introduced readers to the female connotations of elegy in the Decameron by recalling explicit remarks about the genre in his own Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta. In the Decameron’s Proemio, the references to the Elegia serve two interrelated purposes. First, they guide perceptions of the Decameron by evoking a discussion of the properties typical of medieval elegy in a text titled Elegia. Second, the allusions to medieval ideas about elegy in the Elegia highlight the different, classicizing traits of elegy present in the Decameron. The opening line of the Decameron is modeled on the initial phrases of the Elegia:38 Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti. (Dec., Pr. 2) It is human to have compassion on those who are suffering.

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Suole a’ miseri crescere di dolersi vaghezza, quando di sé discernono o sentono compassione in alcuno. . . . Adunque, . . . , mi piace, . . . , narrando i casi miei, di farvi, s’io posso, pietose. (Elegia, Pr. 1) It often happens that those who are suffering desire more to lament, when they receive and get compassion from someone else. . . . Therefore, . . . , I would like, . . . , to tell you my story, and thereby make you full of pity if I can. Boccaccio’s introductory remarks recall that the virtue of compassion was occasionally associated with the genre. Uguccione da Pisa defined the etymology of elegy in relation to feeling pity and compassion for those suffering. Still, though evoking a concept obliquely associated with elegy, Boccaccio more directly underscored the import of the virtue in the genre. His remarks propose that his elegy overtly aims to inculcate feelings of love and charity in readers. Boccaccio also alluded to the first line of the Elegia to recall other traits of medieval elegy treated in the work’s Prologo.39 For example, Fiammetta contrasts the erotic nature of her narrative to Greek texts about fables and Latin writings about martial topics: “non troverrete favole greche ornate di molte bugie né troiane battaglie sozze per molto sangue, ma amorose, stimolate da molti disiri” (you will not find Greek fables decorated with many fictions, nor stories about bloody Trojan battles, but tales about love, stimulated by many desires) (Elegia, Pr. 3). Fiammetta also underscores the central importance of lamentation in her discourse when she discusses matters concerning content and style: “quindi a’ casi infelici, . . . io con ragione piango, con lagrimevole stilo seguirò com’io posso” (therefore, about examples of wretchedness, . . . I weep, in a tearful style to the extent that I can) (Elegia, Pr. 5). In the Decameron, Boccaccio notably does not emphasize these generic traits typically associated with (medieval) elegy. Still, the reference to the Elegia would have alerted readers to the properties discussed in detail by Fiammetta. After addressing the characteristics of medieval elegy, Boccaccio signals that elegy is gendered female. Boccaccio highlights that the presence of women is a defining feature of elegy by recalling a programmatic passage about gender in Ovid’s Heroides. Boccaccio repeats Ovid’s claim that women suffer the effects of love more than men do. In one of the last

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letters of the text, Hero discusses differences between men and women. She explains that women suffer the effects of love more than men do because they lack the pursuits of men, such as war and politics: urimur igne pari, sed sum tibi viribus impar: fortius ingenium suspicor esse viris. ut corpus, teneris ita mens infirma puellis–– deficiam, parvi temporis adde moram! Vos modo venando, modo rus geniale colendo ponitis in varia tempora longa mora. aut fora vos retinent aut unctae dona palaestrae, flectitis aut freno colla sequacis equi; nunc volucrem laqueo, nunc piscem ducitis hamo; diluitur posito serior hora mero. his mihi summotae, vel si minus acriter urar, quod faciam, superest praeter amare nihil. (Her. 19.5–16) We burn with equal fire, but I am weaker than you; men, they must have greater strength. Like the body, the mind is weak in tender girls––if the delay continues, I will die! You men can hunt, you can cultivate the earth, you pass the hours in various pursuits. Either the forum, or gifts of the oiled wrestling ring occupy you, or you can guide the horse with the reins; you hunt birds with the snare, fish with the hook; the late hour is dissolved in wine. But alas me so alone, though I burn but a little, what can I do, since I have nothing but love. Boccaccio recalls the passage of the Heroides when the narrator explains why he addresses the Decameron to women: elle sono molto men forti che gli uomini a sostenere [alcuna malinconia, noia, pensieri]; il che degli innamorati uomini non avviene, sí come noi possiamo apertamente vedere. Essi, se alcuna malinconia o gravezza di pensieri gli affligge, hanno molti modi da alleggiare o da passar quello, per ciò che a loro, volendo essi, non manca l’andare a torno, udire e veder molte cose, uccellare, cacciare, pescare, cavalcare, giucare o mercatare. (Dec., Pr. 11–12)

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women are less able than men to bear [these discomforts]; this does not happen to a man who is in love, as we can plainly see. If men are afflicted by melancholy or ponderous thoughts, they have many ways of alleviating or forgetting them: if they wish, they can take a walk and listen to or look at many different things; they can go hawking, hunting, or fishing; they can ride, gamble, or attend to business. Boccaccio-­narrator, like Ovid, writes to women because they do not have outlets for their desires or passions. In imitating Hero’s remarks, Boccaccio was not only evoking a classical precedent for addressing a female audience.40 He was also echoing a major generic commonplace of classical elegy. Ovid and elegiac poets privileged women as lovers to distinguish elegy from other genres. As epic and tragedy were associated with men and the bellicose, so elegy was associated with women and the erotic. In the Amores, Ovid denies Tragedy’s request that he write about men, and instead celebrates the tenerae . . . puellae (tender girls) of his elegiac Muse (Amores 3.1.25–27; cf. Her. 19.7). Ovid commonly signaled the genre of his texts by declaring that women are more prone than men to feel the effects of love (cf. Ars 3.28– 32 and 3.381–94). Therefore, Boccaccio evoked a commonplace of elegy to underscore the genre’s erotic feminine content. By symbolically dedicating the Decameron to women, Boccaccio was also guiding perceptions of the meta­literary dimension of gender in both his and Ovid’s works. Boccaccio repeated a second commonplace of elegy to define his role as an author. The elegiac poet often characterized himself as a pimp. On the one hand, he offered his puella to the gaze of the (male) reader; on the other hand, he provided women an outlet for their desires (e.g., Ovid, Amores 1.5.7–24; 3.1.43–61; 3.12; and Propertius, Elegiae 3.3.47–50).41 The Decameron’s subtitle, Galeotto (Go-­between), recalls the common characterization of the elegiac poet as both a helper of women and a pimp. The Decameron itself also functions as a go-­between for women who are confined to their rooms by male lovers, brothers, and relatives (Dec., Pr. 14). Scholars have typically considered the Decameron’s subtitle in light of Dante’s use of the term in Inferno 5, the canto dedicated to the lustful. In Inferno 5, Dante-­pilgrim encounters Francesca da Rimini, who recounts the origins of her adulterous affair with Paolo. Francesca explains that

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she and Paolo were reading a romance about Lancelot and Guinevere (Inf. 5.127–32). She continues that they were inspired to commit adultery by a passage in which the knight illicitly kisses the wife of King Arthur (Inf. 5.133–36). Francesca then explains that “Galeotto fu ’l libro e chi lo scrisse” (the book and the person who wrote it was their go-­between [Galeotto]) (Inf. 5.137).42 Long before Dante used the term negatively, elegiac poets characterized themselves as go-­betweens for positive reasons. Ovid and his literary peers described themselves as go-­betweens because they opened closed doors for lovesick women. They enabled lovers to enter women’s chambers, or they helped women escape from their confinements. Again in polemic with a personified Tragedy, Ovid defended his writings by noting that Elegy was a go-­between (Amores 3.1.44). He explained that his lover, Corinna, can flee her locked room assisted by the enticements of the elegiac poet, not by the typical shoe or buskin of tragic actors: quam tu non poteris duro reserare cothurno, / haec est blanditiis ianua laxa meis (you will not be able to pry the door with the hard buskin, but it opens to my charms) (Amores 3.1.45–46; cf. Ars 3.605–66).43 By recalling classical ideas about how elegiac writing might help women, Boccaccio was emphasizing the positive moral dimension of his erotic text. Far from damning female readers such as Francesca, Boccaccio, like elegiac poets before him, alleviates women’s “noia” (distress) (Dec., Pr. 11–12). Boccaccio as authorial go-­between shows compassion to (female) readers in need, in stark contrast to writers who might condemn women like Francesca to Hell.44 In evoking the literary resonances of gender, Boccaccio also demonstrated that the Decameron should be categorized first and foremost as an elegiac work. Boccaccio carefully arranged the order of the Pro­ emio to underscore the elegiac properties of the Decameron’s stories. Each of Boccaccio’s allusions to elegy, whether medieval or classical, appears in the opening lines of the Decameron. In foregrounding remarks about elegy, Boccaccio altered the content of the categories of the medieval accessus to introduce the stories with concepts related to genre.45 Boccaccio’s Proemio follows the order typical of an accessus by addressing titulus, nomen and intentio auctoris, materia and modus tractandi, utilitas, and cui parti philosophiae supponitur (title, name and intention of the author, the text’s matter and mode of treating, its utility, and the category of philosophy to which it belongs). After the title (Decameron: Galeotto), the

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narrator discusses author and author’s intention (Boccaccio, who compassionately helps women); subject matter/didactic procedure (one hundred short stories—fables, parables, and histories—about pleasant and harsh examples of love and about the effects of fortune); and finally his stories’ utility and their relationship to ethics: “le già dette donne, che queste leggeranno, parimente diletto delle sollazzevoli cose in quelle mostrate e utile consiglio potranno pigliare, in quanto potranno cognoscere quello che sia da fuggire e che sia similmente da seguitare” (in reading these, the ladies just mentioned will, perhaps, derive from the delightful things that happen in these tales both pleasure and useful counsel, inasmuch as they will recognize what should be avoided and what should be sought after) (Dec., Pr. 13–14). Boccaccio alluded to classical elegiac commonplaces in the title (Galeotto) and author (Heroides) sections, which only occasionally addressed issues related to genre. Boccaccio arranged the accessus so that the allusions to elegy would precede and frame discussions of the Decameron’s other generic categories. The narrator subsequently explains that the Decameron comprises one hundred novelle, “o favole o parabole o istorie” (either fables, or parables, or histories) (Dec., Pr. 13). Boccaccio thereby introduced the properties of the Decameron by reference to various types of genres.46 The order of allusions in the accessus also underscores the different properties of each of Boccaccio’s elegiac texts. In fact, the allusions to the Elegia and Ovid’s poems highlight how Boccaccio was altering and expanding the medieval genre. In the Elegia, the protagonist was a woman who addressed female readers. Fiammetta complains about her former lover and prays that God might quell her feelings (Elegia, Pr. 4). In the Decameron, the male narrator addresses women. He explains that he too initially suffered from heartsickness, but hastens to add that now he is cured (Dec., Pr. 6). The differences between the two texts signal that neither the theme of lovesickness nor female narrators are determinate properties of elegy. The Decameron-­narrator further deemphasizes the importance of lamentation in elegy by noting that he has recovered from his heartbreak. The Proemio demonstrates that the genre of elegy does not only encompass tales about lovesickness, but that it also features fables, parables, and histories about various types of love (Dec., Pr. 14). The opening remarks also suggest that elegiac authors do not, as Fiammetta did, only recount tear-­inducing stories, but that they also tell delightful

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and instructive narratives (Dec., Pr. 14). Boccaccio was thus highlighting the properties of medieval elegy that were familiar to readers to underscore how he was modulating the genre so that it resembled its classical antecedent. Moreover, by expanding the properties of elegy in this way, Boccaccio was imitating the authorial career of Ovid himself. The Roman poet too had first experimented with the thematics of lamentation in the Heroides, and then went on to write other types of erotic elegies. Boccaccio concludes his introduction to the Decameron’s genre by referring to one property typical of comedy, namely, its standard thematic trajectory from wretchedness to happiness.47 In the “Introduction” to Day 1, Boccaccio recalls this determinate property of comedy when the narrator notes that the Decameron will begin sadly and end happily (Dec. 1, Intr. 2 and 6). The thematics of comedy are discussed as part of a defense about why the Decameron must begin with a gruesome description of the plague (Dec. 1, Intr. 2–7). These remarks also distinguish the Decameron from one comedy in particular, Dante’s Comedy. Boccaccio evokes Dante’s poem when the narrator describes the crisis caused by the plague, which recalls Dante-­pilgrim’s crisis in Inferno 1.48 Each author-­ character is thirty-­five years old when their respective crises occur. The pilgrim stumbled into a wood at the proverbial midpoint of a human’s life, which was conventionally considered to last seventy years (Inf. 1.1– 3; and cf. Ps. 89:10). The Decameron-­narrator announces that the brigata met in 1348 during a social crisis caused by the plague, which would have occurred at the midpoint of Boccaccio-­author’s own life, thirty-­five years after his birth (Dec. 1, Intr. 8). (Boccaccio was born in 1313.) The narrator compares the Decameron’s sad exordium to a “montagna aspra e erta” (bitter and steep mountain) that must be ascended, and its happy conclusion to a beautiful plain (Dec. 1, Intr. 4). The phrases recall the “selva . . . aspra” (bitter wood) that frightens the pilgrim, the “dilettoso monte” (delightful mountain) that he could not climb, and Mount Purgatory more generally (Inf. 1.5 and 77). Boccaccio’s echoes of the Comedy serve several ideological purposes.49 In relation to symbolism, the allusions underscore the particularly carnal nature of the Decameron’s poetics. Boccaccio helps readers appreciate his poetics by repeatedly drawing attention to the body. The narrator refers to his birth and the (fictitious) date of the Decameron by calculating from the Incarnation, the moment when Christ assumed a human

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body: “Dico adunque che già erano gli anni della fruttifera incarnazione del Figliuolo di Dio al numero pervenuti di milletrecentoqua­ran­totto, quando nella egregia città di Fiorenza, . . . , pervenne la mortifera pestilenza” (Let me say then that thirteen hundred and forty-­eight years had already passed after the fruitful Incarnation of the Son of God when into the distinguished city of Florence .  .  . there came a deadly pestilence) (Dec. 1, Intr. 8). The narrator adds that “corpi superiori” (superior bodies) may have brought the plague to Florence (Dec. 1, Intr. 8). He also describes how the plague mutilates every part of the human body, from the nose to the genitals, from the arms to the legs (Dec. 1, Intr. 9–18). In addition to the physical, the social effects of the plague are described, but again they are illustrated by reference to the body. The plague made family members abandon each other and therefore caused a scandalous situation. Women, if constrained by necessity, would “ogni parte del corpo aprire” (open every part of the body) to male servants (Dec. 1, Intr. 29). The narrator concludes that the bodies of the dead were not properly buried in Christian cemeteries, which were so full that bodies were piled upon bodies in ditches (Dec. 1, Intr. 42). Readers would probably have appreciated the metaliterary importance of bodies in the “Introduction” because bodies covered by the sores of the plague would have repeatedly evoked the image of a manuscript, white or yellowing parchment covered with black ink. In addition, Boccaccio emphasizes the historicity of his carnal  poetics—their relationship to and impact on history—by rewriting the opening of the Comedy. Though the pilgrim’s and narrator’s crises are similar, how they are depicted differs significantly. Both the Comedy and Decame­ron begin with descriptions of sin. In his reading of Inferno 1, Boccaccio explains that the pilgrim experienced a spiritual or an intellectual crisis. He notes that Dante had submitted his reason to the appetites and was in danger of eternal damnation (Espos. 1.2.33 and 36). In the Decame­ ron, the narrator hypothesizes that God may have sent the plague to correct mankind’s sinfulness (Dec. 1, Intr. 8). He then adds that many were engaging in immoral and damnable actions (Dec. 1, Intr. 19–31). Dante-­ pilgrim also finds himself in an oneiric landscape, and Boccaccio dedi­ cated many lines to an allegorical interpretation of Dante’s sleepiness (Inf. 1.1–63; Espos. 1.2.29–46). The pilgrim’s crisis occurs in a highly symbolic landscape of woods, mountains, sun, and beasts. Boccaccio instead

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describes a crisis in contemporary Florence, and he relies primarily on the body as a symbol. Therefore, Boccaccio’s rewriting of Inferno 1 eliminates the spiritual and otherworldly poetics of the opening sections of the first canto of the Comedy. The pilgrim travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; the brigata travels through the Tuscan countryside. Whereas the pilgrim crosses into the afterlife, the narrator refers to the moment when Christ was incarnate on earth. Both authors explore the themes of sin and redemption. However, Boccaccio appears to suggest that he does so with a more carnal poetics—more fully grounded in the present world and contemporary history. Indeed, the title Decameron highlights that the stories signify in a manner resembling how God signifies in physical creation and history.50 The title Decameron recalls Hexameron, a genre of commentary on the allegorical meanings of God’s “writing” in the six days of creation. The title foreshadows both the allegorical resonances of the body and the fact that history inspires the stories of the Decameron. For medieval Christians, the body was emblematic of signifying truth in and through history in the wake of the Incarnation. Finally, the carnal symbolism of the Proemio and “Introduction” to Day 1 is informed by contemporary ideas about how bodily images affect spiritual contemplation. These sections draw on a nexus of concepts related to what has been termed “affective piety.”51 Umbrian mendicants and Tuscan contemplatives were inspired by the ideas of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Francis of Assisi (1181/2–1226), and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221–74) about the psychosomatic impact of carnal images. Franciscan concepts fostered the notion that meditation on scenes from Christ’s life and passion (“suffering”) could engender affective responses of love and compassion (“suffering with”). For his part, Francis of Assisi embodied such contemplative ideas by reflecting on the spiritual import of lepers’ bodies and by receiving the stigmata.52 The sores of a leper prompted Francis to envision Christ’s body in the Passion, and he immediately felt compassion.53 Indeed, the disease of leprosy and the disfigured body resulting from it played a key role in Francis’s life (it inspired his conversion), the order he founded, and his legacy.54 Female mystics and contemplative writers also had visions of Christ with highly erotic and carnal elements.55 Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) experienced ecstasy while mediating on scenes of Christ’s passion, and she too directly engaged the bodies of lepers.56 Catherine of Siena’s (1347–80) meditation

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on Christ’s suffering body inspired her to characterize his body as a bridge between the divine and human, the celestial and earthly realms.57 Like other female contemplatives, these women felt as though they had erotically embraced Christ, thus becoming his brides (sponsae Christi) in mystical marriages. These pietistic movements were bound up with changes in art and literature in the late medieval period. They inspired novel modes of artistically figuring and emotively responding to the body. Franciscan thought influenced artists such as Giotto (1266/7–1337), who emphasized the humility, humanity, and embodiment of Christ.58 Giotto depicted scenes of all periods of Christ’s life, from his nativity and circumcision to his Passion, in the Arena chapel in Padua (ca. 1301–5; also called the Scrovegni Chapel after its patron Enrico degli Scrovegni).59 Artists such as Giotto also stopped depicting the so-­called Christus triumphans, or Christ Triumphant on the cross, and instead represented the humanizing Christus patiens, or Christ Suffering during the crucifixion.60 Moreover, affective and contemplative concepts influenced both vernacular and Latin writings. Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) wrote vernacular religious lyrics, or lauds, about Christ’s passion and the Madonna’s emotional pain.61 For example, his ballad Donna de Paradiso recounts a dialogue between Mary and Jesus about the final moments of his physical and emotional suffering.62 The pseudo-­Bonaventurean Meditationes vitae Christi (ca. 1305), a popular Tuscan text addressed to the Sisters of the Poor Clares, encouraged readers to form imaginarias representaciones (imaginary representations) in their souls of Christ’s life and bodily suffering.63 As in the Latin version, so in Tuscan vernacular versions readers are asked to engage intimately with the scenes described. The narrator requests that one “attendi” (pay attention to), “guarda” (look at), “poni ben mente” (concentrate on), and “imagina” (imagine) what is being discussed.64 Given that women engaged in striking somatic expressions of piety and were the audience for various devotional writings, modern scholars have debated whether affective contemplation was particularly the purview of women. They have also pondered this matter because women were often associated with the carnal and concupiscible in medieval culture. Several scholars have argued that women were considered to possess a unique capacity to respond affectively to Christ’s bodily suffering with compassion.65 Other scholars have instead noted that masculine and feminine spiritual notions were commonly attributed to both genders.66

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Boccaccio may have encountered these theological and religious currents at various moments in his life. He traveled extensively near or in Umbria and throughout Tuscany.67 In addition, he could have learned about affective notions in Naples, where King Robert of Anjou patronized the Franciscans.68 Moreover, Boccaccio appears to have reflected on Dante’s understanding of similar Franciscan concepts in the Amorosa visione.69 Boccaccio depicted a mystical marriage with more overt erotic elements in comparison to Aquinas’s narrative about Francis’s relationship with Poverty (Par. 11.43–81). Unlike Francis and Poverty, Boccaccio-­dreamer and Fiammetta physically embrace and join hands in a mystical marriage (AV 44.79–85, 45.10–27, and 46.22–42). After spending a decade in Tuscany, Boccaccio also seems to have appreciated the affective value of carnal images in preaching (ars praedicandi). (Toward the end of the 1350s he was sufficiently versed in pastoral matters that Pope Innocent VI officially sanctioned him a cleric on November 2, 1360.) In the Decameron (ca. 1348–60), Frate Cipolla of Certaldo (mis)uses affective and homiletic notions to stimulate the financial generosity of his parochial audience. He motivates his ignorant public to give money by preaching about the alimentary delights of Bengodi, the finger of the Holy Spirit, a tuft of the seraph that appeared to St. Francis, the pen of Archangel Gabriel, and the coals on which San Lorenzo was roasted (Dec. 6.10.37–52). Boccaccio was also familiar with Giotto’s reputation as a painter who specialized in depictions of nature and the body. In the Amorosa visione, Giotto was celebrated as painter from whom Natura “occultò” (hid) nothing (AV 4.13–18). In the Decameron, Giotto is also associated with depictions of the human form, imperfect and disfigured as opposed to idealized and perfect. While traveling across Tuscany, Giotto’s companion Forese mocks his ugly appearance by noting that no one would, upon seeing Giotto, guess he was the greatest painter in the world (Dec. 6.5.11–14). Finally, many of these concepts were commonplaces in central Italy, but Boccaccio may have copied passages of an affective contemplative text. In his notebooks (Miscellanea Laurenziana; BML, 33.31, ca. 1338–48), Boccaccio apparently recorded sententiae from the pseudo-­Bernardian De passione Christi (late twelfth century).70 In the opening passages of the Decameron, Boccaccio drew on contemplative and literary ideas about the affects. The narrator evinces the ethical goal of devotional writing by asserting that readers should have compassion on the “afflitti” (afflicted) (Dec., Pr. 2). His extended account

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of the plague then encourages readers to imagine the suffering body and respond to it compassionately. By beginning the text with descriptions of deformed bodies, Boccaccio may have been inspired by Franciscan concepts. Franciscan writings contained detailed remarks about Christ’s suffering body, and vitae of Francis featured narratives about the figure of the leper. In fact, the biographies began with Francis’s encounter with the diseased body because it had supposedly inspired the saint’s conversion. The narrator also prefaces these descriptions by likening the Decameron to a suffering human body. The narrator explains that, because the text starts with a description of the plague, it “porta nella sua fronte” (carries on its front) (Dec. 1, Intr. 2)—as though the text had a brow—the hor­ rible events at Florence. The reference to the Incarnation that precedes the extended descriptions also evinces Jesus’s time in a human body, and by extension his suffering. In the “Conclusion,” Boccaccio similarly recalls in direct terms ideas related to medieval pietistic currents. In particular, he describes types of art that were inspired by affective notions. The narrator discusses painters who depict Jesus as an embodied man on the cross in the Christus patiens (Dec., Conc. 6). The references to Christ’s body, which frame the text, suggest that the Decameron’s elegiac stories signify in a manner that approximates how God embodied meaning. The allusions also imply that the erotic novelle can affect change (nearly or somewhat) as effectively as God’s carnal “poetics” do. In addition, the evocation of affective concepts highlights that the Decameron, like devotional texts, draws on the body to arouse readers emotionally. Finally, Boccaccio proposed the notion that women are particularly adept at this kind of somatic contemplation. His engagement with gender in the Decameron was inspired by the female resonances of the vernacular and the feminine connotations of elegy. However, it was also informed by ideas about women’s emotiveness in medieval culture. In accord with these notions, the narrator explains that the amatory stories are dedicated to women because they are more affected by erotic suffering than men are (Dec., Pr. 9–12). He then emphasizes on two occasions that women will be profoundly moved by his account of bodily pain because “naturalmente tutte [sono] pietose” (they [are] naturally full of compassion) (Dec. 1, Intr. 2, and cf. 32–35). Finally, the narrator figures the Decameron as a woman’s body when noting the novelle will not trick any readers (Dec., Conc. 19). He adds that “tutte nella fronte portan segnato quello che esse dentro dal loro seno nascoso tengono” (they all carry

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marked on their brow that which they keep hidden inside their breast) (Dec., Conc. 19). By gendering his text female, Boccaccio foregrounded the exceptional affective potential of the elegiac Decameron. He suggests that, as women are moved by love and the body to express compassion, so female readers will be deeply affected by his erotic literary corpus. More specifically, he thus intimates that men, the primary readers of the Deca­me­ron, should read like the female dedicatees of the Proemio. Boccaccio proposes that “female-­disposed” readers, who meditate on the plague-­ridden or sexualized body, will be supremely capable of helping others. They will assist their fellow citizens by having pity on those suffering, just as the author attempts to do by writing the Decameron. By contrast, the Florentines, who are repelled by images of diseased or erotic bodies, are engaging in un-­Christian, hateful, and perverse types of behavior. These individuals are not aroused in a proper, feminine manner to assist those suffering from illness or heartbreak. Therefore, the opening passages of the Decameron reveal that Boccaccio endeavored to address many of the same theological issues as Dante did. However, inspired by Franciscan, affective, and gendered notions, he focused more explicitly on their relevance for humankind’s time in a body. Boccaccio thereby highlighted not only the orthodoxy of the erotic Decameron but also the ethical and social utility of his text.

A LOW G E N R E

In the “Introduction” to Day IV, the narrator again discusses metaliterary issues in the first person. He continues to elucidate the short stories’ properties by addressing the relationship between register and content (convenientia in medieval literary theory). The narrator highlights this aspect of the Decameron through a reference to a passage of the Remedia amoris that addresses the same topic. Like the Ovidian persona, Boccaccio interrupts his text to defend his writings from criticism. The narrator implies that he has been attacked because critics have misunderstood the Deca­ me­ron’s genre: estimava io che lo ’mpetuoso vento e ardente della ’nvidia non dovesse percuotere se non l’alte torri o le piú levate cime degli

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alberi: ma io mi truovo della mia estimazione ingannato. Per ciò che, fuggendo io e sempre essendomi di fuggire ingegnato il fiero impeto di questo rabbioso spirito, non solamente pe’ piani ma ancora per le profondissime valli mi sono ingegnato d’andare; il che assai manifesto può apparire a chi le presenti novellette riguarda, le quali non solamente in fiorentin volgare e in prosa scritte per me sono e senza titolo, ma ancora in istilo umilissimo e rimesso quanto il piú si possono. Né per tutto ciò l’essere da cotal vento fieramente scrollato, anzi presso che diradicato e tutto da’ morsi della ’nvidia esser lacerato, non ho potuto cessare. (Dec. 4, Intr. 2–4) I used to think that the impetuous and fiery wind of envy would only strike the high towers and the most highest of peaks of the trees, but I find I was very much mistaken in my judgment. I flee and have always striven to flee the fiery blast of this angry gale, by trying to go about things quietly and unobtrusively not only through the plains but also though the deepest valleys. This will be clear to anyone who reads these short stories that I have written, without a title, in Florentine vernacular prose, and composed in the most humble and lowest style possible; yet for all of this, I have not been able to avoid the terrible buffeting of such a wind that has almost uprooted me, and I have nearly been torn to pieces by the fangs of envy. In the Remedia, Ovid had also declared that envy strikes what is high, and noted that several readers are tearing his poems: nuper enim nostros quidam carpsere libellos, quorum censura Musa proterva mea est. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . summa petit livor: perflant altissima venti, summa petunt dextra fulmina missa Iovis. at tu, quicumque es, quem nostra licentia laedit, si sapis, ad numeros exige quidque suos. fortia Maeonio gaudent pede bella referri: deliciis illic quis locus esse potest?

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grande sonant tragici: tragicos decet ira cothurnos; usibus e mediis soccus habendus erit. liber in adversos hostes stringatur iambus, seu celer, extremum seu trahat ille pedem. blanda pharetratos Elegia cantet Amores et levis arbitrio ludat amica suo. (Rem. 361–80) Recently some have torn my books, and criticized my Muse as impudent. . . . Envy attacks the heights: its winds hit the peaks, the bolts launched by Jove hit the heights. But you, whoever you are, harmed by my license, if you are wise, know that everything has its rules. Bloody wars are narrated in the Maeonian meter: What place can that have for the allures of love? Tragedy has a grand style: ire has the tragic buskin; the comic slipper sports a medium style and tone. The iambus is free to attack the enemy camp, either quick, or dragging the last foot. Let suave Elegy sing of Cupid’s arrows, and play the fickle mistress if she so wants. Ovid rejoins that envy has attacked his work unfairly. His critics do not understand that his form and content accord. He clarifies that epic deals with military subjects; tragedy has a grand or high style and concerns anger; comedy has a middle style and tone; and iambic poetry concerns invective. He notes that instead elegy involves love and seduction and features a levis (light) or fickle register. Ovid then concludes that hactenus invidiae respondimus (I have responded to envy) (Rem. 397). Boccaccio recalls and imitates Ovid not only to signal the low register of his short stories, but also to define that register as typical of elegy. Ovid highlighted the lowness of elegy implicitly, by contrasting the genre to high tragedy and epic and middle comedy. Instead, Boccaccio explicitly declares the low nature of his novelle. The narrator himself goes low in the valleys, and the short stories are composed in the “umilissimo” (most humble) register possible (Dec. 4, Intr. 3). Boccaccio was also innovative in modifying Ovid’s discussion of style for his own purposes. Boccaccio imitates a passage that does not overtly characterize elegy’s register as low. Ovid would at times explain that tragedy was composed gravibus verbis (with heavy words) and treated sublimia (sublime matters) (Amores

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3.1.35 and 39).71 However, he did not state that elegy was written in a low style or that it exclusively dealt with humble phenomena. He employed the metaphoric notions of levis (light) and tener (tender) to describe his poems’ properties and content (Amores 3.1.35–42; and Rem. 380).72 Boccaccio further draws out the spatial dimension of register inherent in the Remedia by evoking the concept of envy. For Ovid, the notions of envy and hatred have metaliterary, and in particular hermeneutic, connotations. Invidia (Envy) does not understand, etymologically “glares askance at,” the properties of Ovid’s writings. In classical Latin, invidere meant to “look against,” especially in a hostile or an aggressive manner.73 In the Metamorphoses, Ovid personifies envy as a goddess who eats vipers and feels displeasure at others’ successes (Metam. 2.760–82). He describes her as possessing a shriveled body, nusquam recta acies (never straight sight), decaying teeth, a breast green with bile, and a venomous tongue (Metam. 2.775–82). When expositing the canto of the suicides in the Inferno, Boccaccio quotes Ovid’s description of envy and interprets her hideous and misshapen body (Espos. 13.1.46–53). For example, he states that she “in parte alcuna non guarda diritto” (never looks directly) (Espos. 13.1.52). He also notes—crucially—that “il giudicio dello ’nvidioso essere perverso e contro ad ogni ragione e dirittura” (the judgment of the envious person is perverse and against all reason and correctness) (Espos. 13.1.52).74 Moreover, the Roman poet explains that envy, hatred, and anger are the purview of high tragedy and epic, thereby further differentiating the amatory content of his elegies. In imitation of Ovid, Boccaccio adopted a critical vocabulary with spatial connotations. His echoes of the Remedia highlight that hatred similarly has hermeneutic resonances in the Decameron. The narrator declares that Envy has not understood his writings, and that the novelle must “go low” stylistically to escape Envy’s lofty critique. Boccaccio was thus repeating another elegiac cliché to classify the Decameron’s register. Ovid often used envy as a critical term.75 Boccaccio continues to emphasize that his prose stories and Ovid’s poems have similar stylistic features by having the narrator announce that the Decameron is a text “senza titolo” (without a title) (Dec. 4, Intr. 3). Medieval readers also thought Ovid’s Amores was a Liber sine titulo (Book without a Title). In his biography of Ovid, Boccaccio relates that some call the poem Amores because it concerns Ovid’s erotic relationship with

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Corinna: “non parla che di suoi inamoramenti e di sue lascivie” (it speaks only of his love affairs and erotic exploits) (Espos. 4.1.119). Others, Boccaccio adds, refer to the poem as Sine titulo because the work does not feature a continuous narrative but a series of discrete episodes: “puossi dire similemente Sine titulo, per ciò che d’alcuna materia continuata, dalla quale si possa intitolare, favella, ma alquanti versi d’una e alquanti d’un’altra, e così possiam dir di pezi, dicendo, procede” (it can also be called Sine titulo, because it does not speak of one continuous topic, from which one could name the work, but some verses speak of one topic and others of another, and thus we can say that it presents a series of indi­ vidual narratives) (Espos. 4.1.119). By invoking the Ovidian title, Boccaccio recalled an authoritative model for his individual short stories, similarly connected by erotic themes.76 In addition, the Decameron’s missing title draws on another Ovidian elegiac commonplace. Ovid regularly noted that his elegiac poems, such as the Tristia and Ars amatoria, do not have titles (Tristia 1.1.61 and 109–116).77 Therefore, Boccaccio’s reference alerted readers to similarities of style and content in the Remedia, Amores, Ars, Tristia, and Decameron. After treating issues of register, Boccaccio addressed a second low aspect of his elegiac poetics. He demonstrates that elegiac texts, including his and Ovid’s, use the body for symbolic purposes. Boccaccio reveals the carnal nature of the Decameron’s poetics by having the narrator recount a short story, or a “leggiera risposta” (light response), to his critics (Dec. 4, Intr. 9). Boccaccio called the short story light perhaps to signal that his and Ovid’s ideas about lightness were connected to the notion of lowness. There is nothing light in Boccaccio’s narrative, but many things are conceptually low. Filippo Balducci tries to shield his son from everything low by making him live up high on a mountain. After his wife died, Balducci resolved to dedicate his life to God, so he took his son to live on Mount Asinaio. Asinaio was the name of a spiritual retreat to the north of Florence, but the word also means “shepherd of donkeys.”78 While living up away from the city, Balducci did not tell his son about or let him see “alcuna temporal cosa” (any earthly thing) (Dec. 4, Intr. 15). Eventually necessity prompts Balducci and his son to descend to Florence, where the latter marveled at a group of young women.79 When his son asks what they are, Balducci calls them goslings to avoid arousing his son’s “concupiscibile appetito” (concupiscible appetite) (Dec. 4, Intr. 23). His son

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responds that he wants a gosling because to him they are more beautiful than even the artistic “agnoli dipinti” (depicted angels) (Dec. 4, Intr. 28). In reply, Balducci says that his son cannot have one because he does not know “donde elle s’imbeccano” (how they are fed) (Dec. 4, Intr. 28–29). Scholars have often interpreted Boccaccio’s short story as a commentary on humanity’s erotic impulses. Many argue that the brief narrative reveals that humans’ natural yearnings cannot be repressed, whereas others observe that the story shows that our desires must be controlled.80 If, however, the ethical and the poetic are considered together, as they were in the medieval period, it would seem that both concern the dangers related to ignoring the body. In terms of ethics, Balducci cannot prevent his son from feeling erotic desires or enjoying his corporeality. Upon entering Florence, his son immediately becomes curious about and delighted by low things, such as women. In terms of poetics, Balducci uses metaphoric language, as a poet might do, to try to repress his son’s bodily and erotic desires. Boccaccio draws out the narrative’s relevance for poetics through one change he made to the popular medieval story. Whereas in most versions a father tells his son that the women are devils, Boccaccio, in imitation of Odo of Cheriton (ca. 1185–1247), has Balducci call them “papere” (goslings).81 The change introduces a metaphoric dimension to the story. By calling women goslings, Balducci unsuccessfully tries to use language and metaphor to shield his son from carnal and erotic experiences.82 Boccaccio’s narrative implies that neither an ethics nor a poetics can be effective if disconnected from the body, or metaphorically imposed from on high. In contrast to Balducci, the narrator acknowledges and respects the human body, especially women’s physical presence. Boccaccio highlights his appreciation of the female form by declaring that he enjoys women’s carnality in various ways: io apertissimamente confesso, cioè che voi mi piacete e che io m’ingegno di piacere a voi: e domandogli se di questo essi [alquanti de’ miei riprensori] si maravigliano, riguardando, lasciamo stare gli aver conosciuti gli amorosi basciari e i piacevoli abbracciari e i congiugnimenti dilettevoli che di voi, dolcissime donne, sovente si prendono, ma solamente a aver veduto e veder continuamente gli

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ornati costumi e la vaga bellezza e l’ornata leggiadra e oltre a ciò la vostra donnesca onestà. (Dec. 4, Intr. 31) I openly confess, that is, that you do please me and I do try to please you. But why is this so surprising to them [some of my critics]? Putting aside the delights of having known your amorous kisses, your pleasurable embraces, and the delicious couplings that one so often enjoys with you, sweet ladies, let us consider merely the pleasure of seeing you constantly: your elegant garments, your enchanting beauty, and the charm with which you adorn yourselves (not to mention your feminine decorum). The narrator declares that he, like Balducci’s son, feels aroused when he sees feminine beauty and grace (Dec. 4, Intr. 31). Boccaccio thereby shows that the female body has a symbolic and metaliterary dimension in the Decameron, that women’s bodies represent meaning. Boccaccio foregrounds the semiotic valences of the body in his text by repeating Ovid’s concept of envy as a literary critical term: “Riprenderannomi, morderannomi, lacererannomi costoro se io, il corpo del quale il cielo produsse tutto atto a amarvi . . . , se voi mi piacete o se io di piacervi m’ingegno” (Will my critics blame me, bite me, and tear me apart if I, whose body heaven made most ready to love you with . . . , for trying to please you and for the fact that you delight me) (Dec. 4, Intr. 32). Boccaccio’s citation draws on Ovid’s concept of hating the literary text, but the narrator uses it in reference to his own body. Whereas Ovid’s critics hated his poems, so Boccaccio’s critics physically lacerate him. As in his previous writings, Boccaccio thus underscores that the human corpus symbolizes the literary text. By announcing that his critics are tearing his body, the narrator means that they are shredding the Decameron. Boccaccio then specifies that he also utilizes the erotic (body) for symbolic purposes. Boccaccio echoes and modifies yet another elegiac commonplace to draw out the symbolic dimension of the erotic in his text. The narrator informs his critics that real women inspire him, not the Muses. He adds that neither he nor anyone can stay “con le Muse in Parnaso” (with the Muses on Parnassus) (Dec. 4, Intr. 35). Women

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caused him to write a thousand lines, the Muses none: “le donne già mi fur cagione di comporre mille versi, dove le Muse mai non mi furono di farne alcun cagione” (ladies have already been the reasons for my composing thousands of verses, while the Muses were in no way the cause of my writing them) (Dec. 4., Intr. 35). Ovid too had begun the Ars by declaring that Love rather than the Muses inspired him: nec mihi sunt visae Clio Cliusque sorores (Neither Clio nor her sisters the Muses appeared to me) (Ars. 1.27). While responding to envy in the Remedia, Ovid also explained that his art consists both of lascivious love and of Thais the whore, but not of chaste women: Thais in arte mea est: lascivia libera nostra est; nil mihi cum vitta; Thais in arte mea est. (Rem. 385–86) Thais is in my art: wantonness liberated is my subject; not the chaste matron; Thais is in my art. By echoing Ovid, Boccaccio again sheds light on the symbolic dimension of his poetics.83 Ovid had repeatedly and systematically signified by reference to the real erotic: his poetics or art use the erotic metaphorically and symbolically (Ars amatoria). In his poems, the act of love and erotic bodies are symbols for the artistic process, and remarks about art in turn concern amatory relationships. The allusion to Ovid suggests that Boccaccio’s poetics also draw on the eroticism of real women, just as the elegist’s art relies upon the real erotic. In the “Introduction” to Day 4, Boccaccio also contrasted his elegiac-­ inspired views to what he characterized as Dante’s comedic ideas about literature. Boccaccio signaled that he was reflecting on the Comedy by explicitly naming his fellow Florentine. The narrator protests that critics are wrong to say that he is too old to love because Guido Cavalcanti, Dante, and Cino da Pistoia also loved women in their later years (Dec. 4, Intr. 33). Boccaccio also alluded to the Comedy earlier in the “Introduction” to Day 4 by recalling Dante’s discussions of the pedagogical role of poetry.84 The opening phrases of the authorial defense recall Paradiso 17, in particular Cacciaguida’s command that Dante teach the world:

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Questo tuo grido farà come vento, che le più alte cime più percuote; e ciò non fa d’onor poco argomento. (Par. 17.133–35; emphasis added) This your cry will be like a wind that strikes most the highest of peaks; and this is no small claim to honor. Cacciaguida continues that the pilgrim has been shown Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven because his teachings will be inefficacious unless he reveals “la . . . radice incognita e ascosa” (the . . . unknown and hidden root) of things (Par. 17.140–41). Boccaccio also evokes Paradiso 17 by having the narrator announce that he tried to avoid the winds of envy that strike the heights: “estimava io che lo ’mpetuoso vento e ardente della ’nvidia non dovesse percuotere se non l’alte torri e le piú levate cime” (I used to think that the impetuous and fiery wind of envy would only strike the high towers and the most highest of peaks) (Dec. 4, Intr. 2; emphasis added). In addition, the general theme of Balducci’s story recalls a passage of Purgatorio 26, in which the pilgrim meets Guido Guinizzelli: “Non altrimenti stupido si turba / lo montanaro, e rimirando ammuta, / quando rozzo e salvatico s’inurba” (Not otherwise is the mountain peasant struck with awe and troubled, falling silent as he gazes, when, crude and rustic, he enters the city) (Purg. 26.67–69).85 As the stilnovo poet stares dumbfounded at the embodied pilgrim, so Boccaccio’s young hermit marvels at a city and females never seen before. Finally, Boccaccio’s definition of the Deca­me­ ron’s style as “umilissimo e rimesso” (most humble and modest) recalls a common contemporary definition of the Comedy’s register. For example, the author of the “Epistle to Can Grande” similarly defines the poem’s modus loquendi, or “manner of speaking,” as remissus . . . et humilis (modest . . . and humble) (ECG §10).86 Boccaccio clarifies why he recalls Dante by associating the author of the Comedy with Filippo Balducci.87 Boccaccio even connects the two figures by altering the medieval story that inspired his narrative.88 In many versions of the story, a father learns that his son will go blind should he see the sun. The father then hides the child in a cave to avoid the tragic result. In another version, a father fears that should his son experience

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pain he would become Christian. The father then confines him to a luxurious room of a palace, so that his child might not suffer and then convert to Christianity. In Boccaccio’s version, Balducci instead withdraws to the top of a mountain with his son after his wife dies. The additions of a mountain and a deceased spouse/lover to the story recall Dante’s ascent up Mount Purgatory after Beatrice died. Many of Boccaccio’s allusions to the Comedy also prompt readers to remember the vertical dimension of Dante’s travels. The references evoke the pilgrim’s travels specifically up Mount Purgatory and in Paradise, thus further associating Dante’s ascent with Balducci’s. In reflecting on Dante’s celestial travels, Boccaccio was also engaging in a dialogue with Petrarch. Petrarch himself was considering the implications of Dante’s voyage at about the same time as Boccaccio was composing the Decameron.89 The fact that the dates of Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s Dantean works are similar suggests that the two writers were probably exchanging ideas. Boccaccio also expressed thoughts about Dante several years before writing the Decameron, in the Ameto and Amorosa visione (1341 and 1342–43). Petrarch expressed views about Dante in a lyric poem composed in 1349 following the death of his friend and fellow poet Sennuccio del Bene (1275–1349): “Sennuccio mio, benché doglioso et solo” (RVF 287). He continued to reflect on Dante and the Comedy both in the epic Triumphi, which was begun sometime around 1351–52, and in Familiares 21.15, addressed to Boccaccio (ca. 1359). Boccaccio associates Balducci with Dante to highlight differences between his elegiac Decameron and the epic Comedy. By associating Dante’s ascent with Balducci’s, Boccaccio questioned how the depiction of a celestial, transcendent experience might morally and spiritually affect readers. The implication is that the celestial portions of Dante’s poem, like Balducci’s teachings, may not adequately prioritize matters related to humanity’s embodied nature. Like Balducci, Dante may not impart sufficient lessons about “earthly things” and the bodily “root” of humankind’s existence. In contrast to the Paradiso, Boccaccio implies that the Decameron more overtly focuses on humanity’s carnal reality and domestic existence. Petrarch voiced similar ideas about Dante’s “poema sacro” (sacred poem) (Par. 25.1) by reflecting on Dante’s travels. In the lyric poem commemorating Sennuccio, Petrarch calls out to his recently deceased friend and to other poets, including Dante, in the third heaven, the sphere of Venus:

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Ma ben ti prego che ’n la terza spera Guitton saluti, et messer Cino, et Dante, Franceschin nostro, et tutta quella schiera. (RVF 287.9–11) But I beg you to salute all in the third sphere: Guittone and messer Cino, and Dante, our Franceschino, and all that band. These lines are introduced with remarks about how Sennuccio is now free of the body and therefore can enjoy a broad view of the heavens: Or vedi insieme l’un et l’altro polo, le stelle vaghe et lor viaggio torto, et vedi il veder nostro quanto è corto. (RVF 287.5–7) Now you see one and the other pole, the wandering stars and their winding journey, and you see how short our seeing is. Petrarch’s lines also evoke contrasts between Dante’s otherworldly voyage and his own worldly, embodied reality. While Sennuccio and Dante survey the heavens, Petrarch notes that his vision is “corto” (short) (7). Not only do the verses mean that Petrarch as an embodied human cannot see the heavens, but they also suggest that his vision is focused more narrowly on earthly matters. More obliquely, these Boccaccian and Petrarchan passages also remind readers that Dante probably did not actually journey to the otherworld. Boccaccio also recalled Dante’s ascent to highlight differences between Dante’s epic-­comic poetics and his own elegiac poetics. By likening Dante’s ascent to Balducci’s, Boccaccio drew a distinction between the high symbolic properties of the Comedy and the low signifying properties of the Decameron. The implication seems to be the following. As Balducci communicated by not referring overtly to low things, so the Paradiso often signifies by reference to an otherworldly experience, celestial symbols, and transcendent reality. Instead, Boccaccio proposes that the Decameron signifies by sustained reference to humanity’s earthly experience, carnal symbols, and present-­day reality. Boccaccio also highlighted differences

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between his elegiac stories and Dante’s epic poem by appropriating for his text a description of the Comedy’s register as “umilissimo e rimesso” (most humble and modest) (Dec. 4, Intr. 3). He even asserts that the novelle have a style that is as low as possible (Dec. 4, Intr. 3). Boccaccio means to say that in comparison to his truly low Decameron the Comedy has sublime content and an elevated linguistic register. In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio later stated explicitly that the Comedy did not treat “basse materie” (base matters), such as the domestic, agrarian, and erotic realities of provincial life (Espos., Acc. 18). He also went on to explain that a low register would not have suited the exceptional and exalted material of the poem (Espos., Acc. 19). By characterizing Dante as a high writer, Boccaccio also aligns Dante with Ovid’s critics. Boccaccio’s remarks carefully evoke both Ovid’s declaration that summa petit livor: perflant altissima venti (Envy attacks the heights: its winds hit the peaks) (Rem. 369) and Cacciaguida’s explanation that Dante’s “grido farà come vento, / che le più alte cime più percuote” (cry will be like a wind that strikes most the highest of peaks) (Par. 17.133–34). Boccaccio’s remarks intimate that his critics, Ovid’s detractors, and Dante (unfairly) prefer high genres such as epic and tragedy, elevated linguistic registers, and less eroticized images. Petrarch similarly questioned the generic properties of the Comedy, but in more negative terms. Petrarch called into question Dante’s contributions to epic literature by suppressing in his own poems explicit mention of the Comedy. He also reflected on how Dante authorized his vernacular poem by associating himself with a pantheon of classical writers. When Petrarch-­character meets Dante in the Triumphus Cupidinis (Tr. Cup.), he sees Dante among a group of love poets in a green field: “vidi gente ir per una verde piaggia” (I saw people going about a verdant landscape) (Tr. Cup. 4.29). The episode recalls Dante’s encounter with Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and Virgil that occurred in a similar space in Inferno 4: “giugnemmo in prato di fresca verdura” (we came into a meadow of fresh green) (Inf. 4.111). By characterizing Dante as a love poet, Petrarch obscures Dante’s place in the canon of (epic) literary authorities. He thus also questions why Dante associated himself with classical writers of different genres, styles, and subjects. As other contemporaries were doing, Petrarch was criticizing Dante for “generic hubris.” In other words, he was questioning Dante’s decision to compose a plurigeneric, stylistic, vernacular hybrid poem with a mixture of potentially conflicting subjects.90

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Finally, Boccaccio and Petrarch qualify Dante’s status as a writer by reviewing how he presented himself as a unique, prophetic author. Petrarch undermined Dante’s authority by naming him without special qualification alongside other love poets. In the Canzoniere, Petrarch calls out to Guittone d’Arezzo, Cino, and Dante in the heaven dedicated to lovers, in the sphere of Venus (RVF 287.9–11). In the Triumphus Cupidinis, Petrarch sees Dante alongside other poets who were “d’amor volgarmente ragionando” (speaking about love in the vernacular) (Tr. Cup. 4.30–38). Boccaccio too names Dante along with Cavalcanti and Cino as poets who continued to love women even in old age. The narrator defends himself from spending too much time with women by noting that he and other aging poets seem old and grey but still have a “green tail”: “E quegli che contro alla mia età parlando vanno, mostra mal che conoscano che, perché il porro abbia il capo bianco, che la coda sia verde” (And those who go around talking about my age show that they know nothing about the matter, for though the leek may have a white top, it still has a green tail) (Dec. 4, Intr. 33). By noting Dante has a “green tail,” Boccaccio reminded readers that Dante too felt (immoral) human desires, and not merely chaste yearnings, for Beatrice.91 In the first draft of his biography of Dante (1352–53), Boccaccio also specified that Dante struggled with eros throughout his life (Tratt. §29, and see §§172–74). In the Esposizioni (1373–74), Boccaccio explained that Dante felt the “grandissimi stimoli” (greatest stimulations) of erotic passion (Espos., Acc. 33). Boccaccio’s statements about Dante’s human desires remind readers that the poet was not, in fact, an otherworldly writer or prophet. These passages highlight that Dante was a very earthly author with flaws like every other human. Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s reflection on Dante was part of an ongoing debate about the literary and ideological merits of the Comedy in the fourteenth century. Whereas Petrarch would continue to voice criticisms of Dante in later years, Boccaccio would champion Dante as an exemplary author of Christian allegory. Against the humanists, Boccaccio more overtly promoted what he considered to be the positive aspects of Dante’s writings and obscured what he thought were their potential ambiguities. In the present context, however, Boccaccio endeavored to highlight the merits of his elegiac writings. By engaging Dante and his own critics, Boccaccio asserted that he has properly accounted for humanity’s carnality with his ethical views. He also affirmed that he has effectively

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communicated his ideas by harmonizing style-­symbol-­content in his low poetics. The “Introduction” to Day 4 thereby encourages readers to love their bodies, seek enlightenment, and experience healing.

A N O RT H O D OX G E N R E

In the Decameron’s “Conclusion,” the narrator responds to criticisms that he has “troppa licenzia usata” (used too much license) by recounting erotic stories (Dec., Conc. 3 and 5). He counters that he has merely used language typical of everyday speech: dico che piú non si dee a me esser disdetto d’averle scritte [le parole] che generalmente si disdica agli uomini e alle donne di dir tutto dí “foro” e “caviglia” e “mortaio” e “pestello” e “salsiccia” e “mortadello,” e tutto pien di simiglianti cose. (Dec., Conc. 5) I say that it is not improper for me to have written them [the words] than for men and women at large to use in everyday speech “hole,” “peg,” “mortar,” “pestle,” “sausage,” and “mortadella,” and other similar expressions. The narrator adds that his pen “non dee essere meno d’auttorità conceduta che sia al pennello del dipintore” (should be granted no less authority than the brush of the painter) (Dec., Conc. 6). He has not acted more sinfully than the artist who depicts Michael the Archangel killing the serpent with his sword, or paints George stabbing the dragon, or “fa Cristo maschio e Eva femina” (makes Christ a man and Eve a woman) (Dec., Conc. 6). The objects named were commonly considered to have erotic connotations in the Middle Ages, and the topics of two of the paintings mentioned also suggest erotic acts.92 By underlining the eroticism of these objects and bodies, Boccaccio explicates a crucial literary, ontological, and theological point.93 The narrator’s remarks suggest that Boccaccio must use the erotic in his poetics because it is inherent in every facet of creation. With respect to language, the narrator’s examples underscore that words are gendered masculine

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and feminine (“foro” and “caviglia”). These lines similarly prompt readers to note that physical objects have erotic, gendered connotations. For example, a mortar and pestle call to mind the female and male genitalia and also the act of intercourse. Moreover, Boccaccio’s discussion of paintings highlights that artistic representations and sacred history have a sexual dimension. The depictions of Michael and George wielding swords have phallic connotations. As the narrator notes, even the mother of humankind and its Savior are flesh and blood (human) beings with a gender.94 In fact, during this period painters more overtly drew attention to Christ’s penis to underscore his humanity. Clear depictions of Jesus’s sexuality were a component of the late medieval Christus patiens motif. Boccaccio thus implies that the erotic is a necessary and an appropriate symbolic medium for communicating serious meaning. Since the erotic grounds everything in the universe, Boccaccio must necessarily employ it in his writings. While the narrator’s remarks reveal why Boccaccio writes amatory literature, they also underscore the erotic’s role in the poetics of elegy. Boccaccio reveals the central role of eros in elegy by echoing metapoetic passages of the Tristia. To defend his controversial poems, Ovid explained that the erotic was ubiquitous in Roman culture—games, theaters, and the performances of mimes all have sexualized components. Artists too depict erotic scenes in private residences: scilicet in domibus nostris, ut prisca virorum artifici fulgent corpora picta manu, sic, quae concubitus varios Venerisque figuras exprimat, est aliquo parva tabella loco; utque sedet vultu fassus Telamonius iram, inque oculis facinus barbara mater habet, sic madidos siccat digitis Venus uda capillos, et modo maternis tecta videtur aquis. (Trist. 2.521–28) As in our home antique bodies of men glisten, depicted by the hand of an artist, so are there not couplings and various figures of Venus represented, on some little table somewhere; not only Ajax sits showing anger on his face, but his savage mother has evil in

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her eye, so dripping Venus dries her wet hair with her fingers, and scarcely covered she is seen in her maternal waters. Ovid then underlines the defining role of the erotic in elegy by declaring that authors of other genres write about topics such as wars (Trist. 2.529– 32). He continues that, although the presence of amatory material is a constituent feature of elegy, even Virgil recounted erotic acts in the Aeneid (Trist. 2.533–36). In imitating Ovid’s apology, Boccaccio similarly justifies his poetics by appealing to the presence of the erotic and corporeal in the visual arts.95 In addition to noting that painters depict Jesus as a man and Eve as a woman, the narrator declares that artists paint the perforated body of Jesus on the cross: “[egli fa . . . ] a Lui medesimo, che volle per la salute della umana generazione sopra la croce morire, quando con un chiovo e quando con due i piè gli conficca in quella” ([he represents . . . ] he himself, who wished to die upon the cross for the salvation of humanity, his feet nailed to it sometimes with one and sometimes with two nails) (Dec., Conc. 6). As Ovid concluded by mentioning Virgil, so the narrator mentions the Bible: Quali libri, quali parole, quali lettere son piú sante, piú degne, piú reverende che quelle della divina Scrittura? E sí sono egli stati assai che, quelle perversamente intendendo, sé e altrui a perdizione hanno tratto. (Dec., Conc. 12) What books, what words, what letters are more holy, more worthy, and more revered than those of the Holy Scriptures? And yet there are many who have perversely interpreted them and have dragged themselves to eternal damnation because of this. Each author thus justifies his own erotic text by referring to other canoni­ cal texts. Ovid notes that his and Virgil’s poems have similar content. Boccaccio argues that one can read the erotic material of any text perversely, from the Decameron to Sacred Scripture. Boccaccio imitated the Tristia to propose again that elegiac authors rely upon erotic and sensual bodies to signify. His authorial persona has recalled a metaliterary passage of the Tristia that likens Ovid’s poetics to

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overtly erotic and carnal paintings. Like Ovid before him, Boccaccio is not merely saying that he should have the same authority to engage with the body and the erotic as painters do. By comparing his writing to painting, Boccaccio specifies that his poetics draw on the same means of signifying as an artistic medium that physically relies on the body. Painting is one of the more carnal of artistic media because the representations of painters have a real physical dimension. Paintings and frescoes of bodies and of human genitalia occupy space on a wall or canvass. Both Christian painters and the elegiac Boccaccio represent creation, the Fall, the Crucifixion, and salvation by using the body. This may be why Boccaccio frequently reflects on the signifying properties of the body by reference to artists and painters (Giotto, Calandrino, and so on; Dec. 6.5; 8.3 and 6; 9.3 and 5). After defining the properties of elegy, Boccaccio clarifies that his poetics approximate—to the extent that a human writer can—God’s. Boccaccio implies that his poetics resemble God’s by recalling the most important way that God signified on earth. By invoking Jesus in the “Conclusion,” Boccaccio frames the Decameron with allusions to the Incarnation and Crucifixion. As we have seen, the narrator begins the Deca­me­ron by calculating the date of the plague’s arrival in Italy from the year of the Incarnation (Dec. 1, Intr. 8). He concludes the collection of short stories by referring to Jesus dying on the cross (Dec., Conc. 6). These references precisely evoke the period of Christ’s earthly existence before his resurrection, from the moment when the Logos became flesh to the moment when he suffered death.96 In fact, they highlight the bodily experience on earth that Christ and humans have in common. By beginning and ending his text in this manner, Boccaccio reveals that he has adopted the same symbolic principles in the Decameron as God employed in his physical and literary corpus. Boccaccio embodies truth in textual bodies because God embodied his teachings in Jesus. Boccaccio thereby authorized his poetics by reference to the defining tenet of Christianity, the theological commonplace understood by all medieval Christian readers— the Incarnation. Boccaccio also alludes to Jesus on the cross to foreground the ethical dimension of his elegiac poetics. That Boccaccio wanted to promote compassion was implicit in his decision to write an elegiac text. Medieval critics occasionally derived the etymology of “elegy” from the Greek

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Kyrie eleison, in Latin Domine miserere (“Lord, have mercy” or “compassion”; cf. Uguccione, Deriv. E 30.15–16). For Christian readers, Jesus’s self-­sacrifice would also be the supreme example of the virtue theorized in the opening of the Decameron: “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti” (It is human to have compassion on those who are suffering) (Dec., Pr. 2). In dying for humankind, Christ showed compassion for humans who were afflicted by the “plague” of sin or who were suffering in the postlapsarian world more generally. Christ assumed a body and had compassion on us by allowing himself to suffer in the Passion. The narrator emphasized that compassion was a human virtue in the first line of the Decameron and then underscored this point by recalling painters who depicted Christ’s sexuality. Artists like Giotto depicted Christ’s penis to underscore the divine’s participation in our humanity. In addition, the circumcision of the penis foreshadowed the suffering Christ would endure in the Crucifixion, which itself was considered emblematic of his humanity.97 The reference to Jesus underscores the Decameron’s theological scope and import. By comparing the Decameron to Jesus’s body, Boccaccio asserts that he has written his short stories for the same reason that the Word became flesh, namely, the redemption of humankind. Boccaccio has recalled the precise moment when Jesus suffered death, which allows others to rise again, as Christ himself did, with a restored body. In an analogical relation to the salvific function of Jesus’s body, the Decameron will restore the bodies and spirits of those suffering. In being a poeta and a theologus, Boccaccio thus emphasizes that the body is essential for both kinds of writers. In response to the crisis of the plague, Boccaccio redeems the corporeal and mundane as the primary medium in and through which to encourage change. In using the body in the Decameron, Boccaccio signaled on several occasions that he was indebted to contemplative, Franciscan, and affective concepts. He recalled these theological and religious ideas about the symbolic efficacy of carnal images to affirm that his material poetics are orthodox. Boccaccio also composed this last overt metaliterary passage for the same reason he wrote the previous authorial sections—to distinguish his poetics from Dante’s. In defining the theological dimension of his poetics, Boccaccio implied that his understanding of the poeta-­theologus differs from that of his literary predecessor. In the Decameron’s “Conclusion,”

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Boccaccio again introduces a distinction between his and Dante’s views by recalling a canonical definition of elegy. The narrator answers women who object that “un uomo pesato e grave” (a weighty and heavy man) should not compose trifles by noting his body lightly floats on water: “parlando a quelle che pesato non m’hanno, affermo che io non son grave, anzi son io sí lieve, che io sto a galla nell’acqua” (speaking to those ladies who have not weighed me, let me assure them that I am not heavy at all— on the contrary, I am so light that I float on water) (Dec., Conc. 23). As in previous passages, Boccaccio recalled the Ovidian notion of lightness (levis; lieve; leggero) to define the style of elegiac texts.98 Ovid too had declared that his poems with their light meter were not suitable for more lofty topics, such as wars: non ideo debet pelago se credere, siqua audet in exiguo ludere cumba lacu. forsan—et hoc dubito—numeris levioribus aptus sim satis, in parvos sufficiamque modos: at si me iubeas domitos Iovis igne Gigantas dicere, conantem debilitabit onus. (Trist. 2.329–34) Therefore a small boat should not venture onto the deep, which should instead play in a shallow lake. I am perhaps (and I even doubt it) made for a light verse, and perhaps can succeed with small meters: but if you order me to speak of the Giants repelled by the fire of Jove, the weight will crush my effort. Boccaccio has thus again characterized the properties of his stories by echoing a major elegiac cliché. Propertius also compared his elegiac poems to a boat without excessive weight.99 Propertius explains that he will not speak of the gods, and Phoebus warns that the poet cannot weigh down his textual “boat” with serious themes if women are to appreciate his writings: non est ingenii cumba gravanda tui (don’t weigh down the little boat of your genius) (Elegiae 3.3.22).100 The notion of physical lightness also has erotic connotations in Ovid’s poetry. As the women who weigh Boccaccio during sex know that his body is light, so Ovid had explained that sex makes his (poetic) body light:

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me mea disperdat nullo prohibente puella, si satis una potest, si minus una, duae. sufficiam: graciles, non sunt sine viribus artus; pondere, non nervis, corpora nostra carent. (Amores 2.10.21–24) No one stops my girl from exhausting me if one is enough, great; if not one, then two. I can continue; though graceful, my limbs still have strength: weight, not energy does my body lack. Therefore, Boccaccio’s allusion to Ovidian lightness concisely recalls the constituent components of the Decameron’s low style and erotic content. The concept of lightness also has theological resonances in the Deca­ me­ron. Boccaccio evokes the theological implications of lightness and agility by associating the narrator with the poet Guido Cavalcanti, who was very light.101 A brigata of revelers unsuccessfully invited the logician, natural philosopher, and supposed Epicurean to join them, so they accost him in a cemetery (Dec. 6.9.8–9). Betto then asks what will Cavalcanti have achieved if he proves that God does not exist (Dec. 6.9.11). The poet-­ philosopher replies that the brigata can say whatever they wish in their own house: “Signori, voi mi potete dire a casa vostra ciò che vi piace” (Gentlemen, in your own house you may say to me whatever pleases you) (Dec. 6.9.12). Being “leggerissimo” (very light), Guido then escapes his entrapment by hopping over the tombs (Dec. 6.9.12). Betto finally interprets Cavalcanti’s words to mean that the members of the brigata are intellectually dead, and that their houses are the tombs of the cemetery (Dec. 6.9.14). By having Cavalcanti jump over a tomb, Boccaccio recalls a key canto of Dante’s Comedy, in which Guido’s father was punished for heretical beliefs.102 In Inferno 10, Dante meets Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti, who is damned in part for being an Epicurean: “Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno / con Epicuro tutti suoi seguaci, / che l’anima col corpo morta fanno” (Epicurus and his followers have their cemetery in this part, who make the soul die with the body) (Inf. 10.13–15). The Epicureans now find themselves confined to a tomb for having denied the possibility of an eternal life beyond humanity’s bodily existence. As their false beliefs spiritually imprisoned their souls in physical bodies, so they are physically

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enclosed in an eternal prison. Always a sensitive reader of Dante, Boccaccio understood that Dante was charging his “primo amico” (first friend) (Vn 24.6 and 25.10 [15.6 and 16.10]) with being a heretical Epicurean. Therefore, Boccaccio explicitly recalled Guido’s reputation as an Epicurean in the Decameron. However, Boccaccio’s story about Cavalcanti implies that the poet-­philosopher will not suffer eternal damnation. In Boccaccio’s story, Cavalcanti does not suffer spiritually simply because others have imputed to him a series of beliefs and practices of a carnal nature. Dante’s friend may philosophize about God, logic, and the natural world, and may even indulge in carnal pleasures. Still, the poet’s interest in the body and nature does not damn him. To the contrary, by jumping lightly over the tombs, Cavalcanti floats above the present world. As has often been noted by modern readers, his leap over the tomb recalls Christ’s escape from the tomb, his resurrection.103 In addition to the theological resonances of Cavalcanti’s lightness, Boccaccio associated lightness with the worldly in a positive manner. The narrator of the Amorosa visione even argued that the light things of the world must and should be experienced before heavier celestial things: “Venite adunque qua, ché pria provate / deono esser le cose leggieri / ch’entrare in quelle c’han più gravitate” (Come here then, for first the light things must be experienced before we enter into those that have more weight) (AV 3.34–36). By associating elegiac writing and spiritual lightness with the narrator’s body, Boccaccio reveals his understanding of the poeta-­theologus.104 Boccaccio’s references to the properties of elegy and to Cavalcanti suggest that his model writer can be in, but not necessarily of, the world. In literary terms, Boccaccio’s poeta-­theologus can use the mundane to signify without being tainted by it, just as the Amorosa visione dreamer can experience the world without being damned. The Christological implications for Cavalcanti and Boccaccio as writers seem clear. As the author Cavalcanti escaped the tomb in imitation of Christ, so Boccaccio floats lightly on the water, just as Jesus walked on water.105 The body does not spiritually or physically weigh down Jesus, Cavalcanti, or Boccaccio. Shunning Dante’s example of a poet-­theologian who leaves the world to view the afterlife, Boccaccio follows in the footsteps of Jesus, who embraced the body and the world. Boccaccio as author strives to engage in an imitatio Christi, and champions the poetics and ethics related to humanity’s embodiment.

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In the overt metaliterary sections of the Decameron, Boccaccio was striving to differentiate his elegiac-­inflected poetics and ethics from what he characterized as Dante’s comedic ideas about these subjects. At the same time, Boccaccio was addressing the views of those who criticized erotic literatures or who promoted negative ideas about the body. And Boccaccio knew that at least one humanist, Petrarch, was sometimes critical of the erotic corpus. He was also aware that the early humanists were particularly disparaging of vernacular writing tout court. His desire to counter early humanist views probably explains why Boccaccio compared the Decameron’s poetics to the poetics of Ovidian elegy. By likening his writings to Ovid’s, he was attempting to attribute to his short stories, a new and modern genre, a classical auctoritas. He was by extension also associating the poetics of these and of his previous erotic writings with the poetics of a canonical literary form. Finally, he was drawing both on the properties of elegy and on theological concepts to underscore the orthodoxy of his writings. Boccaccio employed these interrelated rhetorical strategies to appeal to the aesthetic and moral sensibilities of contemporary humanists. Nowhere in the Decameron does the broader target of his ideological apologia emerge as clearly as in the “Introduction” to Day 4. In this section, Boccaccio was reflecting on Dante as part of a dialogue with Petrarch.106 Though they were explicitly discussing Dante, the two writers also seem to have addressed each other with a great deal of deference. Boccaccio was indebted to Petrarch for ideas about Dante and the body, but he also knew that Petrarch could be critical of erotic literatures and desires. Boccaccio, however, does not implicate Petrarch in his list of erotic poets with Dante, Cino, or Cavalcanti. Nor does he imply that Petrarch shares some of what he characterized as Dante’s potentially ambiguous views of the body. At the same time, Petrarch probably knew that Boccaccio was writing erotic texts and was championing a profound respect for our embodied reality. Consequently, he himself does not imply that Boccaccio was doing anything immoral or sinful. Indeed, Petrarch does not explicitly question Boccaccio’s ideas or authority in his own earlier writings. Still, given the interrelated nature of their works, the fact that each writer failed to mention the other’s name is striking, and probably calculated.

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Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s overt silence regarding each other suggests that both writers were carefully beginning to mark out different ideo­ logical territory. Around 1350 they were doing so in explicit contrast to Dante, and they were also attempting to signal emerging differences between their own respective writings and ideas. Petrarch was publicly characterizing himself as an author of Latin classicizing literature and as a promoter of moral virtue. He cast himself either as a writer who had transcended erotic desires or as one who was concerned about the potential moral dangers associated with them. Boccaccio was instead presenting himself as a modern vernacular author of erotic yet orthodox writings, and as a proponent of the goodness of the body and creation. As discussed in chapter 1 in this book, the potential tension underlying these differing literary and ethical visions soon became so acute that neither Petrarch nor Boccaccio could remain silent about the other’s works. In the second half of their lives, in direct dialogue with each other, they penned critical writings and letters that expressed reservations about their respective views. As will become apparent in chapter 5, Boccaccio and Petrarch also wrote fictional works that much more emphatically expressed their reservations about each other’s literary and moral ideologies.

FIVE

The Hatred of the Corpus Corbaccio

M I S I N T E R P R E TAT I O N A N D E N V Y

Boccaccio wrote his last vernacular fiction to address issues related to reading and interpretation. The final sections of the Corbaccio overtly remind readers that the prose text concerns the topic of hermeneutics. After describing a dream, the male protagonist explains that friends interpreted the meaning of his visionary experience (Corb. §409). In the dream, a mysterious guide orders the protagonist to hate a widow and all women because they are supposedly deceptive and sinful (e.g., Corb. §§345, 373–75, 382–83, and 413). The dreamer’s friends agree that everything witnessed by him is undoubtedly true: E, veggendo già il sole essere levato sopra la terra, levatomi, agli amici, coi quali nelle mie afflizioni consolare mi solea, andatomene, ogni cosa veduta e udita per ordine raccontai; li quali ottimamente

203

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esponendomi ogni particella del sogno, nella mia disposizione medesima tutti concorrere gli trovai. (Corb. §409) And, seeing that the sun had already arisen over the earth, I got up and went to my friends, whom I seek out when needing consolation for my afflictions. I recounted to them everything that I had seen and heard in the dream. They carefully exposited to me every minute particular of the dream, and they all agreed with my interpretation of it. The Corbaccio was not, however, the first work in which Boccaccio reflected on the subject of interpretation. In the Ameto, the shepherd learns to interpret the bodies of women as images of the virtues and divine love (Ameto 42.3–5, 44.3–5, and 46.3–5). In the Amorosa visione, the reading of profane triumphs enables Boccaccio-­pilgrim to harmonize his carnal and spiritual yearnings (AV 45.10–24, 46.34–42, and 48.55–63). And, in the authorial sections of the Decameron, Boccaccio-­narrator responded to critics who were supposedly misinterpreting his erotic short stories (Dec. 4, Intr. 2–11, Conc. 2–3). The Genealogie, which was being written at the same time as the Corbaccio, also addressed those who were misunderstanding fictional and erotic literatures (e.g., Gen. 14.15–16). Nevertheless, Boccaccio had not dedicated a fictional work to the topic of interpretation as explicitly as he does the Corbaccio. He may have reconsidered the topic of hermeneutics in his later years out of concerns about the reception of his vernacular writings. Boccaccio’s reflections on reading primarily address the interpretation of erotic texts. The dream interpreted in the Corbaccio centrally involves amatory experiences. Moreover, the criticisms of literature outlined in the Genealogie deal with erotica, for example, the writings of Ovid and other elegiac poets (Gen. 14.15–16). Boccaccio also recalled his own erotic Ameto, Amorosa visione, and Decameron in his writings about interpretation, both in the Genealogie and in the Corbaccio (Gen. 14.9.11–15; 14.10.6–7; and 14.22). In the vernacular fiction, the first-­person narrator declares that he wants to recount his experience to offer pity to others (Corb. §§2–5). His remarks echo the primary ethical goal of the Deca­me­ ron: to encourage readers to have compassion for those suffering (Dec., Pr.

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2–8). The guide also discusses the widow’s body in passages that recall the descriptio corporis of the nymphs in the Ameto and of Fiammetta in the Amorosa visione (e.g., Corb. §§274–96; cf. Ameto 5.3–4; 9.13–29; 12.7– 13.1; and AV 15.43–69 and 41.28–39). By recalling his works in texts about hermeneutics, Boccaccio prompted readers to consider the interpretation and meaning of his own amatory writings. Boccaccio frequently reflected on hermeneutic issues related to erotica because some of his peers were especially critical of amatory literatures. Various philosophers and theologians thought that erotic writings were morally and spiritually harmful (Gen. 14.2–6, 13, and 19–20). Moreover, after 1350 Petrarch was criticizing Boccaccio’s erotic writings and the works of authors such as Ovid in letters addressed to Boccaccio (Fam. 21.15.7–8, 10–13, and 24–25; Sen. 2.1.47; and Sen. 5.2. 23–27 and 29–34). The first section of this chapter explores Petrarch’s views of Boccaccio’s vernacular writings and his ideas about the texts that inspired Boccaccio’s works. It will clarify Boccaccio’s motivations for defending his texts. It will also refine ideas about why Petrarch addressed certain writings to Boccaccio, especially his translation of the Decameron’s story about Griselda (Dec. 10.10). A survey of Boccaccio and Petrarch’s dialogue about erotica will highlight how they sometimes adopted different approaches to cultural issues related to the female (textual) body. Before writing the Corbaccio, Boccaccio was inspired by Ovid’s rhetorical strategies for dealing with criticisms of erotic literature. In the Remedia amoris, Ovid characterized critics of his love poems as envious haters (invidia, etymologically “looking askance at”; Rem. 361–97). Ovid thought that his critics were envious because they did not appreciate, or metaphorically did not see correctly, the generic properties of his poems. In the Decameron’s “Introduction” to Day 4, Boccaccio imitated Ovid by characterizing his own critics as haters for similar reasons, because they too did not understand the poetics of his texts (Dec. 4, Intr. 2–4). The notion of hatred also figures prominently in one of the longest and most gruesome stories of the Decameron. In Decameron 8.7, a scholar also comes to hate a widow, and he even physically harms her (Dec. 8.7.39–40, 45, and 87). Scholars have often noted that Decameron 8.7 and the Corbaccio are thematically similar. However, the poetic and ethical parallels between the two works have received less consideration.

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The bulk of this chapter explores why Boccaccio composed an entire work devoted to the notion of hatred. In his earlier writings, the concept was related to Ovid’s ideas about hermeneutics. In the second section, it will be suggested that the envious protagonists of the Corbaccio and Decameron 8.7 represent critics who do not understand—or who symbolically hate—the (meta)fictional nature of erotic writings. For example, the dreamer does not even recognize that the Corbaccio widow wrote him an elegiac metrical epistle (Corb. §101). The guide and dreamer also do not appreciate that she tricks them by employing Ovid’s advice about creating an artificial and a fictional appearance (e.g., Corb. §§96, 101–105, 282, and 335; Ars 2.313, 3.210 and 473). Ovid had often signaled that his erotic advice was not exclusively or actually about courtship and love, but rather concerned the creation of art. He overtly highlighted the meta­ literary dimension of love in his elegies by titling one of his poems Ars amatoria (Art of Love, or Loving Art). In the Corbaccio, Boccaccio carefully evoked the metaliterary concepts and passages of Ovid’s works to remind readers of the symbolic dimension of elegiac writing. At the same time, he dramatized protagonists who misunderstand the metaphoric aspects of the amatory texts that inspired his own. In other words, he created an exaggerated caricature of how ignorant readers interpret Ovid’s writings literally. In the Genealogie, he also criticized readers who do not understand the allegorical nature of elegy (Gen. 14.15–16). Therefore, in his later scholarly and imaginative works, Boccaccio was addressing how his critics come to hate his works and the (symbolic) women depicted in them. The third section concerns the ethical ramifications of misreading the erotic corpus. Boccaccio highlights the topic by showing how bad readers react to the sensual body. The protagonists of the Corbaccio survey the female body, as the protagonists of the Ameto, Amorosa visione, and Decameron do (e.g., Corb. §§274–96; Ameto 12.15–30; AV 15.43–69 and 41.28–39; and Dec. 4, Intr. 31). However, whereas the body engenders feelings of love and compassion in Boccaccio’s earlier works, the dreamer and guide glimpse the widow’s body but feel hatred and anger. By depicting a hateful reaction to the body, Boccaccio was not revising his previous philogynist views, as scholars have sometimes proposed.1 Nor was he questioning the symbolic efficacy of the female body and its exceptional capacity to signify moral meaning. Rather he was creating a fictional representation of how and why readers misunderstand the female body. In

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the Genealogie, Boccaccio warned that the misreading of amatory literature stems from immoral erotic desires and yearnings (Gen. 14.16.5–6). In the Corbaccio, he also evoked passages in erotica about how readers should not hate or become bewitched by humanity’s embodiment. Indeed, his protagonists recall a variety of ethical precepts in amatory literature but systematically misread and misapply each one. The protagonists even— and most crucially—misunderstand Ovid’s programmatic warning to not repudiate what was once loved (e.g., Rem. 211–12, 503–4, and esp. 655–60; and Corb. §§382–83). Therefore, by depicting a systematic, an overt, and a grotesque misreading of ethical concepts in elegy, Boccaccio revealed that the Corbaccio is not a serious palinode. He endeavored to dramatize what happens when foolish readers—who are characterized as such—misunderstand erotic allegorical literatures like elegy and the ethical ideas promoted by them. The final section addresses why some of Petrarch’s and Dante’s ideas about literature and ethics are recalled in Boccaccio’s last vernacular fiction. Scholars have often identified echoes of both writers’ works in the Corbaccio. However, modern readers have not explored the implications of the fact that the protagonists repeat ideas about the body, and especially about the female body, from Dante’s and Petrarch’s writings. In obliquely associating his peers with these protagonists, Boccaccio was not suggesting that Dante or Petrarch entertained immoral views about the (textual) body. He was instead reflecting on the different ways that the three of them engaged the body symbolically. Boccaccio highlighted how he was attempting to dramatize—in clearer terms—both positive and mistaken ideas about erotic literature and humanity’s embodiment. Unlike his fictional protagonists and historical peers, Boccaccio thus demonstrated that he was more overtly celebrating the goodness of female bodies and feminine genres. Therefore, Boccaccio wrote the Corbaccio for the same reason that Ovid had composed the Remedia: to demonstrate the serious implications of hating women and female literatures.

B O C C AC C I O’ S P E T R A RC H

Regardless of how one interprets the Corbaccio, the date of the text suggests that Petrarch inspired Boccaccio to compose the dream vision. Several scholars have argued that Boccaccio wrote the Corbaccio, after having

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met Petrarch in Venice in 1363, to signal his agreement with Petrarch’s literary and moral views.2 These critics interpret the guide’s call to hate the widow, who enjoys vernacular romances, in metaliterary terms as a palinode.3 In other words, the dreamer’s hatred of the widow symbolizes Boccaccio’s Petrarchan-­inspired rejection of erotic vernacular literature. Scholars support this interpretation by noting that after 1363 Boccaccio could have become (re)acquainted with Petrarch’s texts that characterize vernacular erotic texts ambiguously. Boccaccio could have seen a more advanced draft of the Triumphi (begun ca. 1352–53).4 Though beginning with the Triumphus Cupidinis (Tr. Cup.), the poem then depicts the Triumphus Pudicitie. In Milan (1359) or in Venice (1363), Boccaccio also copied in “Chig” a version of Petrarch’s Canzoniere (dated to 1359–62).5 The Canzoniere programmatically begins with a first-­person narrator declaring that he has partially abandoned his erotic interests (RVF 1.1–4 and 11–14). And in 1364, Petrarch sent Boccaccio a letter that overtly characterized vernacular erotic literatures as immoral and juvenile (Sen. 5.2.6–9, 23–27, and 36–37). In support of the palinode interpretation, readers also note that the (fictional) age of the first-­person narrator coincides with Petrarch’s age when he had supposedly transcended his erotic desires. Petrarch often asserted that he intended to cultivate more spiritual pursuits, was thinking about doing so, or had already begun to do so at forty.6 In the “Letter to Posterity,” first drafted around 1350–55, Petrarch declared that he had stopped having sex at this age: Mox vero ad quadragesimum etatis annum appropinquans, dum adhuc et caloris satis esset et virium, non solum factum illud obscenum, sed eius memoriam omnem sic abieci, quasi nunquam feminam aspexissem (When approaching my fortieth birthday, though still having the energy and virility, not only did I give up that obscene act but even any memory of it, as though I had never seen a woman) (Sen. 18.1.6; and cf. Sec. 3.3.3). Petrarch then thanks God for having helped him overcome his filthy desires (Sen. 18.1.6). The first-­person narrator of the Corbaccio, who is initially presented as Boccaccio’s fictional persona, is also described as forty years old (Corb. §119). If Boccaccio intended readers to date the text by allusion to his age, the reference to forty years would mean that the narrative occurred in 1353–54. (Boccaccio was born in June or July of 1313). Scholars have hypothesized that Boccaccio retrodated the Corbaccio so that readers would view it as a Petrarchan-­inspired

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critique of his own earlier erotic texts, especially the Decameron. However, the validity of such an interpretation is undermined by the fact that in the early 1350s Boccaccio had probably not completed a full draft of the Decameron (ca. 1348–60). Scholarship on Boccaccio’s copying practices suggests that he continued to work on the Decameron into the later 1350s and beyond.7 In addition, as we noted in chapter 1 herein, Boccaccio vigorously defended his erotic vernacular writings in his scholarship. The self-­reflexive defenses of literature developed in the Trattatello, Genealogie, and Esposizioni were written and rewritten from the 1350s until Boccaccio’s death in 1375. Moreover, Boccaccio was familiar with Petrarch’s views about love and vernacular writing before they ever met in person. Therefore, issues regarding the precise date of the Corbaccio are not relevant for the interpretation proposed in this chapter. For example, in his biography of Petrarch (1342–50), Boccaccio characterized Petrarch as a writer who did not promote the dignity of erotic experiences or vernacular literatures (Vita Pet. §§26–30). Boccaccio could have also learned about Petrarch’s views on these subjects when they first saw each other in Florence (1350), or when they met again in Padua (1351) or Milan (1359).8 Most crucially, Boccaccio could have seen ambivalent remarks about erotic fictions and experiences in any number of Petrarch’s writings.9 In the Secretum (1347–49, and 1353), Augustinus encourages Franciscus to focus on the eternal, and in so doing he is critical of almost everything carnal. Augustinus argues that not only has Laura’s beauty retarded Franciscus’s cultivation of virtue, but that the things of the world generally engender Dei contemptum (contempt for God) (Sec. 3.4.10 and 3.6.5). Unlike the female bodies of the nymphs for Ameto, Laura and her body do not represent virtue or God for Petrarch’s (fictional) Augustine.10 In the De remediis utriusque fortunae, drafted in 1360 and revised in 1366, the protagonists voice even more critical remarks about the symbolic potential of the mundane. Ratio repeatedly encourages Gaudium to attenuate his profane desires and focus on spiritual matters. He characterizes women and the erotic, everything sensual and of the senses, as superficial and untrustworthy (De rem. 1.69.8). Citing a line from Virgil’s eighth eclogue, he adds that lovers are lost in their own dreams: qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt (those who love dream false things for themselves) (De rem. 1.69.12; and cf. Ec. 8.108). Ratio continues that lovers should not love

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what they see. He repeats Paul’s characterization of this world as being made up entirely of shifting, unstable signs: Nolite amare que videntur, se que non videntur; que enim videntur temporalia sunt, que autem non videntur eterna (Do not love what you see, but what you do not see; for what you see is temporal, what you do not eternal) (De rem. 1.69.28; and cf. 2 Cor. 4:18).11 Boccaccio was apparently familiar with Petrarch’s text; he briefly discusses its moralizing philosophical content in the Genealogie (Gen. 14.10.5). Petrarch’s writings about converting mundane desires to spiritual yearnings also denigrate the classical authorities who influenced Boccaccio. In the Decameron, Boccaccio characterized (implicitly) Ovid and Epicurus as model intellectuals who, like Christ, safely embraced the body (e.g., Dec. 4, Intr. 2–11, Dec. 6.9; and Dec. Conc. 6 and 22–23).12 In a letter addressed to Boccaccio (1363) (Sen. 2.1), Petrarch instead belittles them while addressing criticisms about how the act of repentance had been depicted in his Africa. He laments that some readers have objected that in his epic a pagan anachronistically feels remorse like a Christian (Sen. 2.1.43–46).13 Petrarch defends himself by responding that even Ovid, lascivissimus (the most wanton) of poets, and Epicurus, levissimus (the most superficial) of philosophers, expressed sorrow for their erotic and bodily sins (Sen. 2.1.47). In the dialogue between Ratio and Gaudium, Petrarch also depicted Ovid as a trifling author. After Ratio declares that the body cannot be a symbol, he suggests that elegiac poetry is an empty rhetorical exercise: Seu quid ex vestris Ovidio, Catullo, Propertio, Tibullo, quorum nullum ferme nisi amatorium est poema? (But what about your Ovid, Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus, who wrote nearly nothing but only poetry about lovers?) (De rem. 1.69.38).14 Ratio goes on to argue that Ovid is actually a morbi [amoris] amantior quam salutis (lover of the disease [of love] more than the cure) (De rem. 1.69.40). In the Triumphi, Petrarch also characterized Ovid and the elegiac poets ambiguously. On the one hand, they are named alongside the epic poet Virgil. On the other hand, they are characterized as writers of frivolous material: Virgilio vidi, e parmi intorno avesse compagni d’alto ingegno e da trastullo, di quei che volentier già ’l mondo lesse: l’uno era Ovidio, e l’altro era Catullo,

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l’altro Propertio, che d’amor cantaro fervidamente, e l’altro era Tibullo. (Tr. Cup. 4.19–24; emphasis added) I saw Virgil, and around him appeared companions of genius and silliness, those that the world read so willingly: one was Ovid, and the other was Catullus, the other Propertius, who all sang of love with passion, and the other was Tibullus. Petrarch often intertwined rhetoric about spiritual change with remarks that were critical of Dante, Boccaccio, and vernacular literature. In Familiares 21.15 (1359), addressed to Boccaccio, Petrarch defended himself from charges that he hated or envied Dante (the nominal, verbal, and adjectival forms of invidia and odium appear repeatedly; e.g., Fam. 21.15.5–6). Petrarch countered these criticisms by asserting that he does not envy Dante; rather, he has abandoned his youthful interest in ver­ nacu­lar poetry for more sophisticated cultural interests (Fam. 21.15.10– 13). He then laments that the uneducated masses ruin Dante’s verses with their clumsy recitations, and cites this fact as one of the reasons that he no longer writes in the vernacular (Fam. 21.15.17–18). Petrarch adds that he and classical authors such as Virgil and Homer do not wish to be praised by casual or vulgar readers (Fam. 21.15.22). In Seniles 5.2 (1364), Petrarch similarly denigrated vernacular literature by characterizing it as a popular and an immature culture. In the letter, Petrarch expresses concern that Boccaccio has apparently burnt his juvenile vernacular writings (Sen. 5.2.8–9). He has heard that Boccaccio wanted to destroy his works because he thought they were inferior to Petrarch’s own youthful vernacular poems (Sen. 5.2.8–9). However, Petrarch then hypothesizes that Boccaccio’s anger may also stem from the fact that the vulgar masses, who are the primary readers of vernacular writing, cannot comprehend or judge it (Sen. 5.2.22–27). Petrarch declares that he no longer worries about this issue because he has dedicated himself to the pursuit of Latin studies (Sen. 5.2.23–25; and cf. 4, 10–11, and 19). Petrarch thereby intimates that Boccaccio should similarly abandon vernacular writing for more serious classicizing interests (Sen. 5.2.37). Boccaccio may also have thought that the dramatization of spiritual conflict in Petrarch’s vernacular poems did not chime with his own

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less ambiguous depictions of creation and the body. The first poem of the Canzoniere characterizes temporal pleasure as a brief dream, which the narrator has partially abandoned: “quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno” (whatever pleases in the world is but a brief dream) (RVF 1.14). Petrarch himself noted that Boccaccio was familiar with the Canzoniere in his prima etate (youthful years) (Sen. 5.2.8). Moreover, in the mid-­1360s, the Canzoniere might have been on Boccaccio’s mind because he had recently copied the lyric poems of the collection in Venice around 1363 (the so-­ called Chigi form, 1359–62; BAV, Chigi L.V.176).15 This form of the Canzoniere structurally foregrounded pessimistic attitudes about earthly and/or erotic experiences.16 Whereas the first poem characterizes worldly pleasures as a fleeting dream, the last poem of the first part dramatizes how Petrarch despairs in an (impending) existential crisis. In “Passa la nave mia colma d’oblio,” Petrarch depicts his spiritual troubles as a sea voyage that is about to end in shipwreck, thereby recalling the fateful conclusion to Ulysses’s mundane travels in the Comedy (RVF 189.14). In the poem, the narrator complains that his “nimico” (enemy), probably Love, sits at the helm while his “dolci usati segni” (sweet usual guides), probably the eyes of Laura, are hidden (RVF 189.4 and 12). In addition, Boccaccio might have interpreted the Triumphi as a potentially confusing rewriting of the Amorosa visione, and thus discordant with his clearer positive depictions of the body. Boccaccio’s poem begins with the triumph of Wisdom and concludes with the dreamer embracing Fiammetta and then yearning to do so again. By contrast, Petrarch’s poem begins with the Triumphus Cupidinis and concludes with the Triumphus Eternitatis. Boccaccio had probably not seen the more advanced drafts of the Triumphi during his meetings with Petrarch in Venice (1363) or in Padua (1368). Petrarch had not yet begun composing parts of the Triumphus Temporis and the Triumphus Eternitatis, or the final draft of the Triumphus Fame.17 Still, if Boccaccio had glanced at the verses dedicated to the triumphs of Chastity and Death over Love at any point after their inception (ca. 1352–53), he would have realized that Petrarch was not writing about eros in overtly positive terms. Allusions to Boccaccio as the guide of the Triumphi may also have offended Boccaccio.18 Elements of the dreamer’s initial encounter with the guide recall Boccaccio and his writings. They meet in the Triumphus Cupidinis, which may be an oblique allusion to one of the textual models

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of the Triumphi, the Amorosa visione. The erotic context of their encounter also recalls that Boccaccio had characterized his authorial persona as a lover in many of his vernacular writings, for example, in the Amorosa visione and Decameron. The dreamer also searches around for another living soul because he is “vago d’udir novelle” (desirous to hear news) (Tr. Cup. 1.31). The dreamer’s desire to hear novelle may be a reference to the erotic short stories of the Decameron. Upon seeing the dreamer, the guide then identifies himself to Petrarch as his friend from Tuscany: “vero amico / ti son, e teco nacqui in terra tosca” (true friend am I to you and born like you in Tuscan lands) (Tr. Cup. 1.47–48). He even declares that he knew the dreamer was a lover from a young age (Tr. Cup. 1.52–54). The verses may be both an allusion to how Boccaccio read Petrarch’s love lyrics as a youth and a reference to how Boccaccio characterized Petrarch as a repentant lover in his biography. However, the pilgrim quickly clarifies that he is no longer interested in erotic affairs (Tr. Cup. 1.55–56). Therefore, if Boccaccio had considered himself Petrarch’s Tuscan friend, he would have appreciated that “he” was—against his own beliefs— helping the Petrarchan narrator transcend desire. At the end of his life, Petrarch denigrated even more explicitly the constituent features of the Decameron’s elegiac poetics. The critique in Seniles 17.3 (1373–74), an epistle addressed to Boccaccio, consists of a Latin translation and partial rewriting of the Decameron’s last story (Gualtieri and Griselda, Dec. 10.10).19 Boccaccio may never have seen the letter, but he was aware of its existence. He also seems to have appreciated that it was not merely a straightforward translation of the Decameron’s concluding tale. In a letter to Francesco da Brossano (1374), Boccaccio requested he be sent copiam ultime fabularum mearum quam suo dictatu [Petrarca] decoraverat (the copy of my last fables that he [Petrarch] had adorned with his dictation) (Ep. 24.41). As will become apparent, the notion of adorning or covering female-­gendered fables is central to the ideology of Petrarch’s version. Moreover, a consideration of Petrarch’s epistle sheds light on the self-­aware nature of his previous dialogue with the Deca­me­ ron’s author. While introducing the translation, Petrarch intimated that he composed passages of his earlier writings to question Boccaccio’s poetics and ethics. An analysis of the text also reveals that contemporary readers, and in primis Petrarch, grasped that Boccaccio imitated the poetics of Ovidian elegy.

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Petrarch highlighted the programmatic nature of his criticisms by discussing the metaliterary sections of the Decameron: the Proemio, “Introduction” to Day 4, and “Conclusion.” He denigrates the core aspects of the Decameron’s elegiac poetics by recalling the narrator’s own remarks about the text (Sen. 17.3.1–5 and 38; and cf. Dec., Pr. 9–15; 4 Intr. 2–4; Conc. 20). Petrarch first negatively characterizes the Decameron as a youthful, popular project because of its feminine language. In previous writings to Boccaccio, he had voiced similar ideas about Dante’s Comedy and his own vernacular poems. Petrarch assumes that a young Boccaccio composed the Decameron in nostro materno eloquio . . . ad vulgus (our maternal ver­nacu­ lar . . . for a popular audience) (Sen. 17.3.1; emphasis added). The lines recall Boccaccio’s gendering of the stories’ linguistic and formal properties in the Proemio and “Introduction” to Day 4. The narrator explained that the feminine tales were “in fiorentin volgare e in prosa scritte” (written in the Florentine vernacular and in prose) (Dec. 4, Intr. 3; and cf. Pr. 9–15). Petrarch then negatively characterizes the stories’ female, erotic content as frivolous (Sen. 17.3.1). Elegiac authors addressed women to differentiate the erotic content of their poems from the violent or bellicose subject matter of male tragedy and epic. Petrarch, who appreciates Boccaccio’s symbolic uses of the female gender, declares instead that he is interested only in serious masculine topics. Recalling that the lengthy stories were for women with leisure (Dec., Pr. 10 and Conc. 20), Petrarch notes that he does not have time to read the Decameron because the current war and politics occupy him (Sen. 17.3.1).20 Petrarch thus implies that he prefers the martial and public subjects of male genres, such as epic and tragedy. At the same time, he distances himself from the erotic and subjective material typical of female elegy. Petrarch continues to criticize Boccaccio’s gendered poetics and texts by addressing issues related to the relationship between register and content in elegy (convenientia). Petrarch notes that the Decameron’s stories contain matter of an excessively sexual nature, which according to him is typical of a trifling work about rerum levitas (silly matters) and molta . . . iocosa et levia (many frivolous and light things) (Sen. 17.3.2–3). He instead enjoys the pia et gravia (orthodox and serious material) found in the work, for example, Boccaccio’s description of the plague and final story (Sen. 17.3.3). Petrarch insists, therefore, that he will translate the final story for those ignorant of Boccaccio’s vernacular. As he specifies in the letter’s

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conclusion, his version is not for the matronas (distinguished women) of his day, but for those (male) readers who can benefit most from a story about fidelity to God (Sen. 17.3.4 and 38). Petrarch’s remarks again reveal that he has appreciated how and why Boccaccio was drawing on gender to classify his text as an erotic elegy. His terms evoke the specific gendered concepts that elegiac writers such as Ovid and Boccaccio used to define the properties of their writings. Inspired by Ovid, Boccaccio championed the levia, or light style, that accorded with female content and erotic symbols. In the De remediis, Ratio also noted that Ovid was a writer of levia (light) and feda (foul) things (De rem. 1.69.40). In the preface to his translation, Petrarch distinguishes himself from such material by announcing that he prefers the gravia, namely, the “heavy” properties and material of masculine genres. Petrarch thus associates himself with the envious male critics of the Decameron identified by Boccaccio in the “Introduction” to Day 4 (Dec. 4, Intro. 2–4 and 32). Petrarch notes that these readers are tearing apart Boccaccio’s work canum dentibus (with dogs’ teeth) (Sen. 17.3.2). Petrarch’s Latin version of the Griselda story communicates his disapproval of how Boccaccio drew on the real erotic to represent serious ethical concepts. In contrast to Boccaccio, Petrarch signals that he prefers the idealized erotic and chaste female bodies in his works. Evoking Boccaccio’s metaliterary use of the body as a symbol for the textual corpus, Petrarch announces that he will modify the story’s, or the textual body’s, veste (clothing) (Sen. 17.3.5). Though the phrase alludes to his act of translation, the metaphoric reclothing also represents Petrarch’s criticism of literary texts that feature nude female bodies. Petrarch underscores his disagreement in the most clear and straightforward manner possible, by covering Griselda’s naked form. In Boccaccio’s version of the story, Gualtieri makes Griselda strip naked before a crowd (Dec. 10.10.19). In Petrarch’s rewriting, a group of ladies surround Griselda while she changes clothes modestly: a matronis circumstantibus ac certatim sinu illam gremioque foventibus verecunde ac celeriter adimpletum est (it occurred quickly and modestly with ladies surrounding who tried to cover her breast) (Sen. 17.3.14). Petrarch’s story thus reclothes, covers, and chastens the female protagonist’s body, thereby concealing one of the key generic components of elegiac writing. The rewriting simultaneously hides Griselda’s naked body and metaphorically reclothes the elegiac corpus in which that

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feminine body appears as a metatextual symbol. Petrarch’s epistle thereby demonstrates that ideas about the virtues, in this case fidelity, should not be represented by erotic images or discussed in frivolous genres like elegy. Thus, though both Boccaccio and Petrarch asserted that their respective bodies of work address virtue, Petrarch questioned the efficacy and morality of using erotic images and narratives to signify ethical concepts. This brief reconstruction of Petrarch and Boccaccio’s literary di­alogue suggests that Petrarch sometimes disagreed with Boccaccio’s cultural and moral values. It reveals that, at some point after 1350, Boccaccio prompted Petrarch to think deeply about topics related to erotica, genre, and the utility of literature. Scholars have often noted that Boccaccio’s championing of Dante likely inspired Petrarch to renew his interest in vernacular poetry (despite Petrarch’s claims to the contrary).21 But, as the foregoing suggests, Boccaccio’s authorial identity and vernacular writings also influenced Petrarch’s engagement with erotica both in his vernacular Triumphi and in his Latin epistolary collections. In addition, Boccaccio seems to have inspired aspects of Petrarch’s masculine, humanist authorial identity, not to mention his views about certain symbolic uses of the female body. As Seniles 17.3 demonstrates, even in his last days Boccaccio’s vernacular female writings influenced Petrarch’s masculine Latin humanist views about aesthetics and ethics. Finally, the foregoing reveals the extent to which Petrarch tried to influence the reception of Boccaccio’s erotic vernacular writings. Petrarch’s repeated critiques suggest that he was concerned, even anxious, about whose literary authority, ethical views, and concepts pertaining to gender would influence posterity. For his part, Boccaccio had ample opportunity to reflect on and respond to Petrarch’s opinions about works like the Decameron. Boccaccio had initially reflected on his vernacular corpus in dialogue with Dante, but from the 1350s on Petrarch became one of his most prominent (inter) textual interlocutors. Passages of the Genealogie and Trattatello reveal that he was actively defending the reception of his works against Petrarch and those who could be influenced by him. Boccaccio was, however, a prudent reader and writer. He knew that Petrarch expressed many opinions about the world and the body that resembled his own views (after all, Petrarch converted only in part; RVF 1.1–4). Boccaccio was thus careful in addressing remarks in his friend’s texts that contradicted his ideas.

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In fact, he does not openly criticize Petrarch in the Corbaccio. Such a rhetorical strategy could have been considered controversial given the intellectual climate of the period. Boccaccio instead creates a general negative representation of humanists with beliefs resembling those of Petrarch’s fictional protagonists. He also recalls aspects of Petrarch’s self-­fashioning to clarify how his colleague’s authorial identity could be (mis)construed. Therefore, Boccaccio’s immediate concern was to reveal how and why contemporaries were misunderstanding Ovid’s writings and the elegiac Decameron. Scholars have noted that the guide and dreamer misunderstand an occasional idea found in Ovid’s works or in love treatises.22 However, they have not appreciated the exaggerated, overt, and critical nature of Boccaccio’s depiction of their misreading. Not only do the protagonists misread ideas about literature and ethics found in Ovid’s poems, but they even misunderstand pervasive commonplaces about medieval literary theory and theology. The failure to grasp the absurd nature of the protagonists’ behavior may explain why the Corbaccio has sometimes been considered a humanist-­inspired palinode. In addition, confusion about the Corbaccio may stem from misunderstandings related to Boccaccio’s engagement with Ovidian elegy. A detailed analysis of misreading in the Corbaccio, one that contextualizes the misreading within Boccaccio’s views of elegy, will clarify the ideology of the text. What follows complements the oft-­noted fact that the Corbaccio inverts dream-vision motifs, for example, by featuring a guide who voices un-­Christian ideas.23 When the specific poetic and theological resonances of misreading are elucidated in tandem, the critical nature of the text becomes obvious and apparent.

H AT I N G T H E B O DY ’ S P O E T I C S

Boccaccio foregrounds that the Corbaccio is not a palinode by repeatedly characterizing its protagonists, who voice views opposed to Boccaccio’s own, as fools. He undermines the protagonists’ credibility by having the dreamer misapply the most basic rule of amatory treatises, namely, that erotic desires should be kept secret.24 Because the rule was a commonplace in late medieval culture, any confusion about it would have revealed one’s ignorance to contemporaries. In the Ars amatoria, Ovid counseled

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lovers to talk modestly and to hide their desires: utque viro furtiva Venus, sic grata puellae (men enjoy Venus when concealed, just as women do) (Ars 1.275 and cf. 135–40). In the De amore (1185–86), Andreas Capellanus echoed Ovid’s advice by recommending discretion when courting a lover (De amore 1.3.3–6, 1.6(A).21, and 2.1.1 and 5).25 The Corbaccio dreamer invokes the erotic commonplace when he meets a widow: “io portai sempre opinione, e porto, che amore discoperto o sia pieno di mille noie o non possa ad alcuno desiderato effetto pervenire” (I have always been of the opinion, and still am, that making one’s love public either creates thousands of troubles or it will hinder the fulfillment of one’s desires) (Corb. §91). But he then reveals his ignorance by disclosing his feelings to a friend, and by discussing his desires directly with the widow (Corb. §§91 and 100). In the story of the Scholar and Widow (Dec. 8.7), Boccaccio similarly signaled the extreme ignorance of the story’s male protagonist.26 The scholar Rinieri publicly courts a widow with letters and gifts (Dec. 8.7.14). The widow also discloses her feelings for another man to Rinieri: “gli disse apertamente ogni suo fatto” (she openly discussed everything about herself with him) (Dec. 8.7.51). Boccaccio, therefore, casts the protagonists of the Corbaccio and Decameron 8.7 in a negative light. The protagonists themselves acknowledge the correct protocols for courtship but fail to properly enact them. In depicting the incorrect implementation of amatory rules, Boccaccio was criticizing those who were lambasted as the worst readers in the Genealogie. He reserved extremely negative remarks for those who thought that texts like Ovid’s Ars contained dangerous or illicit advice (Gen. 14.15.1). Boccaccio notes that these readers foolishly attempt to enact the precepts of elegiac poems because their reading is influenced by perverse desires. Boccaccio chides that poor readers are seduced both by lascivious girls and by the erotic content of Catullus’s, Propertius’s, and Ovid’s poems: zelantes hi amant, procantur, et mulierculis ridentibus applaudent oculis, amatorias licterulas dictant, componunt rithimos, et cantiunculas excudunt, quibus affectiones suas et suspiria expromant, et, deficientibus ingenioli viribus, pro oportuno subsidio ad instructores amatorie artis evolant. Hinc Catuli, Propertii et Nasonis volumina evolvunt, et ab ineptis talium suasionibus, lepidis descriptis carminibus, et verborum

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facili exornatis contextu, tanquam in hoc toto inclinati pectore, volentes trahuntur, seducuntur atque tenentur. (Gen. 14.16.5–6) These envious men love, and seek out, and applaud women who wink at them, they write love letters and compose poems and sing little songs, in which they profess their affection and sighs. And since they have little talent, they turn to the teachers of the art of love for help. They peruse the volumes of Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid, and willingly they let themselves be attracted, seduced, and possessed by the superficial allures of their writings, by the pleasant descriptions and elegant weave of their words, to the point that they are totally fixated on them. In his fictional works, Boccaccio also specifies that the desires of these readers blind them to the symbolic nature of the erotic in elegiac and other amatory texts. In the Corbaccio, Boccaccio begins his depiction of the causes of poor reading by having the dreamer misunderstand the literal sense of an elegiac poem. Not only does the dreamer fail to comprehend aspects of the literal sense, but he does not interpret beyond it. Medieval readers were commonly instructed to begin by studying the letter of the text, but they were also taught to identify allusions in the literal sense, to interpret it for allegorical meaning, and so on (see Dante, Conv. 2.1.8–15). Consequently, the dreamer does not follow the most rudimentary of medieval hermeneutic practices, a fact that further characterizes both him and his antielegiac views negatively. The widow writes the dreamer a letter in the meter typical of elegy, verses composed of a hexameter and a pentameter: “l’un piè avevano lunghissimo e l’altro corto” (they had one foot very long and the other short) (Corb. §101). In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio noted that Ovid was most famous for this type of versification (Espos. 4.1.121).27 The narrator, however, does not realize that the letter is an Ovidian elegiac epistle. Instead, he announces that the letter merely contains “parole assai zoticamente composte” (words rather clumsily written) (Corb. §101). The protagonist also does not understand the widow’s allusion to the doctrine of metempsychosis, that “una anima d’uno uomo in uno altro trapassi” (a soul may pass into another man) (Corb. §§102–3). He even puzzles at

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why she characterizes him as “uno valente uomo” (an honorable gentleman) (Corb. §§103 and 106). The dreamer never considers the widow’s most probable motivation for discussing metempsychosis. She was perhaps comparing him to her recently deceased husband, who is the guide, a comparison that may not have been intended as a compliment. After misunderstanding the literal sense of an elegiac epistle, the dreamer fails to grasp the allegorical nature of elegy. Specifically, he does not understand that the erotic precepts described in elegiac texts have metaliterary resonances. He does not appreciate that the widow courts him by employing erotic precepts from the Ars amatoria that are both about creating fiction, or a fictional appearance, and about creating art, or an artificial semblance. Ovid had advised lovers to create an artful look, to inflame desire by delaying written replies, and to conceal art: ars faciem dissimulata iuvat (Ars 3.210) Art that is hidden helps one’s appearance. postque brevem rescribe moram (Ars 3.473) Write back only after a brief delay. si latet, ars prodest (Ars 2.313) If concealed, art can be useful. The widow instead composes letters to inflame the desires of the protagonist: “avvisai che ciò che scritto m’avea niun’altra cosa volesse dire per ancora se non darmi ardire a più avanti scrivere” (I believed that what she wrote to me was not intended to communicate anything, but rather was designed only to entice me to continue to write) (Corb. §105). All

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communication between the dreamer and the widow occurs exclusively in letters (lettere, etymologically related to letteratura; Corb. §§335–36). The widow also consults treatises, perhaps even Ovid’s, to make “artificiata belleza” (artificial beauty) (Corb. §§229–31). As the guide explains, her beautiful art fools everyone: “Primieramente mi piace di quella bellezza incominciare, la qual tanto le sue arti valsono che te non solamente ma molti altri, che meno di te erano presi, abbagliò” (First I would like to speak about her beauty, which depended so much on her artfulness that not only did it confound you but also many others who were not as taken with her as you are) (Corb. §282). For her part, the widow correctly understands that Ovid’s rules about love, even the precept to hide one’s love, concern art. She only composes letters and art and does not respond “con aperte parole” (with open words) to the clumsy advances of the dreamer (Corb. §101). By having the widow employ Ovidian erotic precepts with artistic overtones, Boccaccio highlighted that erotic relationships in elegy were symbolic. Her actions suggest that the erotic often symbolized matters related to the artistic process—as the title Ars amatoria signals. However, the dreamer does not realize that the widow employs precepts from a fictional text that are, in reality, about creating a seductive fiction. In Decameron 8.7, Boccaccio had dramatized these same notions in a similar manner. Like the dreamer, neither the scholar Rinieri nor the widow recognizes that each employs erotic precepts from the Ars about creating art, or an artificial appearance. The narrator Pampinea’s first words announce that the story concerns a failure to recognize the meta-­artistic: “spesse volte avviene che l’arte è dall’arte schernita” (it often happens that art is tricked by art) (Dec. 8.7.3).28 Pampinea means that her story concerns how one person creates a deception to fool another. At the same time, her words also imply the related meta-­artistic sense, namely, that the protagonists do not recognize art and fiction as such. For example, the Decameron widow also writes letters to inflame the scholar’s desires and to prolong a literary relationship: “non [gli] venivan risposte se non generali: e in questa guisa il tenne gran tempo in pastura” (the only replies that came back [to him] were general ones, and in this way she put him out to graze for a long time) (Dec. 8.7.14). As the citation suggests, the widow understands that the command to conceal one’s desires concerns art. She does not speak about love but merely creates more art.

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She moves “artificiosamente” (artfully) and was “astuzia usando nel favellare” (using subtlety in recounting stories) (Dec. 8.7.8 and 85). Though initially ignorant of the artistic nature of amatory rules, Rinieri also learns to implement Ovid’s fictional precepts, which the widow herself does not recognize. The scholar eventually stops talking about love, and rather creates a necromantic image and prayer, later called a “favola” (fable), for the widow to attract a former lover (Dec. 8.7.42, 45, 56, 62, and 64). Bad readers like the Corbaccio dreamer, Rinieri and the widow are similarly tricked because they misunderstand that each implements erotic rules from a fictional text about creating fiction and art. The protagonists not only fail to appreciate the fictional nature of the erotic rules of elegy, but they also do not grasp the symbolic dimension of the body in elegiac texts. The male protagonists of both narratives reveal their interpretative mistake by not realizing that the appearances of the women’s bodies are of a highly deceptive and artificial nature. As Ovid had counseled, the widow artistically adorns and ornaments the various parts of her body: her hair, face, flesh, chest, and so on (Corb. §§236, 282, and cf. §§225–43 and 281–98). Contemporary readers would have grasped the symbolic connotations of her body, and thereby the dreamer’s error, because her body also resembles a manuscript folio. She is a widow and therefore wears “le bende bianche e’ panni neri” (the white ribbons and the black dresses), which recall parchment and ink (Corb. §92). In the Decameron, the widow’s physical appearance also resembles the properties of a manuscript. Pampinea notes that Rinieri first saw Elena at a party “vestita di nero sí come . . . vedove” (dressed in black just like . . . widows) (Dec. 8.7.6). Later Pampinea discusses the contrast between “la bianchezza del suo corpo . . . [e] le tenebre della notte” (the whiteness of her naked body . . . [and] the darkness of night) (Dec. 8.7.66). The narrator even explicitly compares the widow’s sun-­scorched body to a piece of burnt parchment: “la cotta pelle le s’aprisse e ischiantasse, come veggiamo avvenire d’una carta di pecora abrusciata” (her cooked skin opened and cracked, just as we see happen to a piece of burnt parchment) (Dec. 8.7.114). In a related manner, the widow does not grasp the symbolic nature of an image of a body that Rinieri sculpted, an artistic symbol of a body. Therefore, how the protagonists “misread” each other is a symbolic misreading of the Ars and other elegiac literary works. In the Genealogie,

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Boccaccio explains that bad readers are seduced by the fictional content of erotic elegy just as they are by actual sensual women. The male protagonists of the Corbaccio and Decameron 8.7 are seduced by women who draw on Ovid’s ideas about art to create a fictional—highly erotic—appearance. In depicting misreading in this manner, Boccaccio was attempting to highlight two interrelated concepts. First and foremost, he was reminding readers of the symbolic and metaliterary nature of (his) elegiac texts. In addition, he was demonstrating that the protagonists of the Decameron and Corbaccio do not appreciate the genre’s signifying properties. Finally, by characterizing them as immoral lovers and ignorant of medieval hermeneutics, Boccaccio condemns their subsequent denigration of erotic vernacular writings. As the Corbaccio widow has literary valences, so the dreamer has specific cultural connotations. The protagonist appears to be a late fourteenth-­ century humanist.29 When the dreamer and guide discuss the dreamer’s studies, they note that they consist exclusively of classical Greek and Latin authors. The dreamer and guide first mention his intellectual formation when they address why he was considering suicide. He explains that he felt humiliated because his classical studies did not help him understand his relationship with the widow and because she mocked him publicly for his stupidity (Corb. §§109–16). The guide later specifies that the dreamer composed pseudoclassical poems: “poi ch’e’ versi di Omero, di Virgilio e degli altri antichi valorosi aranno cantato [le Ninfe Castalide], i tuoi medesmi, se tu vorrai, canteranno” (after they [the Muses] will have sung the verses of Homer, Virgil, and the other ancient greats, they will sing yours too if you so desire) (Corb. §199). The widow and her lover even deride the dreamer’s classical Muses: “Aristotile, Tulio, Virgilio e Tito Livio .  .  . erano come fango da loro e scherniti e anullati” (Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, and Livy .  .  . were treated like mud by them and mocked) (Corb. §332). Whereas in the Corbaccio Boccaccio defined precisely the identikit of humanists who misread elegy, in Decameron 8.7 he describes Rinieri’s cultural interests in more general terms. A Florentine scholar and philosopher who studied at Paris, Rinieri also feels humili­ ated because his studies did not help him understand his relationship with the widow (Dec. 8.7.5 and 85).30 Though a lover of wisdom (philo-­ sophia), Rinieri interrupts his studies to court the widow and thereby has “lasciati i pensier filosofici” (abandoned the philosophical thoughts) (Dec.

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8.7.10–12). In the Corbaccio, Boccaccio probably specified the identity of bad readers in more overt terms to warn humanist scholars. By casting the foolish dreamer as a humanist, Boccaccio intimated that educated men will also be mocked and humiliated if they profess ignorant views about elegy. Indeed, the fact that the popular masses look down on these apparently educated male scholars is a clear indication that their masculine reading practices should not be imitated. The Corbaccio does not depict these humanists as intellectual elites who have an informed understanding of classical literary traditions. These humanists are so ignorant that they cannot even “read” the true intentions of supposedly uneducated women, who do, however, have a sophisticated grasp of the properties and generic conventions of elegy. Boccaccio then implies that the misreading of bodies and eroticism in elegy stems from erroneous theological beliefs. He proposes that their misunderstanding is the result of not remembering that God used the (female) body to signify in the Bible and in creation. In the Corbaccio, Boccaccio signals the guide’s heretical understanding of the female form by having him recall but contradict the key metaliterary passages of the Decameron’s “Introduction” to Day 4 and “Conclusion.” In these passages, Boccaccio defended his poetics on the grounds that erotic, gendered bodies are ubiquitous in the physical world. The guide, however, asserts that women’s tainted corporeality renders them different from everything and every symbol in creation (Corb. §§173 and 175). The guide explains that women erroneously believe that on account of their gender they are similar to many female gendered things in the world: the Sibyls, and also “le stelle, le pianete, le Muse, le virtù, le ricchezze” (the stars, the planets, the Muses, the virtues, and wealth) (Corb. §§173 and 175). His charac­teri­ zation of the argument echoes Ovid’s comment in the Ars that Virtue herself is female: ipsa quoque et cultu est et nomine femina Virtus (Virtue is named and adored as a woman) (Ars 3.23).31 The guide’s remarks also recall that Boccaccio justified his symbolic uses of the erotic on the basis that many things in the world have a gender, for example, language and objects (“foro” [hole] and “caviglia” [peg]; Dec., Conc. 5). In the “Introduction” to Day 4, Boccaccio also suggested that women resemble the Muses (a [metaliterary] symbol) on account of their sex: “benché le donne quel che le Muse vagliono non vagliano, pure esse hanno nel primo aspetto simiglianza di quelle” (although women are not equal to what the Muses

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are, they nevertheless resemble them in their outward aspect) (Dec. 4, Intr. 35).32 The narrator had proposed that women’s real corporeality, in fact, makes them more effective symbols than the immaterial Muses because they are actually part of the physical world. The guide instead argues that women, on account of their bodies, do not resemble other female connoted objects or symbols. In response to women who maintain that all good things are female, he declares: “Egli è così vero che tutte [le cose già dette] son femine, ma non pisciano” (It is true that all of them [the aforementioned] things are female, but they don’t piss) (Corb. §175). In other words, the guide believes that women’s unique embodiment means that they cannot be like a Sibyl, a symbol for wisdom, or they cannot be like the Muses, symbols for poetry. The guide then appears to deny the possibility that the erotic feminine body signifies, on account of a flawed understanding of salvation history. In the Decameron’s “Conclusion,” Boccaccio had defended his erotic female writings by noting that all things in salvation history were gendered. The narrator explained that God had made Eve a woman and incarnated Christ as a man with genitals (Dec., Conc. 6). The guide obfuscates the fact that God made a gendered embodiment of the divine when “writing” salvation history. He notes that Mary the Mother of God was “quasi non dell’elementar composizione, ma d’una essenzia quinta fu formata” (almost not composed of the material elements, but rather of a quintessence) (Corb. §177). He adds that she could not be fully carnal herself because Christ needed a perfect receptacle, in which to be incarnate (Corb. §177). The guide draws the distinction to rebut women’s claims that they resemble the Madonna. He argues that women’s tainted corporeality negates any similarity they have to an “incorporeal” Mary and thus the possibility that they might be an image of her (Corb. §177). According to him, men instead can be symbols and images of God but only because they have transcended their bodies (Corb. §189). He argues that man is actually an “animale perfetto” (perfect animal) and thus does not bear any responsibility for sin since women are entirely culpable (Corb. §§189–90). Finally, he notes that men are created “poco minore che gli angeli” (just below the angels) in the hierarchy of being (Corb. §194, and, more generally, §§189–94). Therefore, according to the guide, only the noncorporeal and non­ erotic can represent the metaphysical and spiritual. In making these claims,

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the guide has implicitly denied the bases of the Incarnation, a mistake so obvious that contemporary readers would have easily grasped the absurdity of his discourse. Modern readers have perhaps missed the parodic nature of this reasoning because Boccaccio’s engagement with theology has not typically been appreciated, either in the Corbaccio or in his oeuvre generally speaking. A fourteenth-­century contemporary, however, certainly would have considered the guide’s logic heretical. And Boccaccio was at this same time drawing on Augustinian and Pseudo-­Dionysian thought to prove that the body signifies in creation, the Bible, and secular literature (e.g., Gen. 14.12.3–4, 10–12 and 14.18.17–19). Finally, the fact that heretical positions were espoused by protagonists who are characterized negatively would have also made these ideas seem deeply flawed to contemporaries. Their hatred and rejection of elegy would too, by extension, have seemed preposterous. Indeed, the hermeneutic errors of Boccaccio’s and Ovid’s critics then prevent them from interpreting the body as a symbol for any literary, moral, or spiritual ideas. In the metaphoric terms of erotic elegy, these critics do not love the body as Ameto did in the Ameto. They do not cherish it as Boccaccio-­pilgrim did in the Amorosa visione, or as Boccaccio’s authorial persona did in the Decameron. Misunderstandings about elegy and Christian theology lead the critics to hate the body, a concept that has metaliterary resonances in Boccaccio’s and Ovid’s works. Just as Ovid did, Boccaccio suggested that poor readers of literature harbor feelings of rage and envy toward the (textual) body (Dec. 4, Intr. 2–4 and 32; and Rem. 361–97). They “look askance at” (invidia) the conventions of elegy and the fact that the genre draws on the erotic to embody meaning. In the Decameron, Boccaccio recalls the hateful critics who tear Ovid’s poems by lamenting that poor readers shred his own body (Dec. 4, Intr. 32; Rem. 361–62 and 367). In the Genealogie, Boccaccio also explains that poor readers who are unaware of the allegorical nature of literature hate texts and shred books. He states that their envy, rage, anger, and hatred (invidia, ira, livor, odium) impel them to denigrate poets and even to misunderstand the Bible (e.g., Gen. 1, Pr. 29–31; Gen. 14, Pr. 6; Gen. 14.1.2; 14.2, 4–6; 14.5.12; and 14.14.6–8). In the Corbaccio, Boccaccio highlights the erroneous nature of the protagonists’ anger by suggesting that their hatred stems from a grotesque misreading of the Remedia itself. The guide suggests that he will offer

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advice from Ovid’s poem by noting that “ai più pronti remedi [è] ricorso e ricorr[e]” ([he] has had to and still does take recourse to the most ready remedies) (Corb. §278; emphasis added). However, he then contradicts the key piece of ethical advice in Ovid’s text. Contrary to what Ovid enjoins, the guide commands the narrator to hate: “Ciò, che tu hai amato, ti conviene avere in odio; e ciò, che tu per lo altrui amore t’eri a volere fare disposto, a fare il contrario, sì che tu odio acquisti” (Thus, what you formerly loved, you must now hate; and that which you were once disposed to do for the love of another, now do the opposite so you receive hatred) (Corb. §§382–83).33 By contrast, Ovid had explicitly forbidden one to hate an ex-­lover because such hatred reveals a misunderstanding of the fictional nature of both love and hatred in elegiac literature. In other words, Ovid suggested that his precepts about hatred concern fiction just as his ideas about love have artistic overtones. For example, Ovid advised that a lover could stop loving by creating a negative fictional image of the beloved for purposes of self-­deception: ipse tibi furtim decipiendus eris (you should secretly deceive yourself ) (Rem. 212, and cf. 308). In case readers did not understand the fictional nature of his advice, he deliberately specified that real hatred is a crime. He declared that hatred is emblematic of bestial feelings: sed modo dilectam scelus est odisse puellam; / exitus ingeniis convenit iste feris (but it is a crime to hate the beloved; that is the mark of a bestial disposition) (Rem. 655–56, and generally 655–59). The guide’s and dreamer’s hatred for the widow reveals that they have misread the literal sense of the Remedia, the explicit command not to hate. Their anger also demonstrates that they have misunderstood the symbolic dimension of hatred in the poem, namely, that the principles about hatred are metafictional in nature. They do not realize that Ovid enjoined readers to create an unreal, fictional representation of a former lover to free themselves from unhealthy desires. Instead, the foolish duo fixates ever more intently on hating the widow. Boccaccio thus suggests that hatred of the widow reveals a comprehensive misreading of the symbolic nature of bodies and love in elegy, and by extension in his own and in God’s books. Furthermore, he thereby clarified the metaliterary significance of hatred in the “Introduction” to Day 4, a concept that also informs Decameron 8.7. Recalling Ovid’s advice to visualize a lover’s hypothetical faults to create a “fiction” of hatred (Rem. 300), Pampinea notes that Rinieri ponders the widow’s defects and then transforms his love into hatred: “sdegnato forte

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verso di lei, il lungo e fervente amor portatole subitamente in crudo e acerbo odio trasmutò” (becoming extremely angry toward her, he quickly transformed his once fervent love for her into crude and bitter hatred) (Dec. 8.7.39–40).34 Rinieri’s hatred also leads him to destroy a symbol for the textual body, just as critics of Ovid and Boccaccio lacerate symbols for books. He allows the widow to burn under the sun while trapped on a tower, and her body shrivels up like a burning manuscript. Therefore, by depicting ignorant protagonists, the Corbaccio condemns the same poor readings of feminine elegy that are criticized by Ovid in his elegiac poems. Moreover, the allusions to God’s symbolic uses of the female gender remind readers that the Lord never hated or rejected what was classified as feminine. In his scholarship, Boccaccio also condemns readings motivated by hatred. In the Genealogie, he countered the hateful reading depicted in the Corbaccio by enjoining King Hugo IV of Cyprus, the work’s (symbolic) dedicatee, to read the poets regia caritate (with regal charity) (Gen. 14.1.3).35 In the Genealogie, Boccaccio probably drew on the concept of compassion in relation to reading to expand upon Augustine’s call to read charitably. In De doctrina christiana, Augustine explained that if a reader were to encounter in the Bible a symbol or passage that appeared heterodox, it should be interpreted in such a way as to promote love.36 In the Genealogie, Boccaccio’s discussions of carnal symbolism in the Bible and literature also propose that a healthy mind never understood anything in a perverse manner, in the Bible or elsewhere. Both the Genealogie and the Corbaccio remind readers that, if motivated by a pure heart and sincere intentions, they will not be seduced by the erotic in literature or reality. Instead, they will love literature and creation as embodiments of truthful meaning. In the Genealogie and the Corbaccio, Boccaccio thus signaled in clear terms—clear at least to contemporaries—that he was not engaging in a humanist-­inspired rejection of his former literary ideas. He highlighted that the Corbaccio is a critical parody of those who profess hateful, misinformed, and heterodox views.

H AT I N G T H E B O DY ’ S E T H I C S

In the Corbaccio’s proem, the narrator-­dreamer notes that his discourse concerns the topic of ethics. Moreover, how he introduces the moral aims of his narrative antithetically recalls the didactic aims of the Decameron.

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In the Proemio of the Decameron, the narrator introduces the ethical dimension of the text with remarks about compassion: “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti” (It is human to have compassion on those who are suffering) (Dec., Pr. 2). He explains that he almost died of heartbreak, not because his lady had acted inappropriately, but because he had unregulated appetites (Dec., Pr. 3). He concludes that he now feels gratitude for having received guidance from a friend (Dec., Pr. 6–8). Consequently, he will recount delightful and useful stories for women: “le già dette donne, che queste leggeranno parimente diletto delle sollazzevoli cose in quelle mostrate e utile consiglio potranno pigliare” (in reading these, the ladies just mentioned will, perhaps, derive from the delightful things that happen in these tales both pleasure and useful counsel) (Dec., Pr. 14). The Corbaccio narrator also notes that he feels gratitude for help received (Corb. §§2–4). However, he specifies that his discourse will only offer readers general “utilità e consolazione .  .  . e altro no” (utility and consolation . . . and nothing else) (Corb. §5). He explains that he almost hanged himself after an erotic relationship ended (Corb. §7). He continues that, though initially blaming his lover, he now realizes that the mundane things of female Fortuna are not to be trusted (Corb. §§11 and 23).37 The dreamer’s ethical agenda also contradicts Pampinea’s, who tells the story of Rinieri and Elena. Pampinea, who is not implicated in her narrative, as the Corbaccio dreamer is, intends to promote compassion in accord with the Decameron’s goals. Though her story’s gruesome subject will “non sarà senza utilità” (not be without utility), she nevertheless wants readers to learn to have “alquanta compassione” (some compassion) (Dec. 8.7.3). Pampinea suggests that her story also concerns the female things of creation. She describes Elena, who will trick Rinieri, as a woman with a beautiful body, noble lineage, and abundant goods of “fortuna” (Dec. 8.7.4). By having the dreamer state that his story will not engender delight or compassion, Boccaccio signaled that the Corbaccio does not have the same literary or ethical goals as his previous erotic, elegiac-­inspired writings. Moreover, by foregrounding the protagonists’ relationship to worldly goods and women in the proemial sections, he highlights that the ethics of each text concern one’s relation to the feminine aspects of creation. The Corbaccio scholar then unwittingly reveals the flawed nature of his ethics by contradicting moral precepts that appeared in love treatises. Capellanus commanded that lovers should court persons with a noble

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character and be wary of appearances (De amore 1.6.1 and 8–16). Ovid too had advised lovers to seek virtuous partners and to seek out aliquid corpore pluris (something beyond the body) (Ars 2.143–44). The Corbaccio narrator instead courts a lover because he was attracted by her appearance and “atti esteriori” (exterior acts) (Corb. §§94 and 345–46). Pampinea had also explained that Rinieri and Elena were motivated by carnal desires.38 Rinieri believes that God blesses whoever can embrace the naked Elena (Dec. 8.7.6). For her part, Elena only eats and sleeps with her lover, and, having lost him, she desires him back in her bed (Dec. 8.7.60). As the three protagonists misread the poetics of erotic treatises, so they misread the ethical advice of these works. Whereas the treatises advise readers to look beyond the physical and carnal, the protagonists fixate on the body. Consequently, the Corbaccio again presents them and their behavior as flawed. Medieval readers, who were aware of these ethical commonplaces, would have understood that their behavior violated normative moral ideas, in both Christian and erotic-­didactic texts. Moreover, the protagonists’ understanding of love raises questions about their comprehension of textual matters. Given that being a good lover was commonly intertwined with being a sophisticated writer and reader, the fact that these “humanists” are foolish lovers engenders doubt about their literary abilities. In the Genealogie, Boccaccio explained that poor readers of erotica only think about sex and food, and sensualitate duce se trahi permictunt (allow themselves to be seduced by sensuality) (Gen. 14.3.6 and 14.2.1–4). In the “Introduction” to Day 4, Boccaccio had also noted that poor readers were motivated by “appetiti corrotti” (corrupt appetites) (Dec. 4, Intr. 42). In each text, Boccaccio asserts that immoral desires prevent readers from understanding the moral meaning of elegiac texts. In the Corbaccio, he also suggests that readers misinterpret the ethical dimension of texts because of their own sinful desires. Boccaccio critiques the misreading of his protagonists by showing how it affects them negatively. In the Corbaccio, Boccaccio dramatizes the effects of their misreading by having the protagonists view the body in a way that recalls how Ameto and Boccaccio-­pilgrim considered the female form. But how they interpret the body, and the effects of their interpretation, differ significantly. In the metaphoric terms of these texts, the dreamer and scholar do not use the body to help them navigate the world as do Ulysses or Ameto. Boccaccio initially recalls the figure of

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Ulysses-­Ameto by suggesting that the dreamer has become enslaved to Circe, who transformed Ulysses’s crew into beasts with her eroticism. At the beginning of his dream, the narrator finds himself in a “porcile di Venere” (venereal pigsty): “dove che io mi volgessi, sentire mughi, urli e strida diversi e ferocissimi animali” (wherever I turned myself I heard the bellowing, shrieking, and crying of various animals) (Corb. §§57 and 32). Likewise Pampinea suggests that Rinieri was a beast trapped by the Circean-­like Elena: “il tenne gran tempo in pastura” (she put him out to graze for a long time) (Dec. 8.7.14). The phrase recalls an overt reference to Circe in Purgatorio 14, the canto dedicated to those purifying themselves of envy, the sin opposed to the virtue of compassion. On the second terrace of Mount Purgatory, the pilgrim hears that the Tuscan communes are so full of envy that they have become beasts controlled by the ancient enchantress: “hanno sì mutata lor natura / . . . / che par che Circe li avesse in pastura” (they changed their nature so much . . . that it seemed Circe had put them out to graze) (Purg. 14.40–42).39 These lines characterize the protagonists as bestial sinners who are dominated by Circe because they look askance at (invidere) the souls, bodies, and goods of other persons. Whereas Ameto learned to view the nymphs’ bodies as symbols for metaphysical truths, the protagonists of the Corbaccio instead merely fixate on the female form. Ameto viewed the nymphs’ hair, head, eyes, and chest, and then attempted to glimpse the hidden parts of their bodies (e.g., Ameto 9.11–29; and 12.6–30). The shepherd’s gaze represented his future ability to see truth behind the literal-­physical veil. The Corbaccio protagonists also reflect upon the widow’s supposedly decaying and grotesque body by reviewing her face, eyes, chest, and so on (Corb. §§254–72, 282–90, and 291–96). Their morbid fascination with her apparently hideous body antithetically recalls Ameto’s arousal when viewing the nymphs’ sensual presence.40 As Ameto did with the nymphs, so the dreamer and guide attempt to peek behind the widow’s veils. They try to strip away her “art” to see her naked form. The guide explains that her “artificiata” (artificial) face has the color of swamp gas when she awakes in the morning (Corb. §§282–83). He continues that her breasts, which appear full and solid when hidden by clothes, resemble either two rotten apples or an empty bladder (Corb. §§287–89). And he observes that her belly recalls the loose furrowed skin that hangs from the chin to the chest of an ox,

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and specifies that it must be lifted before urination or intercourse (Corb. §290). Their visual stripping concludes with a lengthy description of her vagina that recalls the nautical voyage of Ulysses-­Ameto-­Affron: La bocca, per la quale nel porto s’entra, è tanta e tale che, quantunque il mio legnetto con assai grande albero navigasse, non fu già mai, qualunque ora l’acque furono minori, che io non avesse, senza sconciarmi di nulla, a un compagno, che con non minore albero di me navigato fosse, fatto luogo. Deh, che dich’io? L’armata del Re Ruberto, qualora egli la fece maggiore, tutta insieme concatenata, senza calar vela o tirare in alto temone, a grandissimo agio vi potrebbe essere entrata. Ed è mirabile cosa che mai legno non v’entrò che non vi perisse e che, vinto e stanco, fuori non ne fosse gittatto, sì come in Cicilia la Silla e la Cariddi si dice che fanno: che l’una tranghiotisce le navi e l’altra le gitta fuori. Egli è per certo quel golfo una voragine infernale. (Corb. §§292–93) The mouth that leads into her port is so big and wide that, although my little ship was endowed with a big mast, there never would have been any danger, though the waters were less then, if a companion would have traveled with me with a mast equal to mine. But what am I saying? Even the whole armada of King Robert chained together, when he enlarged it, could have easily entered there without lowering sail or pulling in anchor. And it is a wondrous thing that a ship never entered without dying and without being tossed out overwhelmed and exhausted, as they say that Scylla and Charybdis do in Sicily, the former sucking the ships in and the latter spitting them out. Her gulf is absolutely an infernal abyss. Whereas Affron gained wisdom from viewing and then having intercourse with Mopsa’s body, the dreamer and guide instead become bewitched by the widow’s insides. Unlike Ameto, they do not have fertile intercourse with a text, namely, read allegorically to discover virtue or divine meaning. Rather their hermeneutic practices are characterized—by themselves— as impotent, and they are ultimately subsumed by the female body. Their inability to implement normative interpretative practices renders them

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incapable of seeing anything, or any truth, in or beyond the corpus. The protagonists’ fixation on the female form traps them physically in the world, denying them access to spiritual understanding or transcendental knowledge. Therefore, Boccaccio does not depict an epistemological iter in the Corbaccio that contradicts the ideology of the Ameto to show that he has revised his ethics. The inversion demonstrates that the protagonists of the Corbaccio have flawed moral views, views that are opposed to the ethics of Boccaccio’s earlier works. He continues to reveal the skewed nature of their ideas by underscoring that the protagonists have misread the very texts that inspire their views. The protagonists appear to have misunderstood Ovid’s Remedia, which shapes their view of the widow’s body. By stripping away her physical and sensual art, the guide attempts to implement the key components of Ovid’s ethical advice. Ovid had recommended that a lover could liberate oneself from unhealthy desires by creating a fictional image of the beloved. He proposes that the lovesick person should mentally in peius dotes deflecte puellae (turn the beloved’s positive traits into negative ones) (Rem. 325, and cf. 315).41 Ovid offers examples of how to do this by discussing the physical features, talents, and body parts of a lover in a manner that anticipates the guide’s discussion of the widow’s body and virtues: “quam mala” dicebam “nostrae sunt crura puellae!” (nec tamen, ut vere confiteamur, erant); “bracchia quam non sunt nostrae formosa puellae!” (et tamen, ut vere confiteamur, erant). (Rem. 317–20) “how misshapen”—I would say—“are my lover’s legs!” (but still I confess that they were not) “how unbecoming are my girl’s arms!” (but again I confess that they were not) turgida, si plena est, si fusca est, nigra vocetur. (Rem. 327; cf. 347–50 and 429–30) If she is full figured, call her fat, if tan, call her dark.

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The protagonists have also seemingly misunderstood the ethical dimension of the rhetorical descriptio corporis. Medieval rhetoricians advised that orators could influence an audience’s response by creating a detailed image of a beautiful or an ugly body. The guide accordingly tells the narrator to “imagina” (imagine) his verbal evocation of the widow’s physical presence (Corb. §280). The key aspect of the descriptio was that it was fictional, and classified under the rubric effictio. In the Rhetorica novissima (1235), Boncompagno da Signa discussed the epideictic technique in relation to the trope of transformation (transumptio). His example of the figure of speech concerns how a beautiful woman can be rhetorically transformed into an ugly one: Transumitur [mulier speciosa] in viperam, . . . in rubiginem, voraginem, eruginem et latrinam. . . . Pudibundum eius transumitur in portum confusionis, in os inferni, in rivulum aque fetentis, in antrum, in speluncam luctuosam, in fornacem ignis ardentis, in dolium.42 Transform [a beautiful woman] into a serpent, . . . a sore, an abyss, a rusty latrine. . . . Her privates can be turned into a port of chaos, the mouth of hell, a fetid river, a cave, a woeful pit, an oven of burning fire, a barrel. Boccaccio appears to draw on Boncompagno’s ideas by transforming the sensuous description of the nymphs in the Ameto into a repulsive description of the widow in the Corbaccio.43 Several of Boncompagno’s aquatic metaphors for the genitals may have influenced Boccaccio’s description of the widow’s body. The protagonists do not grasp that the precepts of the Remedia and rhetorical texts are of a fictional nature and designed to help them navigate the world. In fact, their desires prevent them from reading corporeal signs for ethical meaning. They reveal their superficial fixation on the body when they reinterpret the widow’s supposed virtues. Whereas Ovid had advised the lovesick person to transform an ex-­lover’s virtues into opposing vices, they “transform” the widow’s moral virtues into sexual ones. The guide explains that the widow was courteous; she courteously satisfied the desires of everyone who wanted to be with her: “meritamente dice piacerle la cortesia: sì come colei che, mentre da dovere essere richie­sta è stata, mai

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disdir nol seppe” (rightly she says that she liked courtesy, for whenever someone requested it from her, she never knew how to withhold it) (Corb. §255). He adds that the widow was actually wise. He explains that she opened a philosophical school akin to Plato’s where she taught women to satisfy their desires wisely: “tutte quelle donne, che hanno ardire e cuore e sanno modo trovare d’essere tante volte e con tanti uomini con quanti il loro appetito concupiscibile richie­dea, erano da essere chiamate savie” (all those women, who have the daring, heart, and know-­how to be whenever they feel like it with as many men as their carnal appetites require, were to be called wise) (Corb. §260). Boccaccio characterizes such reading negatively by showing that the protagonists’ view of the female body harms them. The dreamer and guide correctly produce a fictional image of the body, as Ovid and rhetorical treatises advised. However, in assuming these images to be true, they become trapped in their own faulty image of reality. In other words, they become trapped in and by the physical images that they cannot read. The carnal images do not allow them a glimpse of metaphysical truths, but only compel them to fixate ever more intensely on erotic bodies and sexual matters. Their epistemological “journey” to knowledge thus contradicts basic affective, contemplative, and theological notions about humanity’s earthly search for meaning. In the Decameron, Rinieri’s and Elena’s fixation on the body and errant reading of erotica similarly traps them in the world. Rinieri misreads the elegiac exclusus amator trope that symbolized a lover’s failure with a woman. Ovid often imagined himself locked outside in the cold awaiting Corinna, who may be hosting one of his rival lovers.44 Therefore, in standing outside a locked house in the snow, Rinieri has misread the Ovidian-­inspired symbol designed to warn him that he would be locked out and frozen (no love). His situation thus recalls the hateful critics described as “assiderati” (frost bitten) in the “Introduction” to Day 4 (Dec. 4, Intr. 42). Rinieri also misreads the symbolic, ethical meaning of “court” in “courtly love” (the pun involves the words corte, cortesia, and amor cortese).45 Capellanus had warned that a lover would become physically trapped as if in a court if one courted for carnal motives: Mulier ait: “In amoris curiam facillimus est inventus ingressus, sed propter imminentes amantium poenas ibi est perserverare difficile, ex ea vero propter appetibiles actus amoris impossibilis deprehenditur exitus atque durissimus. . . . Tartareae etenim talis potest locus curiae comparari;

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nam, quum Tartari porta cuilibet intrare moretur aperta volenti, nulla est post ingressum exeundi facultas.” (De amore 1.6E.213–14) The woman says: “It is very easy to discover the entrance to the court [curiam] of love, yet difficult to abide there, because of the pains poised above lovers; but people find it impossible and insuperably hard to leave because of the acts of love which they crave. . . . Such a place is comparable to the court of Hell, for though the gate of Hell stands open to anyone desirous of entering, once inside there is no prospect of leaving.” Rinieri mistakenly walks into a court, which, if it had been interpreted correctly, should have warned him against pursuing his desires. Elena also misunderstands the “courtly” in courtly love. Instead of promoting or pursuing cortesia, she invites the scholar into her court to inflame her desire with a lover (Dec. 8.7.15–21 and 25–28). She later misreads the image of a tower that recalls her own tower and court. The widow walks into her own courtly trap because she misunderstands an image that should have warned her against going up the tower. Once on the tower she is burned over the course of a day by the same flames that, according to her, burned the scholar: “Deh! levianci un poco e andiamo a vedere se ’l fuoco è punto spento nel quale questo mio novello amante tutto il dì mi scrivea che ardeva” (Now, let’s get up and go see if the fire is now spent that my new lover told me burned him all day long) (Dec. 8.7.28 and cf. 37). As in the Corbaccio, Boccaccio dramatized the negative ethical effects of misreading by having the protagonists harmed by the very symbols that were written to help them.46 Therefore, their own poor hermeneutic practices cause them physical distress and spiritual suffering. The protagonists’ misreading leads them to harm others and even hate their bodies. As they destroy the carnal symbol for a text, so they hate the physical body upon which the symbol is based. In the Corbaccio, the guide commands that the narrator hate only that which specifically harmed him, the widow’s body: Tu hai amata costei perché bella ti pareva, perché dilettevole nelle cose libidinose l’aspettavi. Voglio che tu abbi in odio la sua bellezza,

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in quanto di peccare ti fu cagione, o essere ti potesse nel futuro; voglio che tu abbi in odio ogni cosa che in le’ in così fatto atto dilettevole la stimassi; la salute dell’anima sua voglio che tu ami e disideri; e, dove per piacere agli occhi tuoi andavi desiderosamente dove vedere la credevi, che tu similemente questo abbi in odio. (Corb. §383) You loved her because she seemed beautiful to you, and because you were hoping to delight in erotic acts. I want you to hate her beauty since it caused you to sin, or because it could cause you to sin again in the future. I want you to hate everything that you once considered pleasurable in relation to her, though I want you to love and desire the salvation of her soul. And wherever you once went to find pleasure for your eyes because you believed her to be there, I similarly want you to hate those places. In the Decameron, Elena traps Rinieri in her court for purposes of arousal, and then she mocks him with her lover while he nearly freezes to death (Dec. 8.7.25–32). Pampinea suggests that Elena and her lover also hate when she notes that only Elena’s servant felt compassion for Rinieri (Dec. 8.7.41). Whereas Elena becomes sadistically aroused at others’ pain, Rini­ eri transforms his compassionate love for her into an unnatural and a hateful desire to destroy her body: egli veggendo lei con la bianchezza del suo corpo . . . , sentí di lei alcuna compassione. E d’altra parte lo stimolo della carne l’assalí subitamente e fece tale in piè levare che si giaceva e confortavalo che egli da guato uscisse e lei andasse a prendere e il suo piacer ne facesse: e vicin fu a essere tra dall’uno e dall’altro vinto. Ma nella memoria tornandosi chi egli era e qual fosse la ’ngiuria ricevuta e perché e da cui, e per ciò nello sdegno raccesosi e la compassione e il carnale appetito cacciati, stette nel suo proponimento fermo e lasciolla andare. (Dec. 8.7.66–68) Seeing her and the whiteness of her body . . . , he felt a little compassion. Moreover, the desires of the flesh stimulated him and

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made stand up what was lying down, and prompted him to consider leaving his hiding place and going to pleasure himself with her. He was wavering between one and the other idea. But remembering who he was and how, why, and by whom he had been injured, his hatred was reignited and his compassion and carnal desires were chased away. Firm in his original plan, he let her pass by. Against the natural feelings of desire and compassion humans have for one other, Rinieri persists in his perverse hatred of the widow and her body.47 As Ovid had explained, those who mistakenly hate a former lover prove themselves to be beasts. Trapped in Circe’s court and perversely stimulated by others’ suffering, the protagonists of the Decameron and the Corbaccio have in fact revealed their affinity for “bestialità” (bes­ti­ality) (Corb. §200). In professing hatred, the protagonists of the Corbaccio and Decameron 8.7 view the ethics of literature in a way that contradicts the ethics of elegiac and Christian authors. Ovid declared that one should not write to harm others, but to calm savage passions, encourage love, engender pleasure, and improve character (Ars 1.9–14; 1.30–34; 2.703–32; and 3.539–50). He argued that those who sought vengeance against or spoke badly of former lovers did so because of flawed dispositions, because they were still enslaved to their corrupt desires (Rem. 643–50 and 693–98). The  scholars of the Corbaccio and the Decameron instead threaten vengeance against their ex-­lovers in writing. In contrast to Ovid’s views, the guide advises that the dreamer seek “satisfazione” (satisfaction) for himself by condemning the widow: “questa ingannatrice, come a glorificarla eri disposto, così ad avilarla e parvificarla ti disponi” (this trickster, whereas you were going to glorify her, instead prepare yourself to humiliate and vilify her) (Corb. §§385 and 384–87). The dreamer responds that he will seek his own satisfaction, pursue vengeance, and share her faults publicly (Corb. §§388–91). In accord with his fixation on the carnal, the narrator even envisions his literary vengeance as an attack on the widow’s body. The dreamer announces that he will compose a second harsher attack that will puncture her corpus: ella è da pugnere con più acuto stimolo che tu [Piccola mia operetta] non porti con teco; il quale, concedendolo Colui che

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d’ogni grazia è donatore, tosto a pugnerla, non temendo, le si faccia incontro. (Corb. §413) She is to be poked with an even harsher point than that which you [my little work] carry with you. May God, who is the giver of every grace, grant it, so that when she approaches you might without fear quickly attack her. Rinieri similarly threatens that he could embarrass Elena with his pen to the point that she would physically disfigure herself: Le forze della penna son troppo maggiori che coloro non estimano che quelle con conoscimento provate non hanno. Io giuro a Dio (e se Egli di questa vendetta che io di te prendo mi faccia allegro infin la fine come nel cominciamento m’ha fatto) che io avrei di te scritte cose che, non che dell’altre persone ma di te stessa vergognandoti, per non poterti vedere t’avresti cavati gli occhi. (Dec. 8.7.99–100) The powers of the pen are far mightier than those people suppose who have not known them through experience. I swear to God (and may he allow the revenge I am taking on you to be as sweet right up to the end as it has been from the beginning), I would have written such things about you that you yourself, not to speak of other people, would have been so ashamed that you would have gouged your own eyes out rather than look upon yourself again. By criticizing women publicly, the protagonists—as Ovid suggested— reveal their own flawed moral disposition. Their literary threats suggest that they have not found a remedy for their vices. The protagonists’ understanding of ethics and literature also contradicts Boccaccio’s views of the ethical goal of writing. Inspired by the etymology of “elegy” (related to pity, compassion), Boccaccio drew on the poetics of the genre as a form of imitatio Christi. As Christ compassionately forgives those suffering in the world, so Boccaccio strives to inspire readers to have charity and forgive others. Pampinea, the narrator of

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Decameron 8.7, recalls the ethics of the Decameron by proclaiming that her story should teach compassion. The female members of the brigata also denounce Rinieri’s method of punishment as lacking mercy: Gravi e noiosi erano stati i casi d’Elena a ascoltare 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. (Dec. 8.8.2) Grievous and painful as Elena’s misfortunes were for the ladies to hear, they listened to them with restrained compassion, since they felt she had in part deserved them, although at the same time they did consider the scholar to have been somewhat rigid, and fiercely relentless, not to mention cruel. Fiammetta, who tells the story after Pampinea, will thus tell a delightful story to refresh the brigata’s spirits and teach them how to forgive (Dec. 8.8.3).48 Finally, explicit remarks in the Genealogie again reveal that the Corbaccio is not a palinode. Unlike the Corbaccio scholar, and the humanist readers that he represents, Boccaccio says that he will gently forgive his critics. In the Genealogie, he announces that he too could poke his detractors acrioribus verbis et aculeis acutioribus (with harsher words and sharper points) (Gen. 14.21.1–2). Motivated by compassion, however, he will instead pardon their flawed views of his poetics and ethics. Therefore, throughout his life, Boccaccio preferred to imitate Christ by forgiving those who did not understand the true nature of humanity, creation, and literature. He thereby distinguished his authorial identity from two cruel fools who have misread Ovid’s poems, his own elegiac writings, the Bible, medieval literary theory, contemplative thought, and creation generally speaking.

P E T R A RC H ’ S V I S I O N , A N D DA N T E ’ S

In the Corbaccio, Boccaccio reflects on how ambiguous comments about the erotic (textual) body in Petrarch’s writings might influence readers.

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He highlights that the Corbaccio concerns this topic by having the pro­ tago­nists repeat negative ideas about love in Petrarch’s writings. The dreamer’s love story recalls the themes and narrative of the Canzoniere and the review of those themes in the Secretum. Like Petrarch, who became lost in “giovenile errore” (youthful error) and felt ashamed, so the narrator has made an “errore” (error) and feels shame (RVF 1.3 and 11; and Corb. §21). Petrarch lamented that he had become the subject of “favola” (gossip), and Augustinus too noted that he had become the vulgi fabula (talk of the masses) (RVF 1.10; and Sec. 3.12.6). The dreamer similarly complains that he himself has been publicly mocked by the widow and become a topic of “favola” (gossip) (Corb. §§112–14). In addition, the Circean valley in which the dreamer finds himself enslaved to love recalls Petrarch’s metaphoric existential trap. As Petrarch describes love as an unescapable labyrinth, so the dreamer cannot flee from the “labirinto d’Amore” (maze of Love) (RVF 211.14 and 224.4; and Corb. §§57 and 77). The dreamer’s age also recalls that at age forty Petrarch had already or was wanting to transcend his erotic desires (Sen. 18.1.6 and Sec. 3.3.3; and Corb. §119). Still, like Petrarch, who often suggested that he had only converted in part, the dreamer upon waking realizes that things have “in parte [gli] era tornato migliore” (turned out better [for him] in part) (RVF 1.4; and Corb. §409). The guide also echoes advice about remedies for love found in Petrarch’s Latin works. Boccaccio alerts readers to the fact that these remarks are inspired by Petrarch by intimating that the guide may be Petrarch. In the Triumphi, Petrarch had recognized his “vero amico” (true friend) as the guide because of their common place of birth (Tr. Cup. 1.47–48). The Corbaccio dreamer also recognizes his guide because they are from the “comune patria” (same land) (Corb. §43). The allusion to Tuscany suggests that the guide probably represents either Petrarch or Dante. The guide then offers antivenereal remarks found compactly in book 3 of the Secretum, but which have parallels throughout Petrarch’s other works.49 The guide also discourages the dreamer from loving because of his age and studies, which are Petrarchan commonplaces (Corb. §§118–21). The dreamer repeats these sentiments nearly verbatim at the end of the dialogue (Corb. §375). In addition, the guide notes that at forty years old the dreamer already has greying hair; love does not suit such a prematurely old man; his studies should have shown him the nature of love and

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women; and by loving “a Dio e a’ [suoi] studii e a [se] medesimo [fa] inguria” ([he] harms God, [his] studies, and [him]self ) (Corb. §§119–21 and 130; cf. 127). Augustinus similarly chides that Franciscus at forty already has premature white hair; he should be ashamed that he still loves; love does not accord with his scholarly profession; and love has harmed his soul, relationship with God, and studies (Sec. 3.11.11, 3.12.6, 3.13.5, and 3.13.5–7). The allusions to Petrarch’s persona in the opening and concluding sections of the text create a Petrarchan frame for the dreamer’s visionary experience. Augustinus in the Secretum or Ratio in the De remediis may also have inspired the depiction of the guide’s unsuccessful nautical voyage in and through the widow’s body. In Petrarch’s works, those who think that the body can symbolize divine truth risk a metaphoric shipwreck. Franciscus initially tries to defend his love for Laura on the grounds that in cuius aspectu, siquid usquam veri est, divini specimen decoris effulget (in her countenance, there is something true, a trace of divine beauty shines) (Sec. 3.3.2). Ratio explored a similar thesis about the value of physical creation in debates with Gaudium (De rem. 1.69.28). Augustinus and Ratio ultimately dismiss the possibility that the carnal signifies by arguing that it impedes love for God. Laura and her body have nearly caused Franciscus to shipwreck; she has in splendidum impulit [eum] baratrum (driven [him] into a profound abyss) (Sec. 3.4.11). Ratio warns that Gaudium too will have a similar fate if he uses creation as a guide: inter scopulos fragilem cymbam agis! (you force your small boat onto the rocks!) (De rem. 1.69.30). Throughout the Canzoniere, Petrarch also worried that he might shipwreck because he had sometimes navigated the perils of the world by reference to Laura’s physical appearance (e.g., in “Passa la nave mia colma d’oblio” and “Gli occhi di ch’io parlai sì caldamente”; RVF 189 and 292). Augustinus tries to help Franciscus avoid crashing by commanding him to think about the real, nonfictional feminei corporis feditatem (female bodily filth) (Sec. 3.13.8). As in the Corbaccio, so in the Secretum the result of anger against women and their bodies is hatred. Although Augustinus had initially told Franciscus that Laura had no culpability, he later complains that she never felt pity for him (Sec. 3.4.10; and 3.13.5–7). By having the guide echo these Petrarchan commonplaces, Boccaccio clarifies that such remarks—though fictional and rhetorical—can have nega­ tive ethical consequences. In the Corbaccio, he shows that they can be

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deployed in ways that are potentially misleading and even sinful. Indeed, other readers and writers might begin to think—as the Corbaccio protagonists do—that these kinds of humanist-­inspired views are not merely rhetorical in nature. In the Corbaccio, Boccaccio also recalls Petrarch’s championing of ancient culture and Latin literature versus modern vernacular writing.50 However, he evokes such Petrarchan ideas not to signal his agreement with them, but to question and qualify their validity. In epistles Familiares 21.15 and Seniles 5.2, Petrarch explained that he had distinguished himself from the ignorant masses both by pursuing classical studies and by abandoning his cultivation of vernacular writing. The guide similarly specifies that the narrator has distanced himself from the vulgar masses by means of his “sacred studies”: E, se il minore uomo è da tanto, da quanto dovrà essere colui, la cui virtù ha fatto ch’egli dagli altri ad alcuna eccelenzia sia elevato? Da quanto dovrà essere colui il quale i sacri studii, la filosofia ha dalla meccanica turba separato? (Corb. §194) And, if the least man is of so much worth, how much must he be, whose virtue has raised him to some excellence? How great must he be whose sacred studies and philosophy have distinguished him from the vulgar crowd? In the De vita solitaria (ca. 1346 and revised 1353–66), Petrarch also championed the bucolic solitary life as that best suited for literary pursuits. Boccaccio mentioned the work while discussing Petrarch’s philosophical and moral writings (Gen. 14.10.5). Moreover, in the Canzoniere, Petrarch characterized himself as a writer accustomed to wandering alone in nature (see “Solo et pensoso i più diserti campi”; RVF 35). The guide explains that the narrator too enjoys an existence free from worldly preoccupations; he likes to be alone, write poetry, and strive for fame: A te s’appartiene, e so che tu ’l conosci, più d’usare i solitarii luoghi che le moltitudini, ne’ templi e negli altri publici luoghi raccolte, visitare; e quivi stando, operando, versificando, essercitare lo ’ngegno

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e sforzarti di divenire migliore e d’ampliare a tuo podere, più con cose fatte che con parole, la fama tua. (Corb. §196) You are more used to visiting—and I know that you are aware of it—the solitary places than the throngs of people gathered in churches and other public places. There you dwell, work, write poetry, exercise your mind, and strive to become better and extend your fame to the best of your ability more with facts than with words. The guide concludes with remarks about how the Muses will sing the narrator’s classicizing poems along with those of Homer and Virgil (Corb. §199). Whereas the guide praises the narrator for his Petrarchan-­humanist interests, he criticizes the widow for her interest in popular, vernacular texts. The widow also does not read these works as the Petrarchan author-­ character does, alone in a wood. Rather, she enjoys literature as the female dedicatees of the Decameron do, who are sequestered in their rooms. She entertains herself by reading erotic tales about protagonists such as Lancelot and Guinevere, which is reminiscent of the subtitle Galeotto (Go-­between) of the Decameron, and about Florio and Biancifiore from Boccaccio’s Filocolo: ella legge di Lancelotto e di Ginevra e di Tristano e d’Isotta e le loro prodeze e i loro amori e le giostre e i torniamenti e le semblee. Ella tutta si stritola quando legge Lancelotto o Tristano o alcuno altro colle loro donne nelle camere, segretamente e soli, raunarsi, sì come colei alla quale pare vedere ciò che fanno e che volentieri, come di loro imagina, così farebbe; avvenga che ella faccia sì che di ciò corta voglia sostiene. Legge la Canzone dello indovinello e quella di Florio e di Biancifiore e simili cose assai. (Corb. §316) She reads of Lancelot and Guinevere, of Tristian and Isolde, of their deeds and loves, of their jousts, tournaments, and meetings. She gets all excited when she reads that Lancelot or Tristan or some others

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with their ladies secretly meet alone in their rooms, just as she imagines that she would like to do. She thus can hardly contain her desires. She also reads the Canzone dello indovinello and about Florio and Biancifiore and other similar things. The guide also notes how the widow derided the narrator’s Muses, a likely echo of Petrarch’s complaints that the ignorant misunderstand Latin and Greek studies: Le tue Muse, da te amate e commendate tanto, quivi erano chiamate pazzie. . . . E, oltre a questo, v’era assai peggio che per te: Aristotile, Tulio, Virgilio e Tito Livio e molti altri uomini illustri, per quel ch’io creda, tuoi amici e domestici, erano come fango da loro e scherniti e anullati. (Corb. §§331–32) The Muses that you have loved and praised were called madness. . . . And moreover it was even worse for you: Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, and Livy, and many other illustrious men were, and, from what I gather, your friends and servants, were treated like mud by them and mocked. The guide thus characterizes Boccaccio’s vernacular writings as trifles read by ignorant women, just as Petrarch himself often did. He implies that Boccaccio’s juvenile writings have no value other than as erotic “go-­ betweens.” In other words, his remarks suggest that Boccaccio’s texts do not help readers consider moral or spiritual questions, but only stimulate the erotic desires of uneducated female reading publics. The negative depictions of the protagonists who voice these views undermine the validity of their humanist-­inflected critiques. The Corbaccio deliberately and repeatedly characterizes such views as unbecoming educated, Christian scholars and writers. Boccaccio then compares some of the conflicting remarks about litera­ ture and ethics in Petrarch’s texts to ideas about these same topics in the Comedy. Boccaccio thus agrees with Petrarch’s rhetorical declarations, in works such as Familiares 21.15, that Petrarch does not hate or envy Dante. By writing about love and erotica in ambiguous terms, Petrarch was—in

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Boccaccio’s opinion—echoing potentially confusing ideas about the corpus in Dante’s poem. Boccaccio evokes Dante’s Comedy in the opening and final sections of the text, thereby adding a Dantean frame to the Petrarchan cornice for the dream.51 The Circean valley recalls Petrarch’s maze, but it also recalls landscapes described in the Inferno. The infernal opening leads the reader to consider, if only briefly, that Dante, like Petrarch, may be the guide. Boccaccio encouraged such an interpretation by suggesting that the guide was from Florence.52 The dreamer initially finds himself in a landscape that recalls the “dark wood” (“selva oscura”) described in Inferno 1–3 and the wood of the suicides discussed in Inferno 13: [una nebbia] subitamente intorniatomi, non solamente il mio valore impedìo, ma quasi d’ogni speranza del promesso bene allo ’ntrare del camino mi fece cadere. (Corb. §30) [A fog] suddenly surrounded me, which not only impeded my way, but made me abandon every hope of attaining the promised good at entrance of the path. conobbi me . . . essere stato lasciato in una solitudine diserta, aspra e fiera, piena di salvatiche piante, di pruni e di bronchi, senza sentieri o via alcuna, e intorniata di montagne asprissime e sì alte che colla loro sommità pareva che toccassono il cielo. (Corb. §31) I saw that . . . I had been left in a bitter and fierce deserted solitude, full of savage plants, brambles, and thistles, without paths or any way out. That solitude was surrounded by mountains so harsh and high that their peaks seemed to touch the sky. The “aspra e fiera” (bitter and fierce) landscape resembles Dante’s “aspra e forte” (bitter and harsh) wood and “gran diserto” (great desert); the narrator’s fogginess recalls Dante’s sleep; the loss of hope recalls the writing above Hell’s gate about abandoning all hope (Inf. 1.5, 1.64, and 3.9;

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and cf. Inf. 13.2–3, 26, and 32). The animal sounds that he—an immoral lover—hears might recall similar bestial sounds in Inferno 5, the canto of the lustful (Inf. 5.29 and 35). At the end of the dream, when the narrator has converted in part, he might also be looking up at Mount Purgatory. The guide departs toward a mountaintop, and he salutes the dreamer by repeating Virgil’s last words in the Purgatorio: E, avendomi detto me essere libero e potere di me fare a mio senno, . . . , esso e ’l mio sonno ad una ora si partiro. (Corb. §407) And, having said that I was free and could act according to my intent, . . . , he and my sleep departed at the same time. “libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio, e fallo fora non fare a suo senno: Per ch’io te sovra te corona e mitrio.” (Purg. 27.140–42) “free, upright, and whole is your will, and it would be a fault not to act according to its intent. Therefore you over yourself I crown and mitre.” The dreamer also realizes that the valley was Hell: “parvemi non valle ma una cosa profonda infino in inferno, oscura e piena di notte” (it seemed to me not a valley but a depth down to Hell, black and full of night) (Corb. §406). The guide also recalls Dante’s Inferno when he describes the widow’s body. He compares her body, and especially her genitals, to landscapes ranging from the dark wood to infernal rivers and the Malebolge. His remarks imply that the widow’s bodily fluids are a hellish water park and that her vagina is one of Hell’s “bad pouches” (the etymology of “male + bolge”).53 The initial sight of the widow in the morning recalls the cantos of the simoniacs and of the panderers, seducers, and flatterers (Inf. 18–19):

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Sono molto certo che, se veduta così l’avessi, o la vedessi, che, dove di’ che vedendola al cuore dal suo viso le fiamme ti corsero come fanno alle cose unte, che ti sarebbe paruto che ti si fosse fatto incontro una soma di feccia e uno monte di letame. (Corb. §286) I am totally certain that if you had seen, or were to see her, whereas before seeing her would have made flames run to your heart from her visage as they do on oily things, it would instead have seemed to you as though a pile of dung or a mountain of excrement were before you. The particular description of fire is reminiscent of the simoniacs, who are punished by having their heads stuck in a tomb and their feet burnt: “Qual suole il fiammeggiar de le cose unte / muoversi pur su per la strema buccia, / tal era lì dai calcagni a le punte” (As the flaming of oily things moves over just the outer rind, so did it there from heel to toes) (Inf. 19.28–29). The scatological similitude recalls the flatterers of the previous canto, who are punished in excrement. For example, Thais, the courtesan of Terence’s comedy Eunuchus, scratches herself with despoiled fingernails (Inf. 18.127–36). The widow’s skin seems the color of swamp gas and resembles the river Styx (Corb. §283; and Inf. 8.12). At the entrance to her “voragine infernale” (infernal abyss), the widow’s dark woods are full of animals, which probably recall the animals that Dante encounters in the dark wood (Corb. §291; and Inf. 1.31–54). The waters that flow in her “woods” and from her genitals are again reminiscent of Thais’s immersion: Come che nel vero io non sappia assai bene da qual parte io me debbia cominciare a ragionare del golfo di Settalia, nella valle d’Acheronte riposto, sotto gli oscuri boschi di quella, spesse volte rugginosi e d’una gromma spiacevoli e spumosi, e d’animali di nuova qualità ripieni; ma pure il dirò. (Corb. §291) Indeed, I don’t know how really to start to describe that gulf of Adalia, situated in the valley of Acheron under its dark woods,

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which are often rusty, unpleasant, and foamy with encrustations, and full of new kinds of animals. Yet I will try to tell you. Io mi tacerò de’ fiumi sanguinei e crocei che di quella a vicenda discendono, di bianca muffa faldellati, talvolta non meno al naso che agli occhi dispiacevoli. (Corb. §294) I will not speak about the bloody and encrusted rivers that alternatingly descend from it, which are covered over by white mold and are sometimes as unpleasing to the nose as to the eyes. Le ripe eran grommate d’una muffa, per l’alito di giù che vi s’appasta, che con li occhi e col naso facea zuffa. (Inf. 18.106–8) The banks were encrusted with a mold from the breath from below that condenses there, which assailed both eyes and nose. These and other Dantean echoes liken the widow to various sinners in Hell, but the allusions to Thais appear most appropriate on account of what the guide considers to be the widow’s primary faults. In essence, the guide has made the widow’s body a linguistic composite of Dante’s infernal geography. By having the guide verbally re-­create the (female) corpora described in the Inferno, Boccaccio was distinguishing how he championed the goodness of erotic (textual) bodies. He was juxtaposing his positive depictions of diverse bodies to the nuanced, and thus potentially confusing, representations of them in the Comedy. Such ambiguity in Dante’s poem is re-­presented in the Corbaccio by the two flawed male protagonists. In highlighting this issue, Boccaccio seems to have been especially concerned about the fact that Thais appears in Hell. In the Middle Ages, the prostitute Thais symbolized diverse traits of classical and medieval comedy, such as its humilis, or low, style.54 Thais herself was an emblem of the genre because she was both a protagonist in

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Terence’s drama and a stock character in medieval comedy. As has been suggested, the pilgrim’s encounter with Thais in Hell served to distinguish the linguistic, thematic, and generic properties of the Comedy from other types of pagan and medieval comedies. In Inferno 18, Dante-­poet highlighted the pilgrim’s interaction with Thais to signal that the Comedy’s poetics are not like those of Terentian-­classical low comedy, but rather resemble those of the Bible and its sermo humilis. In medieval culture, however, Thais was also the symbol of Ovid’s elegiac poetics: Thais in arte mea est (Thais is in my art) (Rem. 385). By having a Dantean-­inspired, fallacious guide redamn Thais in the Corbaccio, Boccaccio reminded readers that the works she symbolizes—classical comedy and erotic elegy— should not actually be damned. The implication is that those who do condemn the literatures associated with Thais have not understood these texts, just as the narrator and guide misunderstand the widow. As on other occasions, Boccaccio thus defines his views by championing what had not been overtly and clearly promoted by Dante or Petrarch. The general association of the widow’s body with the Inferno also raises questions about the depiction of divine justice in the Comedy. Already in Decameron 8.7, Boccaccio had intimated that the contrapasso might be both a potentially ambiguous and an exceptionally harsh representation of eternal merit. How Rinieri punishes the widow seems to recall how sinners are punished in Hell.55 For example, as the widow had metaphorically stoked the flames of love in her room, so Rinieri arranges a punishment for her in which the sun burns her body (Dec. 8.7.119–30). By having a flawed protagonist create a contrapasso for the widow, Boccaccio encouraged readers to consider critically the infernal punishments depicted in the Comedy. The Corbaccio and Decameron 8.7 caution readers against passing judgment on the erotic affairs and dispositions of others. Boccaccio thus also warned readers not to punish or castigate other persons. Indeed, the Corbaccio affirms and clarifies that (eternal) judgment and punishment is the purview of God alone. In the Corbaccio, Boccaccio does not implicitly or explicitly intimate that Petrarch or Dante have done anything untoward. He does, however, recall potentially confusing ideas about literature and ethics in their writings to clarify them and distinguish them from his own views. Boccaccio proposed that he had a different—less ambiguous—approach to writing about the erotic corpus. He characterized his writings as presenting in

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clearer terms both positive and flawed views of the female (textual) body. In addition, he was cautioning his readers against voicing seriously mistaken understandings of God’s literary and physical creation. The Corbaccio sends a warning to anyone who might be influenced by passages in Petrarch’s or Dante’s writings. Look—Boccaccio seems to say—look at the flawed logic in attempting to transcend or flee the world. Literary, philosophical, and theological ideas about transcendence and conversion can lead readers to neglect this present life, or even worse, to hate the human body. Boccaccio instead offered an Ovidian remedy to emphasize that a healthy mind motivated by compassion must embrace the body as God and Christ do. He affirmed that good readers, especially those who are informed by Christian theology and hermeneutics, will cherish their earthly voyage and embodiment.

D E S T ROY I N G B O C C AC C I O’ S B O DY

The title Corbaccio might also allude to the destruction of the literary and physical body. Scholars have proposed various interpretations of the title, but they have usually agreed that Corbaccio might derive from the Latin for crow (corvus): corbaccio would be the vernacular pejorative form.56 In the Middle Ages, the crow was considered a bearer of bad news because of its garrulous voice; an image of sin on account of its black color, in particular of carnal sin because its beak could pluck out the eyes of reason; and an emblem of hypocritical preaching. In one of Aesop’s fables, the crow was also a symbol of vanity because it tried to dress like the more comely peacock. Considering these common connotations of the crow, critics have argued that the title might refer to the narrator, the guide, the widow, or the literary text. In the Metamorphoses, Ovid also recounts a myth in which the crow discusses a woman’s erotic exploits with others, just as the dreamer and guide do. Since Boccaccio recalls many Ovidian intertexts in the Corbaccio, he may also have wanted readers to consider Ovid’s myth in relation to the title. Indeed, recalling Ovid’s myth sheds light on the relevance of the text for writers. In the Metamorphoses, Apollo punishes the crow for seeing and then relating that his lover Coronis was sleeping with another (Metam. 2.531– 632). When the crow informs Apollo, the god becomes enraged just as the

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Corbaccio narrator does, and he punctures Coronis’s body with an arrow (Metam. 2.602 and 604–5). Apollo then repents as Coronis announces with her dying gasps that she is pregnant. Though Apollo saves the child from his mother’s womb, he comes to hate himself, his own body for the act of violence, and the crow, whose feathers he changes from white to black: Paenitet heu sero poenae crudelis amantem seque quod audierit, quod sic exarserit, odit; odit avem per quam crimen causamque dolendi scire coactus erat, nec non arcumque manumque odit cumque manu temeraria tela sagittas. (Metam. 2.612–16) Alas too late the lover regrets his cruel punishment, he hates himself, what he heard that enraged him; he hates the bird, who made him know the crime and cause of his pain, and he hates the bow and his hand, and with the hand the arrows, hasty darts. The crow is thus proverbially condemned in perpetuity because of his speech: lingua fuit damno (his tongue damned him) (Metam. 2.540). Being punished for seeing something illicit also recalls one of the reasons why medieval readers thought that Ovid was exiled: perdiderint cum me duo crimina, carmen et error (two crimes ruined me, the poem and the error) (Trist. 2.207; emphasis added).57 Like other medieval biographers of the poet, Boccaccio notes that Ovid might either have seen the emperor Augustus naked when he was a child or had an affair with his wife, Livia (Espos. 4.1.123–25). The myth about the crow and these details in Ovid’s (auto)biography suggest that illicitly viewing the corpus or speaking ill of it can have dire consequences for a writer. Ovid’s personal and fictive narratives provide a warning for those who see, write about, or want to punish the erotic acts of others. They imply that those who improperly write about these acts may in turn be punished, and that their bodies may even be disfigured. In contrast to Ameto or Boccaccio, who have healthy views of love, the voyeuristic writer who fetishizes the erotic affairs of others may regret the interest.58

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The title evokes an Ovidian myth about mangled bodies, but it also recalls another disfigured corpus. That the title Corbaccio might evoke Boccaccio’s own name has rarely been considered.59 Corbaccio, in fact, recalls the author who used his own body as a symbol for the literary text (Dec. 4, Intr. 32). The title evinces the body since corbaccio is close to the vernacular diminutive of corpo: corpaccio. As a pejorative form, the title suggests that Boccaccio’s female literary body has been disfigured just as the widow’s has. In other words, those who misread ruin Boccaccio’s name, his reputation, and the ideology of his works. As the crow disfigured Coronis’s body and his own with his views, so critics mangle bodies with their mistaken ideas. Their failure to interpret compassionately has literally deformed a name and metaphorically a literary body: Boccaccio’s.

Epilogue

In the fourteenth century, the Italian peninsula witnessed recurring debate about the dignity of the vernacular, growing fascination with ancient culture, the invention of diverse literary forms, and increasing plurilingualism.1 Boccaccio himself promoted vernacular writing by editing or commenting on Dante’s lyric poems, Vita nova, and Comedy from the mid-­1350s to 1374.2 He also ennobled the Florentine language by writing vernacular texts in canonical genres such as lyric poetry, eclogue, dream vision, and pastoral. In addition, Boccaccio created new types of vernacular literature by composing works with elements drawn from epic, romance, elegy, and short story. With respect to Hellenistic culture, Boccaccio was responsible for bringing Leontius Pilatus to teach Greek at the Florentine Studium (1360–62), and for encouraging him to translate Homer into Latin.3 Like his contemporary, Petrarch, Boccaccio was active in the collecting and copying of classical Latin texts (e.g., works by Terence, Seneca, Martial, Statius, and Livy). He complemented these codicological pursuits 255

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by compiling interpretations of ancient myths and by imitating Ovidian elegy in his writings. The plurality of Boccaccio’s cultural interests was matched by the diversity of the geographical, social, and political contexts in which he lived, worked, and wrote. Boccaccio grew up (1327–40) in the chivalric, aristocratic court environment of Naples, which was permeated by French, Italian, Latin, and Mediterranean cultures. As an adult (1341– 75), he lived in the mercantile, communal, and republican environment of Florence, which was characterized by similar cultural pluralism. Boccaccio also participated actively in the political, clerical, financial, and legal cultures of Naples and Florence. On account of Boccaccio’s diverse literary interests, social roles, and professional experiences, scholars have characterized him as a mediator. Moreover, Boccaccio self-­consciously encouraged readers to view him as an intermediary by subtitling the Decameron Galeotto (Go-­between). Concepts such as translation, incorporation, contamination, hybridization, and combination have also been commonly employed in descriptions of his writings and authorial identity. These interrelated notions underscore that Boccaccio contributed to the diversification of culture by promoting vernacular, Latin, and Greek literatures to very different, and at times to overlapping, readerships. These same notions also highlight that Boccaccio created original and sometimes controversial syntheses of these cultures. This book has explored how Boccaccio drew on medieval literary theory to authorize the synthesis, translation, and mediation of the cultures that he created. In many instances, such operations of cultural hybridization were not only considered daring, but were opposed by the intellectual and religious values of the period. Theories of genre, the genera dicendi, explicitly condemned the kind of literary innovation that characterizes Boccaccio’s oeuvre.4 Humanists such as Albertino Mussato (1261–1329) and Giovanni del Virgilio (fl. 1300–1327) also made rigid hierarchical distinctions between classical Latin and contemporary vernacular texts.5 They considered works written in Latin serious literature for highly educated men. By contrast, they characterized vernacular writings as frivolous entertainment for the ignorant masses and women. Finally, various theologians, philosophers, and humanists disapproved of amatory literatures for religious and ethical reasons. They argued that ideas about metaphysics, spirituality, or personal conduct should not be communicated in texts with erotic narratives and images. In critical works such as the Genealogie,

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Boccaccio suggested instead that hierarchical value judgments based on subject matter, language, and historical periodization were largely arbitrary and needed revision. Indeed, his reflection on allegory led him to conceive of culture in a more holistic manner. Boccaccio’s innovative conception of allegory allowed him to achieve an unprecedented appre­ci­ation of the history of literature understood as the progressive unfolding of meaning. In both his fictional and scholarly writings, Boccaccio also proposed that popular and erotic literatures were more than mere entertainment. In his opinion, they were not only worthy of study, but they were the most effective medium though which to communicate crucial existential ideas. Therefore, by addressing these fourteenth-­century issues, Boccaccio anticipated present-­day ideas about interdisciplinarity, world literature, and cultural studies. Boccaccio developed these notions in response to the textual cultures of fourteenth-­century Italy in general and in reaction to Dante and Petrarch in particular. Boccaccio lived one generation after Dante, and he was a contemporary and friend of Petrarch. Consequently, he was able to engage with both writers in a privileged manner. He witnessed directly how Dante’s and Petrarch’s views were affecting contemporaries, and he tried to guide perceptions of their respective works. On the one hand, Boccaccio acknowledged that all three of them were promoting texts and experiences that had sometimes been criticized as immoral or sinful. In his scholarly works, Boccaccio documented how he and his fellow Florentines were participating in a similar cultural evolution. On the other hand, Boccaccio was championing texts and facets of reality that—according to him—Dante and Petrarch had not valorized in a sufficiently direct manner. For example, he promoted the dignity of literatures and experiences that were associated with various sinful figures in the Comedy, especially Francesca, Cavalcanti, and Ulysses. In Boccaccio’s writings, the literary and ethical ideas that were potentially damned by association with these souls were defended and redeemed. In the Ameto, Amorosa visione, and Decameron, Boccaccio fostered the idea that loving and compassionate readers can enjoy all aspects of creation, literary or otherwise. Petrarch, for his part, developed various ideas about literature and ethics in response to Boccaccio. Given when the Ameto, Amorosa visione, and Decameron were composed (1341, 1342–43, and ca. 1348–60), Petrarch had ample opportunity to learn about Boccaccio’s cosmopolitan

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poetics and ethics. This study has shown that Boccaccio influenced Petrarch’s ideas about literature and spirituality, and to a greater degree than readers have sometimes assumed.6 Scholars have highlighted how Boccaccio’s engagement with Dante informed Petrarch’s views of vernacular writing broadly speaking. The chapters of this book have complemented this scholarship by revealing that Petrarch was also influenced by Boccaccio’s views about allegory, the body, and the self. The Amorosa visione, which was a model for Petrarch’s Triumphi, foregrounded topics related to all of these issues. In Familiares 21.15, Seniles 5.2, and Seniles 17.3, Petrarch also reflected on Boccaccio’s views of these matters while developing his own ideas about them. Boccaccio responded to Petrarch in turn by modifying his characterization of Dante and literary apology in the different versions of the Trattatello and in the Genealogie. Boccaccio also complemented Petrarch’s elitist championing of Latin culture by affirming the dignity of popular, erotic, and foreign literatures. Finally, Petrarch encouraged Boccaccio to consider in novel ways questions concerning embodiment and selfhood. Boccaccio wrote key sections of the Amorosa visione, Decameron, and Corbaccio with Petrarch’s ideas about these topics in mind. Like his contemporaries, Boccaccio was self-­consciously contributing to the birth of a modern, or a novus (new), understanding of literature. He and his late medieval contemporaries were refining the notion that literature was a scientia (science), namely, a discipline with fixed rules and discursive value akin to that of philosophy and theology. The reading of Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics inspired the late medieval notion that literature was a science.7 Inspired by Aristotle’s theory of causes, medieval critics began to analyze the Bible as they did other secular texts. They also discussed issues related to authorship and style in scripture. This evolution contributed to a gradual diminution of the Bible’s influence in determining literary values. For example, Dante frequently theorized in his writings that sacred and secular texts were composed of similar formal properties. However, he also characterized the Comedy as a sui generis sacred poem (Par. 25.1). Dante suggested that the poem was special because he was inspired by God, and he implied that his spiritual mission resembled a prophet’s. Boccaccio too authorized his views about literature by reference to the Bible as the supreme text, much more than readers have usually

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assumed. At the same time, he was considering the properties common to all literatures in a more sustained manner than Dante or Petrarch did. While reflecting on the textual pluralism of the fourteenth-­century, Boccaccio came to articulate an essential component of a modern understanding of literature. With respect to his peers, he more explicitly fostered the idea that all literatures are composed of similar fictional and historical narrative elements, communicate allegorically, and thus can be truth-­bearing. Boccaccio promoted literature tout court by underscoring its signify ing capacity, but he also championed the exceptional symbolic potential of erotic texts. Bolstered by literary, theological, and devotional ideas, he asserted that readers could most easily understand texts that signify by reference to humankind’s present-­day, embodied experience. Even though Boccaccio’s poetics have been contextualized in relation to ideas about realism and mimesis, Boccaccio himself characterized them in terms that were comprehensible to diverse educated and less educated reading publics.8 In the Ameto and Decameron, he promoted erotic literatures by recalling the fact that God used the (female) body to signify in the Bible and providential history. Boccaccio also justified his writings by emphasizing that the body and creation were the foundational components of history, the basis of humankind’s experience of reality. Boccaccio thereby reminded readers that knowledge largely depended on one’s sensual experience of creation. His texts advanced this notion at a moment when writers across the Italian peninsula were increasingly sensitive to problems concerning cognition and linguistics. Although some reacted to these changes with Ockhamist skepticism, Boccaccio suggested that one motivated by love could—indeed should—read the world to discover meaning. The Ameto and Amorosa visione emphasize that the liberal arts will teach readers to look past deceptive appearances, to see meaning everywhere. In the Decameron, Boccaccio complemented this optimism by acknowledging that readers may struggle at times to find beauty and meaning in the world. For example, in Day 6, Panfilo’s story about the painter Giotto highlights that superficial appearances can be vexing. After Giotto covered himself with ugly clothes during a storm, his friend Forese jokes that others might not recognize the artistic genius of the day (Dec. 6.5.14). However, Elissa’s subsequent tale about the poet Guido Cavalcanti attenuates any ideas about epistemological skepticism potentially inherent in

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Panfilo’s novella. Her story suggests that if readers are like Cavalcanti— informed by logic, natural philosophy, a “gentile” (gentle) disposition, and curiosity—then they will have no problem interpreting creation and their experiences (Dec. 6.9.8–9). As the Epicurean poet transcended the threats of a brigata by jumping over a tomb, so adept readers—she implies—will be able to metaphorically hop over mundane, hermeneutic, and theological difficulties (Dec. 6.9.12). Boccaccio questioned those who professed literary, ethical, or metaphysical ideas that were not grounded in real-­world experience. For him, such alienation from concrete reality was a clear sign that the world had been read poorly. In the Decameron, he reflected on these cognitive problems on numerous occasions. He dramatized difficulties related to epistemology and the body in the stories about Ciappelletto, Andreuccio da Perugia, Tancredi, Frate Cipolla, and Calandrino (Dec. 1.1, 2.5, 4.1, 6.10, and 8.3), not to mention in the “Introduction” to Day 4 and “Conclusion.” These passages depict “readerships” characterized as ignorant on account of how they engage creation, carnal experiences, or stories about bodies (e.g., Dec. 1.1.74, 78–80, 84–86 [and 1.2.2–3]; 2.5.3; 6.10.53–56; and 8.3.4– 5). Andreuccio da Perugia misinterprets the significance of the rhetoric, dress, house, and quarter called Malpertugio (Evil Hole) of Fiordaliso (Dec. 2.5.14–19 and 25). He does not understand that he is dealing with a Sicilian prostitute, who masterfully manipulates her environment, body, and language. His hermeneutic errors subsequently render him a hostage to fortune and creation. The prostitute makes Andreuccio fall into a pit of excrement; robbers lower Andreuccio into a well, where he becomes trapped; and finally two thieves force him into a tomb (Dec. 2.5.39–40, 65–71, and 72–76). Only when Andreuccio learns to interpret and command his surroundings does he escape from the sepulcher (Dec. 2.5.77– 84). Given the Christological resonances of Andreuccio’s resurrection, the tale implies that the ability to read creation impacts one’s salvation. The stories about Ciappelletto and Cipolla similarly feature pro­tago­ nists who manipulate (perceptions of ) bodies and physical objects, and thus control their publics’ environments. Whereas Ciappelletto lies about his multifarious sins to trick a priest into burying his body in a monastery, Cipolla’s story about fake relics increases the financial generosity of his provincial parishioners (Dec. 1.1.75 and 83–85; and 6.10.6.7 and 37–52). Like Andreuccio, Calandrino is also a poor reader of the physical

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world and its signs. He fails to grasp that Buffalmacco and Bruno are lying about a stone with the supposed power to make one invisible (Dec. 8.3.19–20). Again, like Andreuccio, he becomes a hostage to those who do understand and dominate creation. Believing that the heliotrope has made him invisible, Calandrino makes himself susceptible to the torments of his friends, who pelt his body with stones (Dec. 8.3.45–50). Moreover, Calandrino’s stupidity prompts him to harm the bodies of others. When his wife criticizes him for wasting time, he continues to not comprehend that the heliotrope is inefficacious (Dec. 8.3.51–52). His false belief that she ruined its powers by talking leads him to beat her violently. Finally, Boccaccio-­narrator implies that the interpretive mistakes of his critics stem from their flawed views of the body and also from their “appetiti corrotti” (corrupt appetites) (Dec. 4, Intr. 42). After the narrator explains why critics misread his erotic stories in the “Introduction” to Day 4, Filostrato tells a tale about a man who similarly misunderstands eros and the body. Tancredi, the prince of Salerno, loves his daughter Ghismonda “tanto teneramente” (so tenderly) that he does not allow her to remarry after her husband dies (Dec. 4.1.4–6). He then spies incestuously on her love­making and objects to her courtship of a lover (Dec. 4.1.16–22). Ghismonda responds to his repression by arguing that Tancredi believes she is made “di pietra o di ferro” (of rock or of iron), rather than of the flesh created by God (Dec. 4.1.33 and 33–39). In the “Conclusion,” Boccaccio-­narrator specifies that confusion about the erotic corpus is induced by both a misunderstanding of salvation history and a “corrotta mente” (corrupted mind) (Dec., Conc. 4–6 and 11–12). These dispositions, he adds, may ultimately lead the individual soul to experience damnation (Dec., Conc. 12). Therefore, Boccaccio did not imply that creation or fourteenth-­ century society were unfathomable or unduly ambiguous. Nor did he endorse skeptical or relativist views. This may be why he addressed persons who were misunderstanding his texts, literature in general, and reality. Boccaccio often documented in explicit terms that diverse interpretations were objectively incorrect. His insistence on this fact demonstrates that he did not believe that the significance of his writings depends entirely on the subjective impressions of readers. Moreover, in the Decameron, the vexing enigmas depicted are not always presented as a truthful reflection of the nature of the world. Rather the ambiguities recounted within the

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text are frequently caused by self-­centered, delusional reasoning. Furthermore, he dramatized negative reading practices—criticized as such—so that his audience might not repeat the hermeneutic and ethical errors of the Decameron’s most ignorant protagonists. Boccaccio thereby attempted to help readers avoid harmful interpretations of reality, so that they might find enlightenment in their daily lives. Boccaccio’s writings also fostered the idea that the world can reveal much about the nature of human existence and spirituality provided it is interpreted with care. Of course, none of the foregoing contradicts the insights resulting from deconstructive readings of the Decameron. Scholars have shown that the text’s complex narrative structures, fragmented authorial voice(s), and depictions of semiotic confusion qualify types of universalizing interpretations. By extension, the text cautions readers to be conscientious when making moral and value judgments. At the same time, this book has revealed that Boccaccio’s writings, including the Decameron, highlight the limits of deconstructive reasoning and overdetermined nuancing. In fact, his texts warn that deconstructive reading can, if taken to an extreme, be intellectually harmful. Focusing constantly on the ambiguities of reality can hinder the construction of value, meaning, and purpose. This type of approach, Boccaccio seems to say, can devolve into superficial critiques of all utterances—regardless of how honest or accurate or useful the utterances may be. At its very worst, it may even result in a detached, unproductive ironic attitude toward one’s peers and their creations. Instead, his works embolden readers to transcend epistemological difficulties and subjective biases. They prompt readers to acknowledge the idiosyncrasies of life while engaging sincerely the ethical needs of their communities. In other words, Boccaccio strove to assist his fellow citizens in their personal assessments and their collective production of values. Boccaccio’s championing of historical reality and the body did not result in a denigration of fictional or fantastic literatures. His writings underscore that fiction can alter history to the extent that a text draws on the body for symbolic purposes. Boccaccio’s erotic works suggest that, by symbolizing meaning in and through the ultimate ground of reality and human experience—the body—fiction can affect how readers understand themselves and thereby change the course of history. Boccaccio highlighted the symbolic and affective efficacy of the body in the pastoral Ameto, a mythical and fantastic work populated by contemporary

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Florentines. He continued to use the body symbolically by imagining persons from history and fiction alive and embodied in his first fictional dream vision, the Amorosa visione. He then depicted contemporaries in Florence and around the Italian peninsula in the Decameron, in their everyday physi­cal and historical environments. In the second half of his life, Boccaccio continued to reflect on the relationship between fiction and history by investigating the historical origins of myths in the Genealogie. He also contextualized Dante’s supposedly fictional poem in light of the poet’s biography in the Trattatello. And, in his last years, he helped readers understand the Comedy by providing them with relevant historical and cultural information in the Esposizioni. Boccaccio’s erotic writings were inspired by ethical and spiritual ideas about the goodness of the body. Several scholars have hypothesized that Boccaccio promoted erotic experiences and mundane cultures as part of a secular, antireligious agenda. Other readers have considered how he drew on Christian ideas to highlight the sinful nature of earthly passions. However, scholars have not considered how his views about the sexualized body might be inspired by theology. Indeed, Boccaccio championed the erotic body because he was reflecting on orthodoxy. His writings suggest that readers—who understand the primacy of the body in salvation history— should embrace eros in its diverse forms. This may explain why he depicted a range of amatory experiences in the Ameto, Amorosa visione, and Decameron. Boccaccio wrote about—generally in a positive or playful light—vari­ ous couplings, men and women with different partners, and a plethora of amatory positions and roles. Therefore, his interest in orthodoxy was not motivated by a prudish moralism or pietism. His texts engaged orthodox notions to promote ideas about the beauty of embodied reality. Boccaccio characterized his writings as being consonant with authoritative notions so that diverse publics, especially critical ones, might love the wonders of eros and the corpus. Boccaccio drew on Franciscan, Pseudo-­Dionysian, and Chartrian concepts to condemn those who hate creation and humanity’s embodiment. In the Amorosa visione, Decameron, and Corbaccio, he countered hateful views by encouraging readers to find peace and happiness in this life. In his erotic writings, Boccaccio emphasized that humans need not necessarily look to the other world for their fulfillment. In the Ameto and Amorosa visione, the shepherd Ameto and Boccaccio-­pilgrim learn to cherish,

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love, and (physically) embrace what surrounds them. In affirming these ideas, Boccaccio suggested that he was in part in harmony with and in part in polemic with Dante and Petrarch. Boccaccio understood that Dante wrote the Comedy to promote love for the world and the body. In his scholarship, he documented that Dante wanted readers to undergo a moral and spiritual conversion, thereby improving their experiences in the here and now. But Boccaccio also highlighted that the Comedy, which is inspired by Neoplatonic and contemplative thought, depicted a pilgrim who transcended space, time, and (potentially) the body. Boccaccio’s works addressed how somatophobia could be inspired by such an otherworldly narrative. Boccaccio was likewise aware that Petrarch encouraged readers to enjoy diverse mundane experiences and aspects of temporal reality. Yet Boccaccio also emphasized that Petrarch dramatized personae who were anxious, worried, and unhappy on account of their struggles with mundane and carnal yearnings. By addressing passages of Dante’s and Petrarch’s works that could be (mis)interpreted as being critical of the embodied self, Boccaccio attempted to resolve ethical and spiritual tensions in his world. He tried to attenuate antitheses related to erotics/ethics, body/spirit, physical/metaphysical, and time/eternity. Modern readers have studied how Dante and Petrarch also dealt with these antitheses by engaging religious and ethical notions. They have revealed that both writers claimed to have resolved such tensions. However, this book suggests that Boccaccio thought that the results of his peers’ efforts were sometimes ambiguous. It has shown that he was concerned about how they championed the erotic, unchaste, tainted body. In fact, Boccaccio foregrounded the dignity of bodies that are not like the idealized, sublime figures of Beatrice and Laura.9 These two women are rarely (if ever) characterized as unchaste or sinful, that is to say, quotidian, commonplace, typical. In Dante’s writings, Beatrice was also presented as a woman who possessed miraculous traits (e.g., Vn 2.8 [1.9], 26.2 [14.2], 26.6.8 [17.6.8], 29.3 [19.6], and cf. Purg. 21.49–51). In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio explained that Dante wrote about “persone eccellenti” (exceptional individuals) and extraordinary acts of virtue and vice (Espos., Acc. 18–19). Boccaccio thus self-­consciously strove to fill a perceived lacuna, by celebrating normal and flawed bodies. He drew on ethical and religious notions to champion those bodies that, in his view, had been overlooked by his fellow Florentines. He encouraged his peers

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not only to love the exceptional (female) corpora immortalized by illustrious artists and authors. He also urged them to cherish the bodies— of neighbors, of family, of friends—that were present in their everyday experience. This book also reveals that Boccaccio considered how Dante’s and Petrarch’s works might engender a degree of confusion about the dignity of self-­identity. He grappled with the fact that the transcendent aspects of their texts might prompt readers to regret their subjective personhood. He pondered whether the Comedy, for example, could inspire a desire for oneness with others or God that was so extreme that the self would no longer want to exist as itself.10 In the Amorosa visione, he reflected on this matter while engaging directly with Dante’s Comedy. In Day 10 of the Decameron, he also depicted individuals who value self-­sacrifice so much that they nearly commit acts of sin or self-­annihilation (e.g., Dec. 10.3 and 10.10). For example, Mitridanes is consumed by trying to be generous and thus becomes envious of Natan (Dec. 10.3.7–8), an elderly man renowned for liberality. Natan’s generous nature leads him to orchestrate his own murder at Mitridanes’s hands, thereby accommodating the man’s “perverso intendimento” (perverse desire) (Dec. 10.3.18–23 and 33). They ultimately make peace with one another, but not before they ponder swapping identities so that Natan’s fame can live on, and not before Natan proves he has no equal (Dec. 10.3.34–43 and 44, respectively). In addition, Griselda remains obedient to her husband, Gualtieri, although he treats her in a terribly severe manner. Gualtieri even tests her fidelity by claiming that he has killed their children, a fact that engenders debate. The narrator Dioneo, Gualtieri’s peers, and the brigata doubt the sanity of both Gualtieri and Griselda (e.g., Dec. 10.10.3, 27, 39, 60–61, and 68–69; cf. Dec. 10, Conc. 1). By presenting these protagonists in an ambiguous light, Boccaccio questioned what motivates one’s desire for transcendence or self-­denial. These stories remind us, just as Dante’s and Petrarch’s works do, to delight in each other’s idiosyncratic forms and passions. Boccaccio thereby strove to foreground the beauty of the self ’s subjective desires, its uniqueness in time, in space, in a body. He encouraged readers to enjoy their distinct corpora, and marvel at our brief moments in history. Therefore, though Boccaccio promoted the writings of his contemporaries (e.g., in his manu­ script anthologies), he was not their slavish scribe or commentator. He

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did not champion their works without qualification. While celebrating his fellow Florentines, he drew attention to the potential ambiguities inherent in their texts. In fact, he guided perceptions of their respective bodies of work in accord with his own interpretation of late medieval cultural debates. Other scholars have documented how Boccaccio characterized his authority and originality in comparison to Dante and Petrarch. This book has highlighted the historical discourses, about the body, that informed the most striking aspects of Boccaccio’s novelty. Scholars have traditionally (and mistakenly) characterized Boccaccio as a writer who uncomfortably straddled the medieval and Renaissance worlds on account of his diverse interests in medieval erotica and humanist cultures. At the same time, they have considered how Boccaccio anticipated modern textual, social, and ethical notions. Generations of scholars have cast Boccaccio as a protodeconstructionist or realist, but others have considered his authorial identity in relation to the socioeconomic conditions of fourteenth-­century Florence.11 It has been noted that Boccaccio was reflecting on a city that was becoming more democratic and less determined by socioeconomic hierarchies, especially in the Decameron. Inspired by these shifting social realities, Boccaccio supposedly represented more classes and kinds of people than had previously appeared in literature (one aspect of his realist poetics). He also depicted these persons in a relatively new literary form that anticipated the modern novel, namely, short narratives united by a frame narrative, or cornice. On account of these aspects of his short stories, it has been suggested that Boccaccio inspired European authors long after the influence of Dante and Chaucer waned.12 This book has complemented these various insights by exploring how Boccaccio engaged—in a plurality of Latin and vernacular writings— a Mediterranean reality that was changing culturally, socially, eco­nomi­ cally, and demographically. And scholars are increasingly appreciating how Boccaccio fashioned himself both a Florentine writer and a cosmopolitan European intellectual.13 Boccaccio, in fact, reacted to the social, demographic, and cultural pluralism of the Mediterranean in a systematic manner. He prioritized the most explanatory and fundamental properties of whatever writings, disciplines, or topics that he was engaging. This was his strategy for resolving the crises and mitigating the tensions of the increasingly diverse world of the fourteenth century. For example,

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while probing the essential properties of literature, he also reflected on the core values of religion and faith. The three opening stories of the Deca­me­ ron dramatize persons of different faiths coming together in harmonious communities. These tales culminate in the programmatic comment of the Jew Melchisedech about religious pluralism. When pressed by the Saladin about which faith is true, he responds: E cosí vi dico, signor mio, delle tre leggi alli tre popoli date da Dio padre, delle quali la quistion proponeste: ciascun la sua eredità, la sua vera legge e i suoi comandamenti dirittamente si crede avere e fare, ma chi se l’abbia, . . . , ancora ne pende la quistione. (Dec. 1.3.16) And let me say the same thing to you, my lord, concerning the three Laws given to three peoples by God our Father that are the subject of the question you put to me: each believes itself to be the true heir, to possess the true Law, and to follow the true commandments, but whoever is right . . . , is still undecided. Boccaccio thus implied that God desired a diversity of devotional practices and religions. After having completed the Decameron, Boccaccio complemented the ideology of these narratives by reflecting on the nature of revelation. In the Genealogie, he developed a syncretic view of revelation understood as the progressive unfolding of truth in pagan, Jewish, Islamic, and Christian religions. (Other writers like Augustine and Dante proposed similar ideas about history.) In the compendium, Boccaccio also notes that people of all faiths are members of the human race, and therefore merit our respect. His argument recalls yet repurposes Augustine’s remarks, in De civitate Dei (De civ. Dei), that everyone should be considered human despite differences in appearance: Nonne nos omnes homines dicimus, quoscunque mortales scimus constare ex anima rationali et corpore, dato alii gentiles sint, et Israelite alii et alii Agareni ac alii Christiani et non nulli adeo perversorum morum, ut potius immanes belue quam homines habendi sint? (Gen. 15.8.4)

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Do we not call everyone human, whomever we know to be made of a rational soul and body, notwithstanding if they are pagan, Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, and even some who have perverse customs, do they deserve to be called terrible beasts rather than humans? Verum quisquis uspiam nascitur homo, id est animal rationale mortale, quamlibet nostris inusitatam sensibus gerat corporis formam seu colorem sive motum sive sonum sive qualibet vi, qualibet parte, qualibet qualitate naturam: ex illo uno protoplasto originem nullus fidelium dubitaverit. (De civ. Dei 16.8) Whoever anywhere is born a person, that is, a rational mortal animal, no matter how unusual to our senses the form of that person’s body is, or its color, movement, or sound, and no matter how unique that person’s nature is with respect to power, part, or quality, no Christian can doubt that that person has been created from our one, common ancestor. In the Esposizioni sopra la “Comedia” di Dante (1373–74), Boccaccio defended a similar view by recalling the same Augustinian concept: tutti gli uomini, di che che seta, di che che nazion si siano, secondo la legge naturale siam prossimi, per ciò che tutti da un principio, cioè da’ primi parenti, proceduti siamo, e però tutti ci dobbiamo amare. (Espos. 11.24) all humans—no matter what their religion or class is—are our neighbors according to natural law because all of us come from a single origin: the first parents. Thus, we must all love one another. These and related remarks in Boccaccio’s texts prescribe an understanding of personhood that transcends variations in beliefs, modes of worship, and so forth. Inspired by the diversity of the Italian peninsula, Boccaccio also advocated respect for individuals with different cultural backgrounds and geographical origins. In the De Canaria (1341–ca. 1350), an account of

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the discovery of the Canary Islands, he reflected on matters concerning cultural pluralism.14 He documented and then characterized, often in a positive light, the different customs and rituals of the peoples on the margins of the Mediterranean. In the Consolatoria a Pino de’ Rossi (ca. 1361), Boccaccio also emphasized the notion that humans everywhere have similar core values.15 To cheer up his friend who had been exiled from Florence, he argues that life is not so grim outside of the city. Boccaccio explains that most parts of the world are governed by similar laws and that genius and art are valued everywhere (Consol. §§13–16). Therefore, in reaction to his milieu, Boccaccio often endorsed the values that have come to be associated with inclusiveness. These values probably informed his decision to include, or to depict, vastly different peoples and experiences in writings such as the Ameto, Amorosa visione, and Decameron. He thus celebrated humanity’s diversity and championed the elements of human experience that are unifying. Boccaccio also shed light on the generic properties and ethics of his writings by reference to medieval ideas about gender. Scholars have considered to what extent Boccaccio held protofeminist views of women; how he used gender to reflect on issues that may, or may not, have had relevance for contemporary women; and why contradictory depictions of women occasionally appear in his writings.16 Readers have also noted that, with respect to Dante and Petrarch, Boccaccio was unique in composing works with numerous female protagonists, in addressing works to women, and in compiling biographies of women.17 This book has developed implications for these issues by contextualizing Boccaccio’s writings within late medieval discourses about language, genre, and piety.18 In the fourteenth century, the vernacular, various low genres, and erotic literatures were classified as female, whereas Latin, some high genres, and political literatures were coded as male. Moreover, contemporary perceptions of women’s bodies and religious experiences changed with evolving views about heresy and sanctity.19 In late medieval Italy, theologians promoted the somatic experiences of female contemplatives to counter groups, such as the Cathars, who were vilifying creation. In addition, Umbrian pietistic and Tuscan religious thought drew on Franciscan, Bernardian, and Bonaventurean notions to promote the affective value of carnal and erotic images.20 Devotional texts encouraged readers to reflect on images of Christ’s passion, which were thought to psychosomatically

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engender feelings of love, grief, and compassion. Scholars have debated whether such affective devotion was particularly the purview of women, who were often defined by their eroticism and carnality.21 In the fourteenth century, ideological currents related to the Inquisition were also associating women’s bodies and somatic spiritual experiences with fraud, deception, inconstancy, heresy, and the demonic.22 Boccaccio engaged issues concerning gender, representation, and orthodoxy by featuring women’s bodies as symbols for the literary text. His unprecedented championing of the female body was inspired by views about the gendered connotations of literary traditions. In the Deca­me­ ron, Boccaccio imitated Ovid’s symbolic uses of gender to elucidate the symbolic properties of his elegiac poetics. In the Amorosa visione and Decameron, he also recalled medieval ideas about how the vernacular was associated with non-­Latin-­literate readerships by dedicating his works to women. Symbolic female readerships comprised not only women but also semieducated men, the popular masses, and readers seeking enjoyment. Moreover, Boccaccio’s symbolic uses of the female body stemmed from ideas about erotic images and carnal experiences in theological and philo­ sophical writings. Neoplatonic writers like Macrobius and Dominican theologians characterized erotic literatures and female desires as immoral. In the Ameto, Amorosa visione, Decameron, and Corbaccio, Boccaccio redeemed the female body by asserting that it could effectively signify philosophical and theological ideas. He also affirmed that the pleasures associated with (reading) the female corpus were constituent parts of salvation history. Finally, Boccaccio’s decision to compose feminine literatures was informed by ideas about affective piety. In the Amorosa visione, Boccaccio drew on Franciscan religious currents and notions while reflecting on Dante’s own engagement with affective concepts in the Comedy. In the “Introduction” to Day 1 and “Conclusion” of the Decameron, Boccaccio also evoked Franciscan-­inspired literary and artistic ideas about meditating on Christ’s body (Dec. 1, Intr. 8; and Dec., Conc. 6). By framing the Decameron with Christological references, he signaled that his erotic novelle convey meaning with the body just as devotional writings do. His remarks about the Incarnation and Crucifixion imply that his stories signify by approximating how God employed the (female) body. Boccaccio thereby fostered the idea that his vernacular writings affectively—and effectively—promote spiritual contemplation.

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Boccaccio’s lifelong engagement with literary, philosophical, and theological ideas about gender implies that for him these were not merely textual issues. His sustained interest in gender suggests that he intended to affect the lives of real, historical women and men. Boccaccio himself emphasized as much in both the Decameron and the Corbaccio by criti­ cizing the hatred of women and feminine desires. Boccaccio carefully documented why the misogyny of humanists, theologians, and contemplatives was not orthodox. In these texts, he asserted that these hateful views do not chime with Christian charity, love, and salvation history. He also defended female spiritual practices by asserting that women have a unique capacity both for understanding several aspects of Christ and for embodying compassion. Scholars do not agree whether affective piety was primarily associated with women. However, Boccaccio-­narrator does address his erotic texts to women because according to him they are deeply affected by both love and depictions of bodily suffering (Dec., Pr. 9–12; and Dec. 1, Intr. 2 and 34). Boccaccio, therefore, was either indebted to his cultural milieu, or he was promoting his own views about women and the affects. In either case, Boccaccio drew on these ideas to signal that men like Petrarch, who were primarily reading his vernacular writings, should adopt female dispositions and attitudes. Boccaccio also contradicted misogynist attitudes by composing a volume about the deeds of women, De mulieribus claris (begun ca. 1361).23 Introducing the work, the narrator explains that his volume complements Petrarch’s recent book about the deeds of men (De mul., Pr. 1–3).24 The narrator goes on to justify the humanist compilation by asserting that both men and women are capable of the same conspicua (wondrous acts) that merit one fame (De mul., Pr. 4). Later in the text, he adds that women and men possess the same intellectual capacities required for becoming great writers (De mul. 86.3). None of the foregoing is meant to obscure that seemingly contradictory ideas about women are present in Boccaccio’s writings. For example, in the De mulieribus, the first-­person narrator— who does not necessarily represent the historical author—voices ideas that do not chime with the aforementioned philogynist notions.25 Still, over several decades, Boccaccio did generally draw on the primary discourses of the period to counter misogynist attitudes. Moreover, the previous chapters suggest that Boccaccio probably did not radically alter his views of women. This book has shown how misogynist ideas in Boccaccio’s

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works were often associated with ignorant readers and sinful interpretations of reality. A fuller historical and cultural contextualization of misogynist passages in Boccaccio’s works has revealed that he typically evoked negative ideas about women to condemn such opinions. Therefore, this book has clarified various factors underwriting Boccaccio’s multifaceted depictions and uses of gender. Boccaccio justified his most controversial and original cultural views by drawing on canonical medieval and early Renaissance notions. In fact, Boccaccio defended his ideas by engaging what he characterized as the most essential elements of literary theory and theology. Like Dante before him, Boccaccio respected tradition. His respect for tradition prompted him to modify, revise, and criticize accepted notions to reform those that, in his view, were flawed. And, as Boccaccio emphasized, readers cannot appreciate his works without considering the theoretical, philo­sophical, and theological ideas that underwrite them. The failure to consider the ethical and theoretical concepts that inform his writings has obscured their relevance. Confusion about the ethics of Boccaccio’s texts has sometimes distorted our appreciation of why his works were composed in the first place. Boccaccio strove to inspire readers, to give comfort and hope to people in the midst of cultural change, social upheavals, and personal crises. Therefore, to not consider seriously the constructive ethical dimension of his writings ultimately robs them of their potential to affect change. Over several decades, Boccaccio developed ideas about what he promoted as the essence of Christianity. From the Ameto to the Corbaccio, his engagement with Christian doctrine was informed by the literary, ethical, and theological resonances of compassion. Inspired by this virtue, Boccaccio encouraged readers to transcend superficial differences related to cultural and subjective biases. He dramatized how readers might react either selfishly or charitably to their increasingly pluralistic, complex environments. In the opening pages of the Decameron and in the Corbaccio, he depicted persons who cruelly abandoned and harshly judged each other. In the Decameron’s “Introductions” to Days 1 and 4, he also featured selfish individuals who overindulged in carnal pleasures or who engaged in contemplative acts that were divorced from social engagement. In contrast to such dispositions, he affirmed that readers should help one other by embodying compassion, the most humane of values (Dec., Pr. 2). For

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Boccaccio, having compassion was intertwined with being a good reader. This is one of the reasons why he frequently reflected on reading. He repeatedly emphasized that readers must interpret charitably to avoid being fooled by appearance or bias, thereby embracing all persons. Boccaccio fostered the idea that literature engenders compassion by showing how imaginative and historical writing can familiarize readers with the unknown, the misunderstood, and the unappreciated. Boccaccio thereby tried to help readers grappling with an increasingly fragmented cultural world, novel forms of media, and demographic diversity. On several occasions throughout his life, Boccaccio himself highlighted the wide-­ranging implications of his writings for these topics. He emphasized the myriad of ways that they are supremely relevant for all who are living in a pluralistic, global, and modern world.

N OT E S

I N T RO D U C T I O N

1. Boccaccio, Rime, 29 (7 [122]). There is no certain date for the poem, but it may have been inspired by criticisms of Boccaccio’s public lectures on Dante (ca. 1373–74; Rime 22–26). The poem is translated in Papio, “Boccaccio as Lector Dantis,” 6–7. 2. On the poem’s relevance for matters concerning vernacularization and translation, see Gittes, Boccaccio’s Naked Muse, 155–80; Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 36–43; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,” 131–33. 3. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria (8.6.44): Allegoria . . . aut aliud verbis, aliud sensu ostendit (Allegory . . . means one thing in words, but another in sense). On allegory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, see Copeland and Melville, “Allegory and Allegoresis”; Whitman, Interpretation and Allegory; Copeland and Struck, Cambridge Companion to Allegory; and Kriesel, “Allegories of the Corpus.” 4.  Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. corpus (II, 472–73); and TLIO, s.v. corpo (10 and 10.1). 5.  For a summary of the textual resonances of the body in medieval discourses related to theology, philosophy, rhetoric, and poetics, see Ross, Figuring the Feminine, 16–49. 6. Given that the body was often used as a metaliterary symbol in the Middle Ages, many scholars of medieval literature have explored how the (female) body was intertwined with reflection on semiotics, hermeneutics, linguistics, and social issues. My research complements this scholarship by assessing how Boccaccio, like his European peers, drew on the gendered body to engage his idiosyncratic cultural contexts. 7.  For accounts of Boccaccio’s cultural, social, textual, and political contexts, see Tanturli, “Giovanni Boccaccio”; Smarr, “Man of Many Turns”; Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, “Boccaccio as Cultural Mediator”; and Candido, “Boccaccio rinnovatore.” 8.  BNC, Banco Rari 50; Zibaldone Magliabechiano, ff. 99v–100r (123v–­124r). On Boccaccio’s autograph, see Petoletti, “Tavola di ZM,” 318 (40); and Zamponi, 275

276   Notes to Pages 3–4 “Scheda 57: Lo Zibaldone Magliabechiano”; and De Robertis, “Boccaccio copista.” For an introduction to the De Canaria, see Coleman, “Boccaccio’s Humanistic Ethnography”; and Bocchi, “Appunti di lettura.”   9.  The redactional history and dates of composition of the Decameron will be addressed in the following. For an introduction to the first three tales of Day 1, and to Day 1 in general, see Weaver, Decameron: First Day, 59–112; and Kircher, “Movement, Moment, and Mission.” 10.  On Boccaccio’s social networks and engagement with notions related to social class, see, for example, Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, “Boccaccio as Cultural Mediator”; Daniels, “Boccaccio’s Narrators”; Psaki, “Voicing Gender”; and Olson, Courtesy Lost. 11.  On Boccaccio’s library and world of books, see De Robertis, “Boccaccio copista”; De Robertis, “L’inventario”; and Gittes, “Boccaccio and Humanism.” 12.  On the date of the work and Boccaccio’s autograph, see Fiaschi, “Gene­ alogia.” On Boccaccio’s contributions to the study of Greek literature, see Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Hellenism”; and Bertelli and Cursi, “Homero poeta sovrano.” 13.  The citation refers to the first version (in ms. “To”; ABC, Zelada 104.6, 1r–27r). Unless otherwise noted, all references to the Trattatello are to the first version (in “To”). The other versions are referred to as A (“Chig,” second version; BAV, Chigi L.V.176, 1r–13r) and as B (third version; autograph not extant). Chapter 1 herein treats the ideological nuances of each version, and the biography’s role in Boccaccio’s manuscript anthologies (in “To” and “Chig”). For an introduction to the Trattatello, see Filosa, “To Praise Dante”; Berté and Fiorilla, “Il Trattatello”; and Berté, “Trattatello.” 14. For an introduction to the Petrarchan vita, see Bellieni, “Le vite di Petrarca.” 15.  For works concerning this sentence and the following one, see note 7, above; and more generally, see Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio; and De Robertis et al., Boccaccio autore e copista. 16.  For summative accounts of previous and more recent scholarly literature, see Bragantini and Forni, Lessico critico decameroniano; Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio; and Kirkham, Sherberg, and Smarr, Boccaccio: A Critical Guide. 17.  Studies of Boccaccio’s ideas about allegory have typically focused on his critical writings (Genealogie or Trattatello) and have rarely considered the rele­ vance of these writings for his vernacular fictions. For works related to these issues, see chapter 1 (section “Boccaccio’s Dante”). For discussions of Boccaccio’s engagement with allegory in his vernacular fictions (especially in the Decameron or Amorosa visione), see Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 131–71; Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 98–100, 101–28, and 192–204; Lummus, “The Decameron”; Milner, “Boccaccio’s Decameron”; and Usher, “Mural Morality.” Kirkham, for example, has explored how the protagonists of Boccaccio’s writings may symbolize ideas related to the virtues, in narratives that perhaps dramatize tensions between reason and

Notes to Pages 4–5   277 desire. Smarr, Psaki, and Lummus have considered the allegorical dimension of the erotic in Boccaccio’s texts, especially in relation to hermeneutic issues. What follows examines the medieval literary, theological, and philosophical notions that inspired Boccaccio’s erotic allegories, especially their truth-­bearing properties. 18. For these lacunae in scholarship on Boccaccio’s writings, see Kircher, The Poet’s Wisdom, 13–14; Papio, “Boccaccio: Mythographer,” 123–24; and Battaglia Ricci, “A Firenze, tra Dante e San Paolo,” 73. As evidenced by these studies, scholars are beginning to address these topics. 19.  On this scholarly paradigm, one that is largely indebted to Erich Auerbach and Vittore Branca, see Auerbach, “Frate Alberto”; Ascoli, “Auerbach,” 135–39; Ferme, Women, Enjoyment, 1–4; and Leavitt, “Il realismo.” For similar characterizations of Boccaccio’s writings, see Quondam, introduction to Decameron, by Boccaccio; and Cervigni, “Introductory Note.” See also Steinberg, “Mimesis on Trial.” According to Steinberg, the Decameron’s “realism” is inspired by the evolving role of verisimilitude in legal contexts. This book shows that those elements of the Decameron defined as realistic by modern readers are also deeply indebted to concepts in medieval literary theory, philosophy, and theology. 20.  For examples of deconstructionist readings of Boccaccio’s writings, see Almansi, Writer as Liar; Mazzotta, World at Play; and Marcus, Allegory of Form. 21.  For examples of studies of Boccaccio’s ethical ideas about personal conduct (ideas which may be indebted to Thomistic or Aristotelian notions), see Hollander, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses; Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta; Kirkham, Sign of Reason; and Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante. This scholarship refined that of previous critics, who argued that Boccaccio strove to valorize mundane or secular experiences and to entertain (rather than instruct) readers. For an account of the scholarship on this subject, see Migiel, Ethical Dimension, 6–12. 22.  For a discussion of how scholars have traditionally juxtaposed Boccaccio’s vernacular works to his Latin writings, see Ferme, Women, Enjoyment, 1–4; Smarr, “Man of Many Turns,” 3–5; and Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, “Boccaccio as Cultural Mediator,” 15–18. For a list and discussion of such studies, see chapter 5 (section “Boccaccio’s Petrarch”). 23.  For the material, codicological, and (self-­)editorial dimensions of Boccaccio’s works, see Cursi, Il Decameron, 19–45; Cursi, La scrittura; Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 50–73; and Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, esp. 41–49, 76–88, and 137–46. 24.  For examples of studies of the metaphoric resonances of the erotic in the Decameron, see Milner, “Coming Together”; Gittes, Boccaccio’s Naked Muse, 175– 80; Migiel, A Rhetoric, 123–46; Psaki, “Giving Them the Bird”; Kriesel, “Chastening the Corpus”; Baxter, “Turpiloquium in Boccaccio’s Tale”; Eisner, “Eroticizing Theology”; and Lummus, “The Decameron,” 74–81. 25.  Readers continue to debate questions related to whether and how Boccaccio promoted normative ethical ideas. Scholars have typically emphasized that Boccaccio cautions (especially in the Decameron) against making universalizing

278   Notes to Pages 7–8 ethical judgments, in large part by dramatizing problems inherent in the construction and interpretation of meaning. For bibliography on and a discussion of these topics, see, especially, Migiel, Ethical Dimension, 3–17 and 139–60. Migiel describes one influential strand of thought about the ethics of the Decameron in these terms: “One of the great innovations of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is that it aims to complicate our moral views and our ethical responses”; and “I myself tend to align with those readers who see the Decameron as questioning moral authorities, transcendental messages, and traditional didacticism (e.g., Hastings, Baratto, Marcus, Hollander, Flasch, Kircher)” (Migiel, Ethical Dimension, 3 and 11, respectively). Milner elucidates a second common understanding of the poetics and ethics of the Decameron: “The rhetoric of the Decameron . . . is presented as an adulteration of language in its betrayal of the faithful relation of sign to signified, and its unmooring of fixed referentiality, a theme which becomes the leitmotif of the whole text”; and “it is clear that any attempt to unravel the deliberative narrative entanglements of the text is doomed from the outset. Any clarification of a deliberately ambiguous work simplifies in the very act of disambiguation, even if the disambiguation is to stress the text’s ambiguity. Boccaccio’s skill lies in keeping so many meanings in play and placing the onus on the reader to make sense when seeking to render the text meaning-­ful [sic]” (Milner, “Boccaccio’s Decameron,” 87 and 98, respectively; emphasis added). Another view of the Decameron is that it is “ethically neutral” (Ginsburg, Chaucer’s Italian Tradition, ix). Scholars also suggest that the Amorosa visione promotes several of these same notions. For example, McKinley observes that the poem “problematizes the didactic framework of allegory,” and that Boccaccio has a “strong interest in problems of representation and interpretation” (McKinley, Chaucer’s House, 4 and 35, respectively). These topics are addressed in the following. 26.  This account of Boccaccio’s authorial biography and writings synthesizes diverse scholarship on Boccaccio’s individual texts. For an introduction to each work mentioned, see the respective chapters and extensive bibliography in De Robertis et al., Boccaccio autore e copista; and Kirkham, Sherberg, and Smarr, Boccaccio: A Critical Guide. 27. The Allegoria mitologica and epistle Mavortis milex are copied in the Zibaldone Laurenziano (BML, 29.8, ff. 61r–62r and 51vA–52rB, respectively). For information about the dates of these texts and the autograph, see De Robertis, “Boccaccio copista”; Petoletti, “Gli Zibaldoni”; and Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 311 (106) and 307 (25). 28.  For information about the date of the text and the autograph, see Coleman, “Teseida,” 90; and Coleman, “Scheda 9: L’autografo del Teseida.” 29.  For a synthetic discussion of, and bibliography on, ideas about celestial and mundane love in Boccaccio’s works, see Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Three Venuses,” 65–67. See also the works listed in note 21, above. 30. The autograph is dated to ca. 1370 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Hamilton 90 [B]). For information about the

Notes to Pages 8–10   279 autograph, see Fiorilla, “Decameron,” 132–34. There is no certain date for either the beginning or the completion of the Decameron. The first-­person narrator refers to the arrival of the plague in Florence in 1348 (Dec. 1, Intr. 8), and 1360 marks the first documented circulation of the text. On the date of the Decameron and its early circulation, see Cursi, Il Decameron, 19–45; Cursi, La scrittura, 107– 28; Cursi, “Authorial Strategies”; Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, 76–85; and, more generally, Bertelli, “Codicologia d’autore.” 31.  On the autograph, see De Robertis, “Boccaccio copista”; and Piacentini, “Buccolicum carmen,” 204–5; and De Robertis, “Scheda 41: L’autografo del Buccolicum carmen.” 32.  The contents of “Chig” are as follows: Trattatello, ff. 1r–13r; Vita nova, ff. 13r–28v; “Donna mi prega” with commentary, ff. 29r–32v; Ytalie iam, f. 34r; canzoni distese, ff. 34v–43r; Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, ff. 43v–79r. The manuscript originally featured Dante’s Comedy, which appeared between the pre-­and post-­ Dantean lyric traditions. Boccaccio then divided the manuscript and placed the epic Comedy in the second part (ca. 1363–66; BAV, Chigi L.VI.213). On the contents of the Chigiano manuscripts, see Bertelli, “Scheda 51: La seconda silloge dantesca.” Boccaccio also revised the Trattatello a second time, but the autograph is lost (the discussion of allegory appears at Tratt. B §§80–105). 33.  On allegory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, see note 3, above. 34.  On biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages, see Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 40–117; Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 65–112 and 197–276; Jordan and Emory, Ad litteram; Cremascoli and Leonardi, La Bibbia nel medioevo; and Boynton and Reilly, Practice of the Bible. On perceptions of the Song of Songs in medieval culture (especially as pertains to ideas about its literal sense and potential allegorical meanings), see Astell, Song of Songs, 25–104; Matter, Voice of My Beloved, 49–85; Turner, Eros and Allegory, 47–70; Nasti, Favole d’amore, 22–42; and Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption, 18–20. 35.  The notion that creation was (akin to) a book was influenced by Neoplatonic cosmology. For the impact of Neoplatonic cosmology on perceptions of the world, and on its import for allegory, see Stock, Myth and Science, 11–62; Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry, 28–73; Dronke, Fabula, 13–67; and Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 118–26. 36.  See Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 113–64. 37.  On Chartrian and Neoplatonic ideas about literature, see note 35, above. 38.  On the formal and symbolic properties of the Comedy, see Barański, “The Marvellous”; Barolini, Undivine “Comedy”; Barański, Dante e i segni; Martinez, “Allegory”; Moevs, Metaphysics, 169–85; Ascoli, Dante and the Making, 301–405; Durling, introduction to The Divine Comedy, by Dante, 3:3–20; Tavoni, “Dante ‘Imagining’ ”; Cachey, “Title, Genre”; and Kriesel, “Allegories of the Corpus.” 39.  On the relationship between the poem and prophetic visions, see Barolini, Undivine “Comedy,” 143–65; Moevs, Metaphysics, 183–86; and Tavoni, “Dante ‘Imagining.’ ”

280   Notes to Pages 10–12 40. On the metapoetic import of the marvel Geryon in the Comedy, see Barolini, Undivine “Comedy,” 58–73; Barański, “The Marvellous”; Ferrucci, Il poema del desiderio, 91–124; and, more generally, Mercuri, Semantica di Gerione. 41.  On humanist views of (ancient) Latin versus modern vernacular culture, see Witt, Footsteps of the Ancients; Cachey, “Between Petrarch and Dante”; Ascoli, “Blinding the Cyclops”; Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 16–43; and Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch.” 42.  For Boccaccio’s influence on Petrarch’s Latin and vernacular writings, see Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch,” 144–48; Cachey, “Between Petrarch and Dante,” 16–24; and Eisner, “Petrarch Reading Boccaccio.” 43.  On the gendered connotations of vernacular culture, see Olson, “The Language of Women”; Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 4–5, 10–11, and 16–43; Barolini, “Notes toward a Gendered History”; and Barolini, “Sociology of the ‘Brigata.’ ” 44. On notions concerning Petrarch’s masculine texts and audiences, see Wallace, “Letters of Old Age”; Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 158–79; Zak, Petrarch’s Humanism, 122–30; Zak, “Petrarch and the Ancients,” 146–50; and Legassie, Medieval Invention, 180–88, 192–93, and 199–200. 45. On notions related to gender and perceptions of nature in medieval culture, see Economou, Goddess Natura; Minnis, Magister amoris, 19 and 94–99; Newman, God and the Goddesses, 51–89; and Gerrard, Brunelleschi’s Egg, 9–30. 46.  For an introduction to the role of gendered concepts in debates about metaphor, style, and rhetoric, see Ross, Figuring the Feminine, 27–45. She discusses various passages in a plethora of texts, e.g., Augustine’s De doctrina christiana (2.5– 6); Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (8.pr.20–24); and Matthew of Vendôme’s Ars versificatoria (2.10 and 2.42). 47.  On orthodox views of creation, for example as expressed in Augustinian, Victorine, and Neoplatonic thought, see Harkins, Reading and the Work of Restoration, 73–136; and Lindberg and Shank, Cambridge History of Science, 2.286–322, 365–84, 436–55, and 569–89. On the Cathars and their presence in Italy, see Lansing, Power and Purity. 48.  On debates related to and the ideological import of women’s spiritual experiences in the Middle Ages, see Elliott, Proving Woman, 1–8 and 47–116; and Bynum, Holy Feast, 113–49 and 245–59. The bibliography on female spirituality and women’s bodies is vast. The following are important studies of women’s mystical or carnal earthly experiences: Petroff, Body and Soul; McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body; Newman, From Virile Woman; and Dailey, Promised Bodies; more generally, see Biller and Minnis, Medieval Theology. The bibliography cited in subsequent notes (e.g., McNamer and McGinn) also deals with these topics. 49.  On affective piety, see McNamer, Affective Meditation, 1–21 and 86–115; Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 141–78; Bestul, “Meditatio/Medi­ tation”; and Davis, Weight of Love, 1–28. 50.  See Minnis, “Medieval Imagination,” 255–60; Coolman, “The Medieval Affective Dionysian Tradition”; and Davis, Weight of Love, 29–44.

Notes to Pages 12–13   281 51. For the Latin text cited by Boccaccio (Gen. 14.18.19), see Pseudo-­ Dionysius, De caelesti hierarchia: Etenim valde artificialiter theologia sacris poeticis formationibus in non-­figuratis intellectibus usa est, nostrum (ut dictum est) animum revelans, et ipsi propria et connaturali reductione providens et ad ipsum reformans anagogicas sanctas scripturas (chap. 2, 2:743–44; and, more generally, chaps. 2–3, 2:740–98). 52.  For an introduction to Bernard’s ideas about meditation and the affects, see McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, 158–224, and esp. 181–224; Casey, Thirst for God; and Davis, Weight of Love, 88–106. 53.  See Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica, e.g., the proemial remarks at 1.3.5–6.12, and cf. 83.2–3. 54. On the role of images in medieval discussions of memory, see Carruthers, Book of Memory, 56–98 (esp. 75–76 and 85–87), 217, 254, 387, and 392; and Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 23–61 and 111–40. 55.  On the availability of Bernard’s works in Dante’s and Boccaccio’s Florence, see Botterill, Dante and the Mystical Tradition, 13–63 and 119–47; and France, Medieval Images, 239–63. 56.  On Pseudo-­Dionysian, Bernardian, and central Italian affective traditions, see McGinn, Flowering of Mysticism, 113–98; McGinn, Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 177–249; McNamer, Affective Meditation, 86–115; Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 141–78. 57.  For example, see passages in the Testamentum (1226) and in Bonaventure of Bagnoregio’s Legenda maior (1260–63) and Legenda minor (1260–63)—for the texts, see Brufani et al., Fontes franciscani, 227–32, 777–961, and 965–1013, respectively. On the leper and stigmata, see the Testamentum in general, and also Bonaventure, Legenda maior 1.1–6, 13, and 15.2–4 and 9; and Bonaventure, Legenda minor 1.7–8. On Francis’s and the Franciscan Order’s engagement with lepers, the sick, and the suffering body, see Johnson, “Franciscan Bodies and Souls”; Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine; Manselli, St. Francis, 33–61; and Davis, Weight of Love, 1–6 and 114–26. 58. See, for example, Angela of Foligno, Memoriale, 126–401; 1.144–163 and 205–311 (Angela meditates on images of the Passion and embraces Christ); 3.43–51, 96–117, 209–66 (Angela becomes Christ’s spouse; sees Francis and Christ embrace; and meditates on the cross); and 5.109–41 (Angela washes a leper and drinks the tainted water). See also Catherine of Siena, Il dialogo della divina Provvidenza ovvero Libro della divina dottrina, chaps. 26–27 (Christ’s suffering body is a bridge between the human and divine); chap. 76 (the soul eats the food of sin and tastes the compassion of the cross); and chap. 78 (“giuoco d’amore” [lovers’ game] between the soul and Christ). 59. Johannes de Caulibus, Meditationes vitae Christi, Prol. 91–92. Matters related to the date (ca. 1305–25), authorship (man or woman), and original language (Latin or vernacular) have been contested. Scholars have traditionally thought that the Latin text was the original and was written around 1305 by the Franciscan Johannes da Caulibus of San Gimignano for the Poor Clares. For a

282   Notes to Page 14 recent summary of these debates, see Falvay and Tóth, “L’autore e la trasmissione.” For the view that the Latin text was based on a shorter Tuscan text, which was composed by a sister of the Poor Clares, see McNamer, “Origins of the Meditationes”; McNamer, Affective Meditation, 86–115; and McNamer, introduction to Meditations on the Life of Christ. The work circulated widely in Latin and in the vernacular, and was one of several Tuscan writings dedicated to the contemplation of Christ’s life and bodily suffering. Another example is Ubertino da Casale’s (1259–ca. 1329) Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu Christi. 60.  Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. compatior (387). For examples and summaries of this scholarship, see Bynum, “Body of Christ”; Jesus as Mother, 16–17 and 110–69; Bynum, Holy Feast; Beckwith, Christ’s Body; and McNamer, Affective Meditation, 1–21 and 86–115. 61.  See the various studies by Bynum previously cited. 62. See Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 12–13. She discusses the bibliography on the debate and outlines the arguments. 63.  See Elliott, Proving; and Elliott, Bride of Christ. 64.  The following biographical account draws on the chronologies in Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, xxix–xxxv; and De Robertis et al., Autore e copista, 61–64. See also Branca, Giovanni Boccaccio: Profilo. 65.  For an overview of the circulation and impact of Franciscan writings in Italy, see Bologna, “L’Ordine francescano.” On the Franciscans at Naples, see Bologna, “L’Ordine francescano,” 749–51. 66.  For information concerning mendicant preaching, the role of images in sermons, and lay spirituality (topics intertwined with affective piety), see Delcorno, Exemplum e letteratura, 25–77; Rusconi, Predicazione e vita religiosa, 113– 99; Taylor, Soldiers of Christ, 15–80 and 156–78; Mormando, Preacher’s Demons, 1–51; Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini; Muessig,  Preacher, Sermon and Audience; Rivers, Preaching the Memory; and Corbari, Vernacular Theology. 67.  For an introduction to how scholars have reflected on the import of gender in Boccaccio’s works, see Stillinger and Psaki, Boccaccio and Feminist; Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, “Boccaccio as Cultural Mediator,” 15–18; Psaki, “Voicing Gender”; Migiel, “Boccaccio and Women”; and Migiel, A Rhetoric. On Boccaccio’s engagement with historic female readerships, see Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 90–92, 115, and 165; Serafini-­Sauli, “The Pleasures of Reading”; and Daniels, “Rethinking the Critical History,” 433–39. On female literacy and writing in the later medieval and early Renaissance periods, see also Gill, “Women and the Production”; Dinshaw and Wallace, Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing; Miglio, Governare l’alfabeto, esp. 23–76; Bryce, “Les livres des Florentines”; Green, Women Readers; Crab, “ ‘If I Could Write’ ”; Cox, Women’s Writing, 1–36; Minnis and Voaden, Medieval Holy Women; and Corbari, Vernacular Theology, 59–64 and 107–48. This scholarship has explored how women participated in the production and consumption of various textual cultures. However, scholarship on Boccaccio’s copying practices suggests that Boccaccio did

Notes to Pages 15–18   283 not copy his texts in formats that would have been suitable for female, domestic readers. 68. For studies of how Boccaccio drew on concepts related to gender to reflect upon hermeneutics (especially problems pertaining to interpretation), linguistic matters, and political issues, see the works listed in notes 43 and 67, above. See also Mineo, “La sesta giornata,” 66–69; Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 169– 74; Usher, “Boccaccio on Readers,” 64–71; Barolini, “ ‘Le parole son femmine e i fatti son maschi’ ”; Serafini-­Sauli, “The Pleasures of Reading”; Psaki, “Giving Them the Bird”; Sherberg, Governance of Friendship; Ascoli, “Pyrrhus’s Rules”; Migiel, A Rhetoric, 123–46; and Migiel, Ethical Dimension. The fact that women are part of a brigata in the Decameron (brigate were typically composed of only men) also suggests that gender has a symbolic dimension in Boccaccio’s works. On the brigata and gender, see Barolini, “Sociology of the Brigata.” With respect to previous scholarship, this book more directly examines how Boccaccio engaged medieval debates about the gendered body and female spirituality while addressing poetic issues (concerning the signifying properties of literature) and ethical questions (pertaining to carnal experiences). 69.  Boccaccio’s concept of the notion of poesis is discussed in chapter 1 (section “The Genealogy of Allegory”). 70.  On the one hand, the notion becomes a theoretical Neoplatonic commonplace. See Murrin, “Renaissance Allegory,” 162–64 (Murrin, however, does not investigate the origins of the idea). On the other hand, authors fiercely debated which texts (for example, which of Boccaccio’s) are allegorical. See Kriesel, “Chastening the Corpus.” 71. For the notion that Christ adopted a compassionate disposition by assuming a body at the Incarnation, see Philippians 2:1–11; Augustine, De civitate Dei, 21.15; and Lake, Prologues, 183. Christ also came to be known as the auctor pietatis (author of mercy). On the authorial resonances of compassion and piety in relation to Christ, see Garrison, Pietas, 21–60; and Wenzel, Preaching in the Age, 115 (and note 21). 72.  For Ockham’s possible influence on Boccaccio, see Flasch, Poesia dopo la peste; Nobili, “ ‘Tu non pensavi,’ ” 150–51; Di Franza, “Modelli scolastici,” 3–4n13 and 15n52. Boccaccio mentions the English Franciscan in his youthful fictional epistle Mavortis milex (Ep. 2.9). 73.  For an introduction to the opening story of the Decameron, see Mazzotta, World at Play, 59–63; Marcus, Allegory of Form, 11–26; Usher, “A ‘ser’ Cepparello”; Cherchi and Sarteschi, “L’innocentia.” 74.  Diverse scholars have discussed how Boccaccio foregrounds problems related to hermeneutics and the discovery of meaning in both his Latin and his vernacular writings. For examples of this scholarship, see Milner, “Boccaccio’s Decameron”; Daniels, “Boccaccio’s Narrators,” 38–41; Migiel, “Boccaccio and Women,” 171–72; Migiel, Ethical Dimension, 3–17; Psaki, “Voicing Gender,” 101– 17; and Steinberg, “Mimesis on Trial.”

284   Notes to Pages 19–20 75.  For discussions of and bibliography on Boccaccio’s diverse engagements with Dante, see Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante, 9–19; Marchesi, Stratigrafie decameroniane, 31–66; Houston, Building a Monument, 3–11; Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 1–28; Olson, Courtesy Lost, 24–25; Fumagalli, “Boccaccio e Dante”; Azzetta and Mazzucchi, Boccaccio editore; Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante”; and the works cited in notes 7, 11, and 15, above. 76.  For the issues addressed in this and the following two sentences, see, for example, Fumagalli, “Boccaccio and Dante” (Petrarch caused Boccaccio to question his own views about the properties and import of the Comedy); Hollander, “Boccaccio’s Divided Allegiance,” 224–26 (Boccaccio may not have understood the narrative properties of the Comedy); Ciabattoni and Forni, introduction to The “Decameron”: Third Day, 6–7 (Boccaccio engages with Dante’s works to question those who claim to have knowledge of the afterlife); Finazzi, “Presenze di Dante,” and McKinley, Chaucer’s House, 18 (Boccaccio recalls phrases from Dante’s works for parodic reasons or to create a humorous imitation); Usher, “Mural Morality,” 123–29 and McKinley, Chaucer’s House, 10 and 20–21, (Boccaccio did not grasp fully or imitate successfully Dante’s allegorical poetics); Hollander, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses, 72–73 (readers have sometimes perceived unresolved tensions between the spiritual allegory and erotic content in the Ameto, a text inspired by the Comedy); Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 88–89 and 123–26 (Boccaccio’s allegorical uses of the erotic in his Dantean works engender a degree of confusion); Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante, 11 (Boccaccio’s Dantean-­inspired allegories, Ameto and Amorosa visione, are sometimes not perceived as serious works) and 17–19 (Boccaccio often engaged with Dante for parodic purposes, mainly to question “Dante’s eupeptic morality and his stance as visionary poet,” 17). 77.  For examples of this scholarship or discussions of this historiographical commonplace, see Veglia, Il corvo, 19–42; Veglia, La strada più impervia, 9–17; Rico, Ritratti allo specchio, 9–13 and 97–131; and Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch,” 139–40. 78.  For example, see Cachey, “Between Petrarch and Dante,” 16–24; Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Hellenism”; Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention; Smarr, “Man of Many Turns”; Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch”; Gittes, “Boccaccio and Humanism”; and Mazzotta, “Boccaccio’s Way.” 79.  On the cosmological and encyclopedic nature of the poem and its poetics, see note 38, above. 80. For example, scholars of material culture have sometimes obfuscated Boccaccio’s criticisms of Dante by suggesting that Boccaccio had a “lifelong, unrelenting commitment” to promoting the vernacular poet; see Cachey, “Between Petrarch and Dante,” 18. 81.  The reception of the Comedy in late medieval Italy is treated in chapter 1 (section “Boccaccio’s Dante”). 82.  The notions and writings that affected medieval perceptions of the body and eroticism are vast. For an overview of medieval discourses that influenced

Notes to Pages 20–21   285 ideas about the body, see Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption, 13–36. The discourses that may have influenced Boccaccio’s understanding of the body will be addressed in chapters 2 and 3. 83. Scholars have shown that literary, medical, ethical, theological, and philosophical issues pertaining to the body are bound up with diverse facets of Dante’s writings. For an introduction to this range of topics, see Durling, “Body, Human”; Barnes and Petrie, Dante and the Human Body; and Gragnolati et al., Desire in Dante. 84.  For studies of how Dante reflected on the potential moral and spiritual dangers stemming from (some types of ) erotic texts and bodily experiences, see Pertile, “Does the Stilnovo”; Holmes, Dante’s Two Beloveds; and Moevs, Metaphysics. 85.  For discussions of how Dante tried to attenuate tensions related to body and spirit or analyses of how he drew on the positive resonances of desire and physical suffering in medieval culture, see Lombardi, The Wings, 86–131; Gragnolati, Experiencing the Afterlife, 89–137; Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption, 60–90; and Webb, Dante’s Persons, 123–63 and 169–84. On the status of desire and the body in the Paradiso (in relation to eschatological matters), see, for example, Psaki, “The Sexual Body”; Psaki, “Love for Beatrice”; Gragnolati, Experiencing the Afterlife, 139–78; and Webb, Dante’s Persons, 31, 155–63, and 164–205. 86.  The figure and presence of Beatrice in the Vita nova and Paradiso has engendered much discussion. With respect to the Vita nova, scholars have considered to what extent she may or may not become “dematerialized” within the narrative (see Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption, 80–81; cf. Gragnolati, “(In-­)Corporeality”; and Harrison, Body of Beatrice). Like the other souls in Paradise, Beatrice awaits her glorified body (Par. 14.33–66). In the Paradiso, Dante also pri­marily refers to the appearance of Beatrice’s eyes and face rather than the rest of her celestial form (a fact that does not necessarily imply, however, that bodies are deemphasized in the Paradiso; see Webb, Dante’s Persons, 164–69). Moreover, in Paradise, the pilgrim encounters the souls throughout the spheres when they present themselves to him in luminous forms that are substantial yet transmuted (Par. 4.28–48, and cf. Par. 3.28–30 and Par. 58–60; and Par. 5.88). As explained in Paradiso 4, they reside in the Empyrean, but they manifest themselves to the pilgrim in this manner because of his human limitations. In the Empyrean, however, the pilgrim is granted the privilege of seeing the souls as though they were reclothed in bodies (at the Last Judgment), as an accommodation to his sight (Par. 30.37–45; cf. Par. 22.58–63, 91–96, and 122–29). On this issue, see Pollock, “Light, Love and Joy.” Likewise, scholars have discussed to what extent in Para­ dise the pilgrim transcends his body and its physical limitations as part of his transformative, transhuman experience (see Gragnolati, Experiencing the Afterlife, 161–78; and Webb, Dante’s Persons, 164–69). In sum, scholars have reflected on how and whether Dante—for example in the Paradiso—still has a human, historical relationship with Beatrice and feels human eros. My research suggests

286   Notes to Pages 22–27 that Boccaccio considered how their paradisiacal relationship—despite its amatory and historical overtones—was different from an erotic relationship between persons who are still on earth. 87. On conflicting depictions of the body in Petrarch’s works, see Brose, “Fetishizing the Veil”; and Marcozzi, “The Metaphor of the Corpus.” 88.  On Boccaccio’s autograph, see Bertelli, “Scheda 40: L’autografo del De mulieribus claris.” History writing in medieval culture was considered a type of literature, and thus classified under the philosophical category of ethics. Like authors of imaginative texts, historians discussed and defended the signifying properties, utility, and truthfulness of their works. On the properties of history writing, see Mehtonen, Old Concepts; Mehtonen, “Poetics, Narration, and Imitation”; and Lake, “Authorial Intention.” For examples of classical and medieval discussions of the properties of history writing, see Lake, Prologues. 89. The impact of Tuscan allegorical literatures on Boccaccio’s writings is addressed in chapter 2 (section “Boccaccio and Images”). 90.  For the diverse descriptions of fortuna and eros, see the index in Delcorno, ed., Elegia, s.v. Fortuna (391) and s.v. Venere (393). 91.  Given the scope of the present study, the following chapters deal with Boccaccio’s engagement with his Elegia and pre-­1340 writings in synthetic yet representative terms. For a fuller account of how Boccaccio attempted to control the reception of these works, see Kriesel, “Boccaccio and the Early Modern Reception,” esp. 436–45. CHAPTER ONE

1.  On Petrarch’s masculine writings and audiences, see Wallace, “Letters of Old Age”; Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 158–79; Zak, Petrarch’s Humanism, 122–30; Zak, “Petrarch and the Ancients,” 146–50; Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, “Boccaccio as Cultural Mediator,” 15–17; and Legassie, Medieval Invention, 180–88, 192–93, and 199–200. 2.  On the manuscript Vat. Lat. 3199, see Breschi, “Scheda 78: La Commedia inviata a Petrarca.” The Latin poem appears at f. VIv. For the text of the poem, see Boccaccio, Carmina, 430–33. For the codicological properties of Boccaccio’s compilations of Dante’s writings, see De Robertis et al., Boccaccio autore e copista, 247–87 (diverse entries and schede; the schede are cited in the following where appropriate); Bertelli and Cursi, “Boccaccio copista”; Bertelli, “Codicologia d’autore”; Cursi, “Cronologia e stratigrafia”; Cursi, La scrittura, 97–106; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,” 122–27. On the properties of “Vat,” see Bertelli, “Codicologia d’autore,” 34–38; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,” 123–24. 3.  On the poem Ytalie iam, see Trovato et al., “La tradizione e il testo”; Bertelli and Cursi, “Boccaccio copista,” 109–11; Piacentini, “Il carme Ytalie iam”; Velli, “Moments of Latin Poetry,” 59–60; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,”

Notes to Pages 27–29   287 124. Scholars have debated whether the poem was sent with a letter (not extant) to Petrarch again in 1359. It is hypothesized that, if this were the case, the poem may have prompted Petrarch to write Familiares 21.15 about Dante. It is also thought that the poem copied in “Chig” may be the earliest draft, and that the version reported in “Vat” may be by a later hand. The meaning of the poem and its material context in “Chig” are discussed in section “The Genealogy of Literature,” below.   4.  The other two anthologies are “Ri” (BR, 1035; ca. 1360) and “Chig.” “Ri” contains introductory vernacular rubrics or Brieve raccoglimento (ff. 1r–3v, 56r– 58v, 121v–123v), the Comedy (ff. 4r–178r), and Dante’s fifteen canzoni distese (ff. 179r–87r). On “Ri,” see Bertelli, “Scheda 50: L’autografo Riccardiano.” “Chig” will be discussed in the following. “To” has the following works: Trattatello, ff. 1r–27r; Vita nova, ff. 29r–46v; Brieve raccoglimento, ff. 48r–51r, 117r–120r, 188r–190v; Commedia, ff. 52r–256r; canzoni distese, ff. 257r–266v. For an introduction to “To,” see Bertelli, “Scheda 49: La prima silloge dantesca”; Bertelli and Cursi, “Boccaccio copista,” 77–81; Bertelli, “Codicologia d’autore,” 45; Cursi, “Cronologia e stratigrafia,” 102–9; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,” 124–26.   5.  For an introduction to the Trattatello, see Berté and Fiorilla, “Il Trattatello”; and Filosa, “To Praise Dante.” On the vita’s political dimensions, see Houston, Building a Monument, 73–89; and Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 29–49. On its humanist dimensions, see Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence, 21–53.   6.  Unless otherwise noted, all references to the Trattatello are to the first version (in “To”). The other versions are referred to as A (“Chig,” second version in BAV, Chigi L.V.176) and as B (third version; autograph not extant).  7. Petrarch’s Familiares 21.15 is discussed in section “The Genealogy of Literature,” below.   8.  For an introduction to the Esposizioni, see Papio, “Boccaccio as Lector Dantis,” 7–14; Gilson, “Modes of Reading”; Alfano, “La ‘conveniente cagione’ ”; Azzetta, “Le Esposizioni”; and Hollander, “Boccaccio’s Divided Allegiance.”   9.  See Gilson, “Modes of Reading,” 253–54; and Hollander, “Boccaccio’s Divided Allegiance,” 223–24. 10.  On the organization and content of the commentary, see Gilson, “Modes of Reading,” 254–58. 11.  On Boccaccio’s engagement with humanist concepts in the Esposizioni, see Hollander, “Boccaccio’s Divided Allegiance,” 224–26 and 229–31. 12. Usher has examined Boccaccio’s ideas about allegorical reading (see Usher, “Boccaccio on Readers”), and Papio has discussed Boccaccio’s views about allegory in relation to his promotion of Dante (see Papio, “Boccaccio as Lector Dantis” and “Boccaccio: Mythographer”). The studies previously mentioned (for example, by Gilson, Eisner, and Armstrong) and chapters in the Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio (by Lummus and Milner) either do not focus extensively on matters concerning allegory, or they address only one of Boccaccio’s critical works.

288   Notes to Pages 29–30 13.  For a general introduction to Boccaccio’s literary theory, see Greenfield, Humanist and Scholastic Poetics, 110–28; and Kriesel, “The Genealogy.” For bibliography on the Genealogie, see also Fiaschi, “Genealogia,” 175–76. Earlier studies of the Genealogie emphasized that Boccaccio supposedly, like other early humanists, downplayed the impact of divine inspiration on secular writers and deemphasized the role of allegory in literature. Lummus has also discussed Boccaccio’s ideas about allegoresis in relation to the mythographic tradition (see Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Poetic Anthropology”). 14.  See again Greenfield, Humanist and Scholastic Poetics, 110–28; and Murrin, “Renaissance Allegory,” 163–66; Rico, Ritratti allo specchio, 23–25; Pasquini, “Luci e ombre”; Zago, Dante e Boccaccio, 58–59; Alfano, “La ‘conveniente cagione,’ ” 261–62; Delcorno, “Gli scritti danteschi,” 111–13; Solomon, “Gods, Greeks, and Poetry,” 237–42; and Veglia, La strada, 79–82. Others note that Boccaccio was innovative in modifying Petrarch’s ideas to defend Dante. See Papio, “Boccaccio as Lector Dantis,” 4, 16, 18–20, 26–27, and 32; Librandi, “La lingua di Boccaccio,” 351–52 and 406–7; and Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch,” 142–43; and general remarks in Filosa, “To Praise Dante,” 214–16. 15.  Scholars have not traditionally considered the self-­reflexive implications of Boccaccio’s literary theory because it was thought that his Latin and scholarly works were not ideologically coherent with his vernacular fictional writings. However, Lummus suggests that Boccaccio’s ideas about poesis in the Genealogie are consonant with the fact he tried to depict “sublime” truths in the Decameron (see Lummus, “The Decameron and Boccaccio’s Poetics,” 77–81). Milner suggests that Boccaccio’s ideas about allegory inform the text’s depiction of the ambiguous “semiotics” of daily life (Milner, “Boccaccio’s Decameron,” 97–98). Citing the authority of Augustine, Boccaccio also argued that readers could overcome hermeneutic ambiguities (Gen. 14.12.11–17), an idea highlighted by Menetti in her study of Boccaccio and fictio (Menetti, “Boccaccio e la fictio,” 80–87) and by Marchesi in his remarks concerning the stories about Calandrino (Marchesi, Stratigrafie, 125–37). 16.  Dante referenced the psalm when discussing allegory in the Convivio (2.1.2–7), and the author of the “Epistle to Can Grande” also explained the concept of polysemy with the example of the psalm (ECG §7). 17.  On humanist defenses of poetry, see Ronconi, Le origini delle dispute; Kallendorf, “From Virgil to Vida”; and Witt, Footsteps of the Ancients, 156–61. On Boccaccio’s knowledge of these defenses, see Papio, “Boccaccio between Mussato.” 18. Petrarch, Collatio laureationis; and Petrarch, Invectives against a Physician. 19. Mussato, Épîstres métriques (Ep.). 20. Petrarch, Collatio 2.7–8 and 9.7; Invective, 1.27, 3.103 and 137. Mussato, Ep. 4.40–68; 7.15–22; and 18.83–89, 92–97, 100–101, and 157–75. 21. Petrarch, Collatio, 9.4; Familiares 10.4.1–2 and 4–8; Invective, 1.35–37 and 3.132. Mussato, Ep. 7.23–44; 18.51–53, 106–28, and 136–42.

Notes to Pages 31–32   289 22. On Boccaccio’s knowledge of the Dante commentators, see Gilson, “Modes of Reading,” 256–57; Azzetta, “Le Esposizioni,” 276–78; and, more generally, Alfano, “La ‘conveniente cagione.’ ” 23.  On the Dante commentary tradition, and on general differences between commentators, see Parker, Commentary and Ideology; Barański, “Chiosar con altro testo”; Barański, “Dante Commentaries”; and Nasti and Rossignoli, Interpreting Dante. 24. For an introduction to the “Epistle to Can Grande,” see Barański, “Epistle to Can Grande”; De Ventura, “Dante, Dupin”; Casadei, “Essential Issues”; and Azzetta, “La tradizione indiretta.” 25.  On the causes of authorship, see Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 15–39; Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 12–36. 26.  On late medieval perceptions of the narrative properties of the Comedy, see the works listed in notes 23 and 24, above, and also Wilson, “Allegory as Avoidance.” 27.  Jacopo Alighieri, Chiose all’Inferno. 28. On Guido’s exegesis, see Nasti, “A Friar Critic”; and Battaglia Ricci, “Guido da Pisa’s ‘Chantilly’ Dante.” 29.  Da Pisa, Expositiones et glose; Declaratio super “Comediam” Dantis. 30.  When he wrote the Trattatello, Boccaccio had in fact already questioned the poetics of the Vita nova in his own vernacular fictions (see chapter 2, “The Revelation of the Body”; and chapter 3, “The Integrated Carnal-­Spiritual Voyage”). In addition, he probably did not have direct knowledge of the Convivio. See Gilson, “Reading the Convivio,” 271–73; and Arduini, “Il ruolo di Boccaccio,” 95–97. 31.  The introduction to this book addresses the topic of and has extensive bibliography pertaining to how Dante characterized the signifying properties of the Comedy. 32.  Aelius Donatus transmitted Suetonius’s lost vita of Virgil to the Middle Ages. For the biography of Virgil and an English translation of the Latin, see Donatus, Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana (VSD), in The Virgilian Tradition, edited by Ziolkowski and Putnam, 181–99. On the circulation of the vita in the Middle Ages, see Ziolkowski and Putnam, The Virgilian Tradition, 179–82. On Boccaccio’s use of the Virgilian vita as a model for the Trattatello, see Freedman, “A Note on Dante’s Portrait”; and Kirkham, “The Parallel Lives.” For other potential classical, humanistic, and troubadour-­inspired sources for the vita, see also Houston, Building a Monument, 73–78. 33. Donatus, VSD, §§2–5 (182). 34. On Boccaccio’s knowledge of contemporary ideas about dreams, see Cappozzo, “ ‘Delle verità dimonstrate da’ sogni.’ ” 35.  Scholars have also noted that Boccaccio recalled the Virgilian vita to characterize Dante’s poem as the modern vernacular counterpart to Virgil’s ancient Latin epic (see note 32, above). Boccaccio perhaps compared the formal properties

290   Notes to Pages 33–41 of the Comedy and of the Aeneid because Aeneas’s voyage to the underworld was likened to an imagined vision or a dream. Aeneas and the Sibyl return to the world through the gate of false dreams (Aen. 6.893–98). In contrast to Virgil, Boccaccio implies that the Aeneid was like a true dream. 36.  In the second and third versions, Boccaccio shortened remarks in the introductory sections about the dream (cf. Tratt. A and B §§14–15). Nevertheless, references to the dream of Dante’s mother still frame the vita. In addition, Boccaccio highlighted the same issues, concerning allegory, the ontology of visions, the poetics of the Comedy, and the poetic laurel, in the later versions (e.g., Tratt. A and B §§141–58). In rewriting the opening, he postponed the detailed account of the dream from the introductory to the concluding paragraphs, and replaced it with more compact opening remarks (Tratt. A and B §§141–45). Comprehensively, these facts suggest that Boccaccio altered these elements of the biography for narrative reasons, and not because he had changed his views about the properties of the Comedy. That Boccaccio discussed similar ideas about allegory, visions, and the Comedy in his later writings, in the Genealogie and Esposizioni (to be addressed in the following), confirms this interpretation. 37.  For Boccaccio’s debts to the “Epistle,” see Mazzoni, “L’Epistola a Cangrande,” 170–74 and 180–81; Jenaro-­MacLennan, Trecento Commentaries, 105– 23; Hollander, Dante’s Epistle, 23–41; and Papio, “Boccaccio as Lector Dantis,” 21–22. 38.  For other remarks about why Boccaccio emphasized that the Comedy was a fiction, see the end of this section. 39.  See Petrarch, Fam. 10.4.1; and Mussato, Ep. 7.20–24. 40.  Passages translated and discussed in Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 317–18, 321–24, and 366–72. 41.  Matters concerning Boccaccio’s exegetical practices are also addressed in section “The Genealogy of Allegory,” below. 42.  On Benvenuto’s characterization of Dante as a prophet (in polemic with Boccaccio), see Barański, “A Note on the Trecento”; Barański, “Chiosar con altro testo,” 99–116; and Rossi, “Il Boccaccio di Benvenuto.” 43.  Scholars have noted that Boccaccio characterizes the Comedy as a fiction, but have not explored Boccaccio’s precise characterization of the poem’s structural properties. See, in particular, Usher, “Boccaccio on Readers,” esp. 71–75 (Boccaccio suggested Dante developed a hybrid view of literature [allegoria in verbis with three senses]); Papio, “Boccaccio as Lector Dantis,” 32 (Boccaccio was not necessarily addressing questions about the import of the literal level); Hollander, “Boccaccio’s Divided Allegiance,” 224–26, and Alfano, “La ‘conveniente cagione,’ ” 262–64 (Boccaccio “de-­theologizes” Dante to make him appealing to Petrarch); and Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch,” 142–44 (Boccaccio promoted a vernacular theological-­fictional Dante contra Petrarch). 44.  On the explicit and implied readerships in the text, see Usher, “Boccaccio on Readers,” 64–65; Solomon, “Gods, Greeks, and Poetry,” 235–38; and Daniels, “Boccaccio’s Narrators,” 44–50.

Notes to Pages 41–46   291 45.  For a general introduction to the Genealogie and its textual history, see Solomon, “Gods, Greeks, and Poetry”; Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Poetic Anthropology”; Fiaschi, “Genealogia deorum gentilium”; and Regnicoli, “Scheda 33: L’autografo di Boccaccio delle Genealogie.” 46.  Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. fingo (II.B.3 b, 750–51). 47.  See Lummus, “The Decameron,” 65–71. Boccaccio’s ensuing discussion of allegory also demonstrates that for him the term encompasses various types of literature. 48.  The example, and its self-­reflexive implications, will be addressed in the following. 49.  Cicero, Pro Archia 6–42. 50.  For an introduction to Boccaccio’s humanist-­inspired ideas about literature (in comparison to Petrarch’s), see Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch”; and Gittes, “Boccaccio and Humanism.” 51.  On medieval theories of biblical authorship, see Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 78–94. Other medieval writers debated whether ancient poets were inspired, and developed a theory of authorship resembling the biblical “double efficient cause.” For example, Giovanni del Virgilio also thought that ancient poets were inspired, while Pierre Bersuire did not. On these notions, see Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 321–23. 52.  For an introduction to definitions of history and fiction in the Middle Ages, see Mehtonen, Old Concepts. On Boccaccio’s knowledge of these distinctions, see Marchesi, Stratigrafie, 1–30. 53.  Other medieval writers also noted that the Bible had fictional and/or metaphoric elements. See, for example, Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 366–67. 54.  Compare Apuleius, Metamorphoseon 4.28–6.24. Boccaccio began reading and annotating Apuleius’s writings in his youth (1330s; BML, 29.2), and he copied the writer’s texts in the 1340s or early 1350s (BML, 54.32). BML, 29.2 has the Apologia, Metamorphoseon, and Florida; and BML, 54.32 contains the Apologia, Metamorphoseon, Florida, and De deo Socratis. On these manuscripts, see Fiorilla, “Scheda 61: L’Apuleio di mano del Boccaccio”; and Speranzi and Fiorilla, “Scheda 65: Un Apuleio letto e annotato dal giovane Boccaccio.” 55.  On Boccaccio’s interpretation of Apuleius’s myth of Cupid and Psyche, see Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 121–40. Candido also notes that Petrarch himself drew on the myth in Seniles 17.3. The letter features a Latin translation of Boccaccio’s Griselda story (Dec. 10.10) and, according to Candido, appears to promote history writing over fictional literature. For Boccaccio’s engagement with Apuleius, see also Eisner and Schachter, “Libido Sciendi”; and Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Three Venuses,” 75–76. Lummus has pointed out the self-­referential nature of Boccaccio’s allusion to the anicula narrator of the story of Cupid and Psyche. He suggests that, as the full meaning of the old woman’s story becomes clear in the course of Lucius’s journey, so the novelle have different meanings depending on the context in which they are told.

292   Notes to Pages 46–51 56. See Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Three Venuses,” 86–87n51; and Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 121–40. 57.  On Boccaccio’s engagement with Apuleius’s Metamorphoses in the Ameto, see chapter 2 in this book (section “Chaste or Erotic Bodies”). 58.  There are several thematic and linguistic echoes of Lucius’s journey in the account of the dreamer’s voyage. See Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 53–73. 59.  On Boccaccio’s debts to Ovid for ideas about the feminine connotations of elegy versus the masculine resonances of epic and tragedy, see also Kriesel, “Boccaccio and the Early Modern Reception,” 417–22. Boccaccio’s engagement with Ovid is one of the primary subjects addressed in chapter 4. 60.  See, for example, Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 169–74; Olson, “The Language of Women”; Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 4–5, 10–11, and 16–43; and Serafini-­Sauli, “The Pleasures of Reading.” 61.  On the widow and her cultural interests, see Usher, “Boccaccio on Readers,” 66–67 and 82; and Menetti, “Appunti di poetica boccacciana,” 48–54. 62.  It has been suggested that Boccaccio inherited his idea about literature(s) being allegorical from Petrarch or that Petrarch would have agreed with him. See, for example, Murrin, “Renaissance Allegory,” 163; and Alfano, “La ‘conveniente cagione,’ ” 262. 63.  See notes 12 and 14, above. 64.  The epistle Mavortis milex is copied in the Zibaldone Laurenziano (BML, 29.8, 51vA–52rB). For information about the dates of the text and the autograph, see De Robertis, “Boccaccio copista”; Petoletti, “Gli zibaldoni”; and Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 307 (25). On Boccaccio’s youthful perceptions of Petrarch, see Houston, “Portrait of a Young Humanist,” 71–72; Monti, “Boccaccio e Petrarca,” 33–36. 65. For an introduction to the vita of Petrarch, see Bellieni, “Le vite di Petrarca”; and Mazzotta, “A Life in Progress.” 66.  See also Houston, Building a Monument, 58–59. 67.  For synthetic accounts of Boccaccio and Petrarch’s discussion of Latin, the vernacular, and Dante, see Paolazzi, “Petrarca, Boccaccio e il Trattatello”; and Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence, 21–53. 68.  For a general introduction to the poem, see the works listed in note 3, above; and Velli, introduction to Carmina, by Boccaccio, 386–91 and 477nn12– 17; Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,” 127; and Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 12–16. 69.  See Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence, 32–41. 70.  The contents of “Chig” are as follows: Trattatello, ff. 1r–13r; Vita nova, ff. 13r–28v; “Donna mi prega” with commentary, ff. 29r–32v; Ytalie iam, f. 34r; canzoni distese, ff. 34v–43r; Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, ff. 43v–79r. On the composition of the Chigiano manuscripts, see Bertelli, “Scheda 51: La seconda silloge dantesca.” On the material properties and ideological significance of the Chigi codex, see Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 9–16 and 50–73; Bertelli and Cursi,

Notes to Pages 52–61   293 “Boccaccio copista,” 90–111; Bertelli, “Codicologia d’autore,” 50–55; Cursi, “Cronologia e stratigrafia,” 114–25; Breschi, “Boccaccio editore”; Tanturli, “Le copie”; Bettarini Bruni, “Il Petrarca chigiano”; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,” 123–24 and 126–27. 71. See, for example, Piacentini, “Il carme Ytalie iam,” 202–7; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,” 127. 72.  The homoerotic connotations of pastoral are partially inspired by passages of Virgil’s eclogues. Virgil’s bucolics either discuss homoerotic desires (Ec. 2; Corydon loves Alexis) or feature male singing contests (for example, Ec. 1; Tityrus and Meliboeus and Ec. 7; Corydon and Thyrsis compete in song). See Oliensis, “Sons and Lovers,” 294–99; and Fredericksen, “Finding Another Alexis.” Boccaccio also recalls Corydon and Alexis in his own Buccolicum carmen 2, in which the two compete for a woman’s affections (2.63–65 and 101–3; see Fredericksen, “Finding Another Alexis,” 429). 73.  Chapter 2 herein addresses in detail both the male tenzone and the rele­ vance of the female gender in the text. 74.  Parables were classified as a genre of argumentum. For medieval ideas concerning the category of argumentum, see note 52, above. 75.  Compare Marcus, Allegory of Form, 4–6; and Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 109–10. Marcus and Eisner note that Boccaccio’s discussion of allegory emphasizes that the reader must search for hidden meanings in all fictions, even in those that may seem controversial, such as the Decameron. C H A P T E R T WO

1.  For medieval ideas about the imagination, see Carruthers, Book of Memory, 56–79; Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 23–61 and 111–40; and Minnis, “Medieval Imagination,” 239–44. 2. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 23–31; and Minnis, “Medieval Imagination,” 240 and 243–45. 3. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 31–61; and Minnis, “Medieval Imagination,” 240–43. 4.  On medical and social issues related to love in the Middle Ages, see Wack, Lovesickness, 51–73 and 83–108; and, more generally, Jaeger, Ennobling Love. 5.  Guido Cavalcanti, “Donna me prega,” 2.2:491–567, 522–29 (27 [27]). 6.  Minnis, “Medieval Imagination,” 240–41. 7. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 31–41 and 56–61; and Minnis, “Medieval Imagination,” 240–42. 8.  On Augustinian, Victorine, Neoplatonic, and Scholastic ideas about the goodness and rational nature of creation, see Harkins, Reading and the Work; and Lindberg and Shank, Cambridge History of Science, 2.286–322, 365–84, 436–55, and 569–89.

294   Notes to Pages 63–65  9. See Branca, Boccaccio: The Man, 41–55. 10. On Dante’s influence on the Teseida, see Coleman, “Teseida,” 89. For other echoes of Dante’s treatise in Boccaccio’s works, see Pistolesi, “Il De vulgari eloquentia,” 163–67; and Nussmeier, “Boccaccio e il De vulgari eloquentia.” 11.  See Branca, Boccaccio: The Man, 56–85. Boccaccio was also reading and copying Dante’s works in Naples (e.g., Ep. 11[9], 3[4], 12[9]; see Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 311 [108, 109, and 110, respectively]); and Dante’s eclogues appear in Boccaccio’s Zibaldone membranaceo, late 1330s–early 1340s (BML, 29.8, ff. 67v–72v). On Boccaccio’s copying and knowledge of Dante’s eclogues, see Petoletti, “Boccaccio editore delle egloghe”; Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 311 (115–18); and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,” 122–23. 12.  On the presence of Francophone culture in Tuscany, see Barański and Boyde, Fiore in Context; Casciani and Kleinhenz, The Fiore; Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 70–100; Cherchi, “Vernacular Literatures”; and Tavoni, “Linguistic Italy,” 251–54 and 256–58. 13.  Boccaccio wrote a brief biography of Brunetto as part of his commentary on Inferno 15, the canto devoted to the punishment of the sodomites (see Espos. 15.15–23, and 85–86). 14.  On views of the poetics of the Comedy in medieval commentaries on the poem, see chapter 1 (section “Boccaccio’s Dante”). 15.  But see Papio’s work on Boccaccio’s knowledge of Boethius and Neoplatonic thought, a topic (and works) addressed in the following. For the notion that the Ameto promotes a secular cultural agenda, see Bruni, Boccaccio: L’invenzione, 201–2 and 214–15; Gagliardi, Giovanni Boccaccio, 33–37, 73–74, 116–22, and 131–33; and Veglia, “La vita lieta,” 10–11, 28, 109, 181, 192, and 238. For the notion that Ameto is indebted to Dantean concepts (pertaining to allegory or conversion), see Orvieto, “Boccaccio mediatore,” 51–57; Surdich, La cornice, 134– 36; Hollander, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses, 73–77; Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 99, 104–5, 107–12, and 123–24; Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 65–70; and Decaria, “Comedìa.” On the supposed tensions between secular, worldly beauty and celestial, eternal beauty in the text, see Tylus, “On the Threshold,” 134 and 140–42. Smarr has noted that Boccaccio drew on the erotic in his allegory to stimulate readers to consider hermeneutic matters (Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 85 and 99–100). She also hypothesizes that Boccaccio may have written such a controversial work either to shock and amuse readers or to underscore his artistic capacity (Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 86, 88, and 225). The present book complements her analysis by examining how Boccaccio was inspired by ideas in medieval literary theory, theology, and philosophy to privilege the erotic body as a symbolic medium. 16.  Boccaccio appears to cite from Eriugena’s translation (ca. 867–72). For the text, see Pseudo-­Dionysius, De caelesti hierarchia 2:727–1039: Etenim valde artificialiter theologia sacris poeticis formationibus in non-­figuratis intellectibus usa est,

Notes to Pages 66–68   295 nostrum (ut dictum est) animum revelans, et ipsi propria et connaturali reductione providens et ad ipsum reformans anagogicas sanctas scripturas (2:743–44, chap. 2). 17. On the in singulis membris in biblical commentaries, see Dove, “Sex, Allegory, and Censorship,” 323–24. This descriptive technique had other antecedents in classical and medieval culture. They are discussed in this section. 18.  For an introduction to the reception of the Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (especially as concerns perceptions of its literal sense and allegorical resonances), see Astell, Song of Songs, 25–104; Matter, Voice of My Beloved, 49–85; Turner, Eros and Allegory, 47–70; Nasti, Favole d’amore, 22–42; and Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption, 18–20 19.  See the indices of the Genealogie (s.v. Augustinus, 2:1784–85) and Esposizioni (s.v. Agostino, 984) for lists of Augustinian works and passages that Boccaccio might have drawn upon in his scholarly writings. 20.  Citations of the text refer to Augustine, De doctrina christiana. 21.  See Augustine, Confessiones. 22.  Papio has noted that Boccaccio’s defense of the poets was indebted to Augustine, who discussed Varro’s categorization of theology into three kinds: mythic, physical, and civic or political (poets belong to the second category; Papio, “Boccaccio: Mythographer,” 136–39). Cf. Gen. 1, Pr. 1.16–18, and Augustine, De civitate Dei 6.5. 23. On Boethius’s apparent hostility to (or contradictory remarks about) mundane and carnal images, and on the influence that his remarks had on later philosophers, see Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry, 20–23, 74–82, and 92–103; and Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 124–26, 318–21, and 328–40. See also the works listed in notes 24 and 26, below. 24.  See, for example, Gen. 5.22.1. For interpretations of the De nuptiis as a Neoplatonic text that, supposedly like Boethius’s, encourages readers to be cautious about mundane affairs and carnal reality, see Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry, 83–92, and, more generally, 104–25; Ramelli, introduction to Le nozze di Filologia e Mercurio, by Martianus Capella (discusses in detail notions related to the liberal arts); and Ramelli, Commento a Marziano Capella attribuito a Bernardo Silvestre, 1759–2055, e.g., 1760–61, 1762–65, 1766–67, 1810–13, 1864–65, and 1882–83. For the notion that the arts are virginal because not tainted by mundane materialism and matters, see Ramelli, Commento a Marziano, 1872–73 and 1880–83. 25.  For an introduction to these cultural changes in the twelfth century, see Chenu, Nature, Man, Society; and Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism. 26. Boccaccio copied the Cosmographia (ca. 1338–48; BML, 33.31, 59v– 67r); see Zamponi, “Scheda 56: Nell’officina,” 303; and Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 306 (17). For an introduction to Bernardus’s and Alan’s views, see Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry, 152–219; Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 113–26, 150–54, and 158–64; and Chiurco, introduction to Viaggio della

296   Notes to Pages 68–71 saggezza, 15–21 and 25–36; Wetherbee, “Alan of Lille”; and Wetherbee, introduction to Literary Works, xvi–xxxvii. 27.  Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia. 28.  Alan of Lille, De planctu naturae (The Plaint of Nature) and Anticlaudi­ anus, 22–217 and 219–517, respectively. For example, see Alan of Lille, De planctu 2.pr.1–5 (description of Nature); and Anticlaudianus 1.270–325 (description of Prudence). 29.  For example, see Alan of Lille, De planctu 6.pr.3–8 and 8.pr.1–4; and Anticlaudianus, Pr. 6.14–28 and 33–37; 6.115–56, 170–84, and 207–30; and 7.311–28. Alan also declares that the Liberal Arts are virginal because they are not tainted by worldliness (see the descriptio of Grammar in Anticlaudianus 2.380–432). 30. The Cosmographia appears in BML, 33.31 at 59v–67r. For information about Bernardus’s text in Boccaccio’s notebooks, see Zamponi, “Scheda 56: Nell’officina di Boccaccio,” 303; and Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 306 (17). 31.  On Scholastic thinking about images, see Colish, Mirror of Language, 110–51; Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 165–96 and 197– 276; and Minnis, “Medieval Imagination,” 240–44 and 255–57. 32. Aquinas, In Aristotelis librum “De anima” commentarium 3.13.791; cf. Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1a, q.1, a.9 resp. 33.  On Boccaccio’s autograph copy of Dino del Garbo’s commentary, see chapter 1 herein (section “The Genealogy of Literature”). On Boccaccio’s debts to Dino del Garbo for ideas about love, and on the role of the De anima in his thinking, see Usher, “Boccaccio, Cavalcanti’s ‘Donna me prega’ ”; and Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 36–45. 34.  See Matthew of Vendôme’s Ars versificatoria (ca. 1175), Geoffrey Vinsauf ’s Poetria nova (1210–15), and Boncompagno da Signa’s Rhetorica novissima (1235). For a general introduction to the artes poetriae, see Gallo, The “Poetria nova”; Purcell, Ars poetriae; Murphy, “The Arts of Poetry”; and Woods, Classroom Commentaries. 35.  On discussions of descriptio in poetic and rhetorical manuals, see Gallo, The “Poetria nova,” 150–87; Murphy, “The Arts,” 45, 48–49, and 55–56; and Woods, Classroom Commentaries, 67–79. 36.  Though a few critics have noted that Boccaccio employed descriptio, they have not often considered why he used the technique. Scholars have also suggested that Boccaccio may have drawn upon Apuleius, Ovid, and Alan of Lille for the descriptiones mulieris. See Usher, “Boccaccio’s Experimentation with Verbal Portraits”; Stewart, Retorica e mimica, 39–54; Pozzi, Sull’orlo del visibile, 145–84; Trippe, “The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” 1232–33; and Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 45–51. 37.  On the role of images in mnemonic theory and practice, again see Carruthers, Book of Memory, 56–79; Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 23–61 and 111–40; and Minnis, “Medieval Imagination,” 239–44. On the

Notes to Pages 71–77   297 concepts of mental fornicatio and the notion of curiositas, see Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 82–91, 94–111, and 126–29, 188, and 302n78. On the ethics of novelty and curiosity more generally, see Ingham, The Medieval New, 146–51. 38.  Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum (9:209): Idcirco enim pictura in ecclesiis adhibetur, ut hi qui litteras nesciunt saltem in parietibus videndo legant, quae legere in codicibus non valent (Artistic depictions are in churches so that those who cannot read may read by looking at the walls and understand what they cannot read in books). On this notion’s impact on medieval culture, see Gayk, Image, Text, and Religious Reform, 4–7. On discussions of carnal images in medieval manuals dedicated to preaching and memory, see Forni, “Realtà/verità,” 304–5; Delcorno, Exemplum e letteratura, 7–22, esp. 9–11; Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini; Minnis, “Medieval Imagination,” 264–65; and Rivers, Preaching the Memory. 39. Capellanus, De amore. 40.  On Dante’s choice of title and on its relevance for the poem’s genre, see Barański, “Dante, the Roman Comedians”; Barański, “Comedìa: Notes on Dante”; and Cachey, “Title, Genre.” 41.  The reference to nymphs in the title would also have evoked ideas about eroticism and poetry, and also concepts related to brides, fertility, and rebirth. For the connotations of nymphs in medieval culture, see Ardissino, “Le ninfe, il Boccaccio, la storia,” 17–20. 42. Studies of the concluding cantos of the Purgatorio present different interpretations and nuanced readings. However, most scholars agree that Dante engages in a sustained metareflection in these cantos, perhaps because they describe a liminal reality on the cusp between Paradise and earth (an important locus for a poet endeavoring to transcribe the spiritual verbum Dei for embodied humans). For an introduction to issues of embodiment, eroticism, selfhood, and authority raised by this section of the Purgatorio, see Pertile, La puttana; Barański, “Dante’s Signs”; Moevs, Metaphysics, 90–102; Webb, Dante’s Persons, 169–75; Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption, 69–79; and Kriesel, “Allegories of the Corpus.” 43.  Boccaccio’s reflection on the cantos associated with the Earthly Paradise in the Amorosa visione will be discussed in chapter 3 (section “The Integrated Carnal-­Spiritual Voyage”). 44.  On Boccaccio’s youthful copying and imitation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, see Petoletti, “Gli zibaldoni,” 292; Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 309 (65) and 312 (126); Petoletti, “Tavola di ZM,” 319 (50, 51). Boccaccio copied passages of Ovid’s epic in his notebooks (sections of which are dated from the 1330s to the 1350s): BML, 29.8 (Zibaldone Laurenziano; f. 75vA–B, 1338–48) and BML, 33.31 (Miscellanea Laurenziana; ff. 29r–30r, 1338–48), and BNC, Banco Rari 50 (Zibaldone Magliabechiano; f. 121r [163r], 1330s–50s). 45. Boccaccio also copied Apuleius’s texts in the 1340s or early 1350s (BML, 54.32). As noted in chapter 1 herein, BML, 29.2 has the Apologia, Metamorphoseon, and Florida; and BML, 54.32 contains the Apologia, Metamorphoseon, Florida, and De deo Socratis. On the two manuscripts with Apuleius’s texts, see

298   Notes to Pages 77–86 Fiorilla, “Scheda 61: L’Apuleio di mano del Boccaccio”; and Speranzi and Fiorilla, “Scheda 65: Un Apuleio letto e annotato dal giovane Boccaccio.” 46. On Boccaccio’s engagement with Apuleius’s account of Cupid and Psyche in the Ameto, see also section “The Revelation of the Body,” below. On the so-­called laus capillorum, see Vio, “Chiose e riscritture apuleiane,” 144–47. For the linguistic echoes of Apuleius’s narrative about Cupid and Psyche in Agapes’s story (a topic also discussed in the following), see Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 45–51. 47.  See Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 47–50. 48. Horace, Ars poetica. 49.  On depictions of male and female readerships in Boccaccio’s works, see Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 169–74; Usher, “Boccaccio on Readers,” 63–70; Battaglia Ricci, “Le donne del Decameron,” 167–77; Olson, “The Language of Women”; Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 90–92, 115; Daniels, “Rethinking the Critical History,” 433–39; and Serafini-­Sauli, “The Pleasures of Reading.” 50.  In the Filocolo (2.4.1–7), Florio and Biancifiore fall in love while reading Ovid’s Ars amatoria, an episode that also recalls Francesca and Paolo’s reading (though in Boccaccio’s version the couple does not go to Hell). On the Dantean echo, see Usher, “Boccaccio on Readers,” 66–69. 51.  The identities of the women in the Ameto was discussed in the 1970s and 80s. See Quaglio’s notes in the critical edition for information and bibliography related to this topic. 52.  For the etymology of Teogapen’s name, see Quaglio, ed., Ameto, 917n5 to division 10. 53. For a summary of interpretations of the tenzone, see Tylus, “On the Threshold,” 138. 54. Ameto expresses frustration and disappointment after viewing each nymph (Ameto 9.18 and 26; 13.15–16 and 28–29, and 30; 15.20 and 26). 55.  In the Decameron, the narrator also characterizes his relationship with his (female) readers in erotic terms, as an act of seduction (Dec., Conc. 27–28). See Milner, “Coming Together”; and Usher, “Boccaccio on Readers,” 64–66. 56.  For the etymology of Affron, see Quaglio, ed., Ameto, 926n24 to division 18. 57.  On Boccaccio’s knowledge of Quintilian, see Coulter, “Boccaccio’s Knowledge of Quintilian”; and McLaughlin, Literary Imitation, 49. Smarr also briefly discusses Mospa’s lesson in allegorical reading (Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 88). 58. Horace, Odes 1.14.1–3, as cited in Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 8.6.44. For the Horatian poem, see Horace, Odes. 59.  For a discussion of Augustine’s, Hugh of St. Victor’s, and Alan of Lille’s views of the liberal arts, see Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille’s Grammar of Sex; Harkins, Reading and the Work, 73–136; Pollmann and Vessey, Augustine and the Disciplines; Reynolds, Medieval Reading; Stock, Augustine the Reader, 123–73; Cestaro, Dante

Notes to Pages 86–94   299 and the Grammar, 15–20; and Ross, Figuring the Feminine, 29–31. Ross also discusses how Augustine reflected on the advantages and disadvantages of the “carnal allures” of texts, that is, their aesthetic dimension. 60. Statius, Thebaid. 61. Virgil, Eclogues. 62.  Dante also gave the name Mopsus to Giovanni del Virgilio in a Latin eclogue. Dante sent the poem to the schoolmaster in response to his request that Dante stop composing poetry in the vernacular, a language with feminine and popular resonances. Boccaccio copied Dante’s eclogues in Naples (Zibaldone mem­ branaceo; BML, 29.8, ff. 67v–72v [ca. 1330s–41]), but it does not seem likely that he intended to recall them in the Ameto by using the name Mopsa. 63.  On medieval iconography related to Grammar, see Cestaro, Dante and the Grammar, 1–8, 9–48, and 77–108. 64.  This paragraph concerning Dante’s ideas about grammar and vernacularity synthesizes—in highly abbreviated form—the analysis of the topics by Cestaro, Dante and the Grammar, esp. 53–76, 82–85, 135–37, 154–66; but also those by Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 140–57; and Ascoli, Dante and the Making, 130–74. 65.  For an introduction to Ulysses in Inferno 26 and in the rest of the Comedy, see Mazzotta, “Canto XXVI: Ulysses”; Barolini, Undivine “Comedy,” 48–58 and 66–73; and Cacciaglia, “L’esperienza del mondo.” 66.  Scholars have noted in passing that Alatiel’s (Dec. 2.7) wanderings in the Mediterranean might recall Ulysses’s travels, and that Ulysses appears in the Amorosa visione as an explorer desirous of knowledge (see chapter 3, section “The Poetics of the Body”; and cf. AV 8.28–30 and 27.80–88). On the figure of Ulysses in these Boccaccian works, see Morosini, Per difetto reintegrare, 78–79, 119, and 133–34; and Pegoretti, “ ‘Di che paese,’ ” 90–99 and 110–13. 67.  Dante’s narrative might be indebted to Ovid, who compared the two sailors’ journeys (Metam. 14.154–319). On this issue, see Cestaro, Dante and the Grammar, 85–88. 68. Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae. 69.  Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 120–22 and 126– 30; and Cestaro, Dante and the Grammar, 97–99. 70.  For Boccaccio’s discussion of Scylla, see Gen. 10.9; for the Sirens, Gen. 7.20; for Circe, De mul. 38 and Gen. 11.60 (on Ulysses and Circe). On ideas about Circe and the Sirens in the Middle Ages, see Holmes, Dante’s Two Beloveds, 35–67 and 99–118. 71.  Compare Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.1.51–74. 72.  For a discussion of the term vago in the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, see Imus, “ ‘Vaga è la donna vaga.’ ” 73.  For example, see Hebrews 11:1; Dante, Par. 24.61–78 and Par. 25.46– 96; and Wawrykow, “The Theological Virtues.”

300   Notes to Pages 98–109 74.  For a summary of scholarship on the idea of two Venuses in Boccaccio’s works, see Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Three Venuses,” 65–67. 75.  The foundation stories about Rome and Naples that precede Fiammetta’s narrative recall in abbreviated form several sections of the Filocolo. When Florio tries to return from exile to his lover, Biancifiore, he meets a group of nobles near Naples. In this episode, the fictionalized persona of the author appears as Caleone, and he courts Fiammetta, the name often given by Boccaccio to his beloved. The group discusses the so-­called “Questioni d’amore,” debates about the nature of love (Fil. 4.17.5–71.4). In the middle of their debates, Fiammetta criticizes erotic love and pleasure (“amore per diletto”; Fil. 4.44.4–9 and 4.44–46) as morally harmful. Later in the work, Caleone also tells a story about sublimating his erotic desires (Fil. 5.47–49). Therefore, the Ameto appears to revise these views present in Boccaccio’s earlier text. 76. The names Pampinea and Abrotonia also appear in Boccaccio’s lyric poems. On these female figures, see Wilkins, “Pampinea and Abrotonia.” The complete essay was published in two articles. 77. For their part, modern readers have debated to what extent Beatrice does or does not become “dematerialized” in the course of the narrative. On this issue, see Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption, 80–81; cf. Gragnolati, “(In-­)Corpore­ ality”; and Harrison, Body of Beatrice. 78.  On medieval ideas about faith, see note 73, above. 79.  Various allusions to Dante’s poem have been noted by Quaglio in the critical edition, and others have been identified by the following studies: Armstrong, “Heavenly Bodies”; and Ledda, “Retoriche dell’ineffabile,” 131–33. Other allusions are noted here. Armstrong proposes that Boccaccio draws on the images of the divine (female), as Dante does, to engage matters related to spiritual conversion. 80.  This key allusion and others to Boethius have been noted and discussed by Papio, “Boccaccio: Mythographer,” 130–35; Papio, “Un richiamo boeziano”; and Carrai, “Boccaccio e la tradizione,” 61–67. Papio also notes that Boccaccio, in his scholarly works, emphasized the pagan poets understood that the universe was ordered to show they held orthodox beliefs. Carrai notes that Boccaccio might be indebted to a volgarizzamento of Boethius by Alberto della Piagentina (pre-­ 1333), which was circulating in Florence (Carrai, “Boccaccio e la tradizione,” 63). CHAPTER THREE

1.  On the ethical purposes of literature in medieval culture, see Allen, Ethical Poetic, 3–66. Matters concerning the ethics of literature were often addressed in the accessus section, or prologue, to a commentary on a literary work. On medieval prologues to literature, see Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 9–72; and Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 12–36.

Notes to Pages 109–113   301 2.  On the dating and redactional history of the Amorosa visione, see Fedi, “Amorosa visione”; and Richardson, “Editing Boccaccio,” 193–94. Citations of the text are from the so-­called A-­text. The B-­text, once thought to have been by Boccaccio, is now considered to be (primarily) the work of a later Milanese editor, Girolamo Claricio (1470–1521). 3. For bibliography on how the Amorosa visione might promote, like the Ameto, a secular cultural ideology, see Bruni, Boccaccio: L’invenzione, 201–2 and 214–15; Gagliardi, Giovanni Boccaccio, 33–37, 73–74, 116–22, and 131–33; Veglia, “La vita lieta,” 10–11, 28, 109, 181, 192, and 238; and McKinley, Chaucer’s House, xiii, 4, 8–10, 17, 19, and 35–37. Other scholars have hypothesized that the poem encourages readers to transcend their potentially misleading impressions about worldly goods and mundane desires to focus on spiritual matters. See, especially, Hollander, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses, 77–91; Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 101– 28; Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 55–116; Bernardo, “Triumphal Poetry,” 34–36 and 41–42; and Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 68–73. Other works on these subjects are addressed in relation to relevant passages and notions in the subsequent notes. 4.  For discussions of how the Amorosa visione might parody Dante’s allegorical poetics and truth claims, might potentially be a failed imitation of the Comedy, or might intentionally or unintentionally create confusion about moral questions in comparison to the Dantean model, see Usher, “Mural Morality,” 123–29; Raja, Il dolce immaginar, 11–14, 21–23, 26, 28, 38, 46, and 75–77; McKinley, Chaucer’s House, xiii, 4, 10, 18, 20–21, 27–28, 32–37, and 118; and, more generally, Calenda, “La terza rima” (Calenda also notes that the Amorosa visione is less ideologically “serious” than Petrarch’s Triumphi [306]); Finazzi, “Presenze di Dante”; Stillers, “L’Amorosa visione”; and Bartuschat, “Appunti sull’ecfrasi,” 88–90. It has also been noted that the visual poetics of Boccaccio’s poem may be inspired by contemporary ideas about memory. On this issue, see Gil-­Osle, “Chatty Paintings.” 5.  Other scholars have observed that the poem deals centrally with the topics of images and the imagination. For example, Smarr suggests that Boccaccio’s work encourages readers to correct their potentially false impressions, namely, their own self-­imagined concepts about mundane reality (Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 105–9). Barthuschat proposes that the poem demonstrates that the pleasure associated with viewing images can prompt readers to pursue, not absolute transcendental knowledge as dramatized in the Comedy, but contingent earthly wisdom (Barthuschat, “Appunti sull’ecfrasi,” 88–90). 6.  See, for example, the notes to cantos 1–3 in Branca, ed., Amorosa visione (558–68), and in Hollander, Hampton, and Frankel, trans., Amorosa visione (210– 12). For a succinct discussion of these Dantean echoes, see also Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 66–71; and Ferrara, “Memoria dantesca.” Ferrara agrees with the interpretation that the poem depicts a general valorization of mundane desires and secular philosophical culture. 7.  The episode of the castle may also recall Psyche’s contemplation of Venus’s dwelling in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (5.1). See Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 57–58.

302   Notes to Pages 115–127   8.  On the moral and spiritual associations of left and right in medieval culture, and in the Amorosa visione and Corbaccio, see Hollander, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses, 86; Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 79–82 and 99–100; and Usher, “Lattanzio Firmiano.”  9. Dante, Rime, 22–33 (2 [79]); Dante’s Lyric Poetry, 1.100–3. 10.  On Boccaccio’s knowledge of Dante’s Convivio, see Gilson, “Reading the Convivio,” 272–74; and Arduini, “Il ruolo di Boccaccio,” 95–97. 11.  The fifteen so-­called canzoni distese appear in “To” (ABC, Zelada 104.6, ff. 257r–266v [ca. 1352–55]; BR, 1053, ff. 179r–187r [ca. 1360]; and BAV, Chigi L.V.176, ff. 34v–43r [ca. 1363–66], once joined to BAV, Chigi L.VI.123. For discussion of and bibliography on these manuscripts, see chapter 1 (sections “Boccaccio’s Dante” and “The Genealogy of Literature”). 12. For an introduction to the tension between Beatrice and the “other” lady in Dante’s works, see Olivia, Dante’s Two Beloveds. Boccaccio may have also intended to underscore the tension between erotics and ethics in Dante’s writings both in the Trattatello and in the way the canzoni distese are arranged in his anthologies (in “To” and “Chig”). On this topic, see Houston, Building a Monument, 60–64 and 78–82; and Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 68–73. 13.  Other readers have commented on this apparent reversal of pedagogical roles. For example, McKinley observes that it was not unprecedented in medieval culture. She notes that Boethius at times seems to resist the arguments of Lady Philosophy in De consolatione philosophiae, and Dante-­pilgrim occasionally expresses skepticism toward Virgil in the Comedy (McKinley, Chaucer’s House, 35–36). Echoing a notion developed by Hollander and others, McKinley adds that this reversal leaves the reader “with the subjective dreamer’s acts of interpretation, which may often be erroneous” (McKinley, Chaucer’s House, 36; cf. Hollander, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses, 88). 14.  Cf. Ferrara, “Memoria dantesca,” 24–26. Ferrara also notes that Boccaccio does not receive any aerial assistance. 15.  On the biblical and spiritual connotations of lightness or agility in medieval culture, see Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 131–37 and 335–37; and Barański, “ ‘Alquanto tenea della oppinione,’ ” 318–23. 16.  For a fuller discussion of and works on Decameron 6.9, see chapter 4 (section “An Orthodox Genre”). 17.  For an introduction to ideas about ekphrasis in ancient and medieval culture, see Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion; and Johnston, Knapp, and Rouse, Art of Vision. For a discussion of the diverse echoes of Inferno 4 in the dreamer’s encounter with Dante, see Ferrara, “Memoria dantesca,” 44–61. Ferrara, like other readers, suggests that Boccaccio tried to promote Dante in the Amorosa visione by arguing that he deserves the laurel crown. 18.  On the role of ekphrasis in Dante’s poetics, see Treherne, “Ekphrasis and Eucharist”; Güntert, “Canto X”; and Barolini, Undivine “Comedy,” 122–42. 19.  For examples of ekphrasis in classical and medieval literary texts read by Boccaccio, see Stillers, “L’Amorosa visione,” 330–31; Bartuschat, “Appunti sull’ecfrasi”; and McKinley, Chaucer’s House, 37–45.

Notes to Pages 127–141   303 20.  Alan of Lille, Anticlaudianus. 21.  For Bartuschat, the novelty of Boccaccio’s Giotto-­inspired ekphrasis consists in the fact that he draws inspiration from contemporary art and artists. He adds that Boccaccio does not want to represent truth, as Dante does, but to cele­ brate the act of creation itself and the new social status of the artist in late medieval culture; see Bartuschat, “Non pur Policleto,” 94–96; and Bartuschat, “Appunti sull’ecfrasi,” 86–87. 22.  For a discussion of similarities between Dante’s and Boccaccio’s uses of the ineffability trope, see Ledda, “Retoriche dell’ineffabile,” esp. 116. 23.  On ideas about images and allegory in the cantos devoted to the Earthly Paradise, see Armour, Dante’s Griffin; Barański, “Dante’s Signs”; and Pertile, La puttana e il gigante. 24.  The notion of a verbalized book is Usher’s (“Mural Morality,” 119). He also notes that Boccaccio’s tendency toward classification in the Amorosa visione chimes with his later compilations of myths and biographies of women and men. 25.  See Barański, “The Triumphi”; and Barański, “The Constraints of Form.” 26.  Raja also notes the lack of order in the dreamer’s wanderings (in comparison to Dante-­pilgrim’s travels) but does not fully explore its ideological implications (Il dolce immaginar, 25–26). 27.  TLIO, s.v. vasello. Smarr observes that the term may have theological, indeed Marian and incarnational, connotations (Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 118–19). 28.  On the Dantean echoes, in particular of Paradiso 26, the canto dedicated to Dante’s encounter with Adam, see Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 96–98 and 110–11. Kirkham notes that the concept of “trespassing the sign” was indebted to Scholastic discussions about reason needing to control the appetites. 29.  On debates related to the dignity of novelty and curiosity in medieval culture, see Ingham, The Medieval New, 146–51. 30.  On ideas about fornicatio in mnemonic treatises, see chapter 2 (section “Boccaccio and Images”). 31.  See, for example, Branca, ed., Amorosa visione, 708–14, and Hollander, Hampton, and Frankel, trans., Amorosa visione, 238–39 (notes to cantos 38–39). Branca suggests that the fountain and the characterization of love might be indebted to various passages in Capellanus’s De amore. Branca hypothesizes that the ladies might represent love, prudence, fortitude or justice, and temperance; Hollander suggests justice, prudence, fortitude, and temperance. See also Porcelli, “L’Amorosa visione,” 81–82. Porcelli suggests that the thematic development of the Amorosa visione may be indebted to the various stages of love or gradus amoris outlined by Capellanus: lover’s hope, kiss, touch, and concession of one’s whole person. Raja notes that the allegory on the fountain is merely “decorative,” namely, without moral implications (Il dolce immaginar, 33–38), and that the dreamer’s choice of earthly love underscores the secular agenda of the poem (34–35). 32.  See Branca, ed., Amorosa visione, 715–16, note to canto 40, §§22–33; and cf. Hollander, Hampton, and Frankel, trans., Amorosa visione, 240, note to

304   Notes to Pages 143–148 canto 40, §26. For other general echoes of the cantos dedicated to the Earthly Paradise in the Amorosa visione, see also Huot, “Poetic Ambiguity,” 117; Ferrara, “Memoria dantesca,” 32–34; and Raja, Il dolce immaginar, 35–36. 33.  It is not clear whether Beatrice and her husband, Simone dei Bardi, had any children. On biographical details related to Beatrice Portinari, see Santagata, Dante: The Story, 35–40. 34. Modern readers have discussed to what extent the figure of Beatrice becomes or does not become “increasingly ethereal and dematerialized” in the course of the Vita nova’s narrative (see Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption, 80–81). On the figure of Beatrice more generally (e.g., in the Paradiso), see also Ferrante, “Beatrice”; Harrison, Body of Beatrice; Psaki, “The Sexual Body”; Psaki, “Love of Beatrice”; Gragnolati, “(In-­)Corporeality”; and Webb, Dante’s Persons, 127 and 164–69. The relevance of Beatrice for Boccaccio’s thought is also addressed in the conclusion. 35. In comparison to Dante’s ecclesiastical triumph and edenic meeting with Beatrice, Raja suggests that Boccaccio’s allegorical pageant of female figures and meeting with Fiammetta celebrates earthly beauty (Il dolce immaginar, 36–42). 36.  Compare Branca, ed., Amorosa visione, 728–29, note to canto 43, §§37– 63; Hollander, Hampton, and Frankel, trans., Amorosa visione, 242–43, note to canto 43, §§54 and 55–58; and Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 89–98. 37.  On the Marian and Christological resonances inherent in Boccaccio’s allusion, see Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 89–98; and Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 118–25. 38.  For bibliography on affective piety and Franciscan spiritual expressions, see Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 16–17 and 110–69; Bynum, Holy Feast, 113–49 and 245–59; McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, 158–224, and esp. 181–224; McNamer, Affective Meditation, 1–21 and 86–115; Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 12–13 and 141–78; Coolman, “The Medieval Affective Dionysian Tradition”; Bestul, “Meditatio/Meditation”; and Davis, Weight of Love, 1–28 and 88–106. The topic is also treated more comprehensively in the introduction and in chapter 4 (section “A Female Genre”) herein. 39.  For example, see passages in the Testamentum (1226) and in Bonaventure of Bagnoregio’s Legenda maior (1260–63) and Legenda minor (1260–63). For the texts, see Brufani et al., Fontes franciscani, 227–32, 777–961, and 965– 1013, respectively. On the leper and stigmata, see the Testamentum in general and Bonaventure, Legenda maior 1.1–6; 13; and 15.2–4 and 9; and Bonaventure, Legen­da minor 1.7–8. 40.  For example, see Brufani, Sacrum commercium sancti Francisci cum domina Paupertate (Sacred Exchange between Saint Francis and Lady Poverty; ca. 1227–39), 1705–33. For passages related to his love of Poverty, affects, and Christ’s passion, see ibid., Prologus to chap. 2 (passim), and chaps. 5–6; and Bonaventure, Legenda maior 1.7–9.

Notes to Pages 148–153   305 41.  Johannes de Caulibus, Meditationes vitae Christi, Prol. 91–92, and the Prol. in general. 42.  On ideas concerning Francis and love in Paradiso 11, see Nasti, “ ‘Caritas’ and Ecclesiology”; and Forcellini, “Il matrimonio con la povertà.” 43.  On the potential conceptual and historical connections between affective meditation and women, see the works listed in note 38, above (especially the works of Bynum, McNamer, and Karnes). 44.  For example, see Bynum, “Body of Christ”; and Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 16–17 and 110–69. 45. Kirkham also notes that spiritual marriages might have influenced the ceremony between Boccaccio and Fiammetta, for example, Christ and the Church, and Francis and Lady Poverty (in Dante). See Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 94–95. 46.  On the symbolic resonances of the heart, and on the trope of extracting and eating the heart, see Webb, The Medieval Heart; and Rossi, “Il cuore, mistico pasto.” 47.  Branca and Hollander also suggest that the episode may recall Beatrice eating Dante’s heart in the Vita nova, and note that the relationship between the pilgrim and Fiammetta follows the general pattern of erotic relationships in the troubadour lyric tradition, from the poet falling in love to getting “mercy” from the beloved. See Branca, ed., Amorosa visione, 735–37, notes to canto 45; and Hollander, Hampton, and Frankel, trans., Amorosa visione, 244, note to canto 45, §§10–24, and other notes for AV 45. 48. The episode may also recall a passage of Proverbs (7:1–3), in which readers are enjoined to inscribe wisdom in/on the heart. On this biblical echo, see Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 124. Boccaccio also highlighted the benefits of the erotic body for assisting in the cultivation of wisdom in the Ameto, for example, in the Mopsa episode. 49.  Branca and then Hollander assert in more general terms that Boccaccio-­ narrator’s relationship with Fiammetta and the guide symbolizes an integration of love and virtue. For example, see the notes dedicated to AV 47 in their respective volumes. Candido interprets the concluding sections as a Dantean-­inspired depiction of a soul’s conversion from focusing on erotic desires to yearning for celestial love, a conversion in which Fiammetta plays a role akin to Beatrice’s in the Comedy (Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 68–73). Raja interprets the relationship as evidence of humankind’s need to avoid excesses in love (Il dolce immaginar, 72–75). Bernardo hypothesizes that the ending implies earthly beauty may be a “lure toward a higher good” (Bernardo, “Triumphal Poetry,” 38). 50.  See Hollander, Hampton, and Frankel, trans., Amorosa visione, 246, note to canto 50, §5. Bernardo notes that the poem “ends in a meeting of illusion and reality” (Bernardo, “Triumphal Poetry,” 38). Scholars have sometimes noted the ending is ambiguous because it might call into question the true ideology of the dream. The interpretation proposed herein suggests that the ending eliminates

306   Notes to Pages 155–160 ambiguity, by proposing that the fictional dream has a historical, embodied dimension. 51.  On Boccaccio’s engagement with Petrarch before 1350, see Monti, “Boccaccio e Petrarca,” 33–35; and Veglia, La strada, 21–64. 52.  The letter appears at BML, 29.8, ff. 51vA–52rB. For information regarding the letter in the Zibaldone Laurenziano, see Petoletti, “Epistole,” 233; and Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 307 (25). 53. See Raja, Il dolce immaginar, 18–22. Raja suggests that the allusions signal Boccaccio’s attempt to transcend Petrarch’s concerns about the value of earthly and literary glory (20–21). CHAPTER FOUR

1.  For bibliography related to Boccaccio’s role in canonizing the short story in the Middle Ages, see Albanese, Battaglia Ricci, and Bessi, Favole, parabole, istorie; and Marchesi, Stratigrafie, 1–30. 2.  Miscellanea Laurenziana (ca. 1338–48; BML, 33.31) contains the Ibis and Amores (ff. 46vA–49rB and 49vA–59rB), while BR, 489 (undated, with Boccaccio’s glosses) is an anthology of Ovidian works (Hero­ides, Amores, Fasti, Tristia, Ars amatoria, De medicamine faciei) and pseudo-­O vidian texts. As evidenced by Boccaccio’s biography of Ovid in the Esposizioni, he distinguished between authentic and nonauthentic texts (Espos. 4.1.116–26). On Boccaccio’s copies of Ovid’s elegiac works, see Petoletti, “Gli Zibaldoni,” 294; De Robertis, “Boccaccio copista,” 329; Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 306 (15 and 16); Marchiaro, “Scheda 70: Un codice di Ovidio”; and Cornish, “Vernacularization in Context.” 3.  For example, see Smarr, “Symmetry and Balance”; Smarr, “Ovid and Boccaccio”; Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 117–29; Rossi, “Presenze ovidiane”; and Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante, 21–28 and 89–107. 4. See, for example, Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante, 89–107; and Candido, “Ovidio e il pubblico.” 5.  For the notion that Christ expressed compassion in the Incarnation, see Philippians 2:1–11; and Augustine, De civitate Dei 21.15. Christ’s compassion also had authorial overtones in medieval culture. On the notion that Christ was the auctor pietatis (author of mercy), see Garrison, Pietas, 21–60; and Wenzel, Preaching in the Age, 115 (and note 21). 6.  For an introduction to the prominence of the sick, suffering, and erotic body in Franciscan devotional writing, see Davis, Weight of Love, 1–15 and 115– 26. Other scholarly works on this subject will be appear in section “A Female Genre,” below. This section treats how Franciscan writings might have inspired the Decameron’s poetics and ethics.

Notes to Pages 161–164   307   7.  Several scholars have dedicated significant attention to Ovid’s influence on Boccaccio’s earlier works. In particular, see Ussani, “Alcune imitazioni”; and the index entries for Ovid(io) in Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 283; Bruni, Boccaccio: L’invenzione, 514; Kirkham, Fabulous Vernacular, 312; and Morosini, Per difetto reintegrare, 215.   8.  On Boccaccio’s comparison of the Filocolo to Ovid’s amatory works, see Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 59–60; and Morosini, Per difetto reintegrare, 17–19.  9.  On Boccaccio’s imitation of the Heroides, see Segre, Le strutture, 87–115; Bartuschat, “Boccace et Ovide”; and Desiderio, “Cultura e fonti.” 10. Dante’s eclogues are copied in Boccaccio’s Zibaldone membranaceo (BML, 29.8, ff. 67v–72v [late 1330s–early 1340s]). On these autographs and on Boccaccio’s knowledge of Dante’s eclogues, see Petoletti, “Boccaccio editore”; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and Dante,” 122–23. 11.  On the reception of Ovid in the Middle Ages, see Ghisalberti, “Medieval Biographies”; Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling; Hexter, “Ovid in the Middle Ages”; Clark, Coulson, and McKinley, Ovid in the Middle Ages; Kretschmer, “The Love Elegy”; and Fumo, “Commentary and Collaboration.” 12.  For two examples of vernacular translations of Ovid, see Lippi Bigazzi, I volgarizzamenti trecenteschi dell’“Ars amatoria” e dei “Remedia amoris.” See also Marchesi, “I volgarizzamenti.” 13.  On different readerships and levels of literacy in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods, see Petrucci, Writers and Readers; Richardson, Printing, Readers and Writers; Cursi, Il Decameron; Miglio, Governare l’alfabeto; Green, Women Readers; and Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book. 14.  On the reading of Ovid’s works in medieval schools, see Ghisalberti, “Medieval Biographies”; and Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling. 15.  Hexter, “Sex Education.” 16. On medieval perceptions of the ethics of Ovid’s works, see Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, 20–30. 17. On medieval ideas about Ovid’s Remedia, see Ghisalberti, “Medieval Biographies,” 38–40. 18. The issue will be addressed in section “A Low Genre” of the present chapter and in chapter 5. 19. On classical versus medieval ideas about elegy, see Weisman, Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, esp. chapters by Nagy, Miller, Greenstein, Roberts, and Fumo; and Thorsen, Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy, esp. part 2, “The Latin Love Elegists.” 20.  For a discussion of Matthew’s views about Ovidian elegy, see Kretschmer, “The Love Elegy,” 271–73. Boccaccio too had read and reflected upon Ovid’s personifications of elegy in the Remedia and Amores. The matter is addressed in section “A Low Genre,” below; see also Kriesel, “Boccaccio and the Early Modern Reception,” 420–22.

308   Notes to Pages 164–166 21.  Matthew of Vendôme, Ars versificatoria. 22.  Reynolds, “Orazio satiro,” 139–40; and Kelly, Tragedy and Comedy, 5–6. 23. John of Garland, Parisiana poetria (1.394–405): Verba cognata materie sumuntur in exemplo subsequenti, quod est carmen elegiacum, amabeum, bucolicum. Elegiacum quia de miseria contexitur amoris; amabeum quia representat proprietates amantum; bucolicum apo tou bucolou, id est, ab hoc nomine bucolon quod est “custodia boum.” Unde, secundum ordinem quem servat Virgilius, hoc carmen debet esse primum, quia in eo observatur humilis stilus, quem sequitur, quem sequitur mediocris et gravis. Est autem materia versuum quomodo iuvenis oppressit nimpham, cuius amicus erat Coridon. Per nimpham significatur caro; per iuvenem corruptorem, mundus vel diabolus; per proprium amicum, ratio (Words cognate to the subject are drawn on for the following example, which is an elegiac, an amoebaean, and a bucolic poem. Elegiac because it is woven of the tragedy of love; amoebaean because it represents the characteristics of lovers; bucolic apo tou boucolou, that is, from the noun boucolon, which is “cowherding.” Whence, according to the order that Virgil holds to, this poem is rightly the first poem in the book, because it keeps to the low style, which comes before the middle and high styles. The subject matter of the verses is how a youth ruined a nymph whose beloved had been Corydon. The nymph signifies the flesh, the young seducer of the world or the devil, the beloved reason). 24.  For an introduction to medieval elegiac comedy, see Kretschmer, “The Love Elegy,” 273–76; and Bertini, “La commedia elegiaca.” 25.  However, comedy differed from elegy because a comedic text had a joyous ending. See Kelly, Tragedy and Comedy, 5–6; and John of Garland, Parisiana poetria 5.365–72. 26.  Cf. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae sive origines 1.39.23. 27.  On medieval ideas about the etymology of elegy, see Segre, Le strutture, 89. For the meaning of miserere, see Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. misereo (1150). 28.  Uguccione da Pisa, Derivationes. 29.  John of Garland, Parisiana poetria 5.365–72; and Dante, De vulgari eloquentia 2.4.5–6. 30. Black, “Ovid in Medieval Italy,” 123–25; Segre, Le strutture, 90; and Fumo, “The Consolations,” 121–22. Boccaccio was probably familiar with the work of Arrigo, who was a Florentine (see Segre, Le strutture, 90). 31.  Boccaccio knew that lamentation was associated with Greek elegy. In his biography of Sappho, he explains that the poet was sad because rejected by a lover (De mul. 47.4). 32.  Medieval perceptions of Ovid being the most authoritative elegiac poet were partially inspired by the fact that his writings circulated widely in late medieval Italy but those of his peers did not. See Kretschmer, “The Love Elegy,” 271–72. 33.  For example, see chapter 5 (section “Boccaccio’s Petrarch”) for Petrarch’s comments about the canon of elegists.

Notes to Pages 167–170   309 34. Scholars have usually suggested that Boccaccio addressed women to underscore the romance, courtly, and stilnovistic aspects of the Decameron. See Russo, Letture critiche, 9–15; Getto, Vita di forme, 4–9; Potter, Five Frames, 71 and 126; Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 120–21; and Stone, The Ethics of Nature, 67. For notions concerning the relationship between gender and language in medieval Italy, see Battaglia Ricci, “Le donne del Decameron,” 167–77; Olson, “The Language of Women”; and Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 4–5, 10–11, and 16–43. 35.  In the Vita nova, Dante notes that men composed poems in the ver­ nacu­lar because women had difficulty understanding Latin (Vn 25.6 [16.6]). 36.  On women’s literacy, writing, and scribal practices in the late Middle Ages (in relation to Latin, vernacular, religious, and secular textual cultures across the peninsula), see Gill, “Women and the Production”; Dinshaw and Wallace, Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing; Miglio, Governare l’alfabeto, esp. 23–76; Bryce, “Les livres des Florentines”; Green, Women Readers; Crab, “ ‘If I Could Write’ ”; Cox, Women’s Writing, 1–36; Minnis and Voaden, Medieval Holy Women; and Corbari, Vernacular Theology, 59–64 and 107–48. 37.  On matters related to Boccaccio’s scribal practices and his (symbolic) female readerships, see note 34, above, and Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 169– 74; Usher, “Boccaccio on Readers,” 63–70; Cursi, Il Decameron, 19–45; Cursi, La scrittura; Cursi, “Authorial Strategies”; Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 90–92, 115; Daniels, “Rethinking the Critical History,” 433–39; Serafini-­Sauli, “The Pleasures of Reading”; and Richardson, “The Textual History,” 41–43. 38.  Many scholars have noted the similarities between the opening of the Elegia and the Decameron. See Branca, ed., Decameron, 5n1; and Delcorno, ed., Elegia, 224n1. For a general introduction to compassion in the Middle Ages and in Boccaccio’s writings, see Papio, “ ‘Non meno di compassion piena’ ”; and Surdich, “Tra Dante e Boccaccio.” 39.  For a discussion of the generic properties of the Elegia, see Porcelli, “I tempi e la dimensione elegiaca”; Barilli, “La retorica della narrativa”; Bardi, Le voci dell’assenza, 11–16; Tateo, Boccaccio, 69–76; Di Franza, “L’Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta”; and Brody, “An Experiment.” 40. On the classical resonances of Boccaccio’s dedication to women, see Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 120–22; Forni, Forme complesse, 27–30; Rossi, “Presenze ovidiane,” 126–28; and Rossi, “Il paratesto decameroniano,” 39–42. Scholars have also noted that Boccaccio’s imitation of the Heroides recalls activities that Ovid explained could distract one from loving, for example in the Remedia amoris. On these parallels, see Smarr, “Symmetry and Balance,” 175–77; Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 125–27; and Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante, 97–104. 41. Propertius, Elegos. On the elegiac poet’s characterization of himself as a pimp, see Watson, “Praecepta amoris,” 147–51; and Fear, “The Poet as Pimp.” On the seduction motif in the Proemio and Conclusion (e.g., Dec., Conc. 27), see also Milner, “ ‘Coming Together.’ ” Milner suggests that the narrator’s characterization

310   Notes to Pages 171–173 of the bond between author and reader as an erotic relationship is inspired by rhetorical notions. 42.  Many critics have argued that Boccaccio subtitled his work Galeotto to redeem the courtly and erotic literatures that Dante seemed to condemn by associating the term with lustful sinners. See, for example, Delcorno, “ ‘Cognominato Prencipe Galeotto,’ ” 87; Rossi, “Il paratesto decameroniano,” 37; and Ferme, Women, Enjoyment, 15–16. Other scholars have suggested that Boccaccio added the subtitle, which in Dante’s poem was associated with sinful interpretations, to alert readers to the potential dangers inherent in reading erotica. See Hollander, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses, 102–8; Marcus, Allegory of Form, 20–21; Mazzotta, World at Play, 56–57; Smarr, “Ovid and Boccaccio,” 253; and Ferme, Women, Enjoyment, 21–26. 43. Propertius also characterized himself as a pimp who helped women attain sexual gratification: quippe coronatos alienum ad limen amantes / nocturnaeque canes ebria signa morae, / ut per te clausas sciat excantare puellas / qui volet austeros arte ferire viros (you will sing of crowned lovers at another’s doorstep and the inebriated signs of a nocturnal delay, so that through you he who wants to trick harsh husbands with art will know how to free the trapped girls) (Elegiae 3.3.47– 50). As a pimp and praeceptor amoris, the poet was in competition with a crafty (older) woman (lena; e.g., see Ovid, Amores 1.8, and Propertius, Elegiae 4.5). She is an alter-­ego persona of the writer, who might usurp the masculine poet’s role. On this female figure, see Meyers, “The Poet and the Procuress.” 44. In the Esposizioni, Boccaccio reflected on Dante’s response to Fran­ cesca and to others in Hell. He noted that Dante showed more compassion to those guilty of sins that he himself had committed (see Espos. 5.1.139–40 and 186–87). For an introduction to Boccaccio’s reading of Inferno 5 and compassion, see Surdich, “Tra Dante e Boccaccio,” 45–48. Gittes, who also notes the Ovidian reso­nance of galeotto, has suggested that Boccaccio characterizes himself as a pimp to show that he uses the erotic for didactic purposes. Poets who revealed esoteric knowledge to the masses were commonly considered pimps. See Gittes, Boccaccio Naked Muse, 155–80. 45. For the topics typically addressed in a medieval accessus, see Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 19–29. 46.  Medieval authors often categorized works within different genres. See Barański, “ ‘Tres enim sunt manerie.’ ” 47.  As noted in section “The Italian Elegiac Ovid,” above, medieval writers appreciated that the genres of comedy and elegy had similar properties and content, for example, material related to wretchedness and erotic love, a humble register, and so forth. 48.  Multiple sources for Boccaccio’s description of the plague have been proposed: passages in the works of Virgil, Seneca, Livy, Lucretius, Ovid, Macrobius, Paul the Deacon, Basil (in Latin translation), and also passages in contemporary

Notes to Pages 173–175   311 medical treatises and municipal chronicles. Most scholars believe that Boccaccio described the plague to depict a society in need of cultural, political, moral, or spiritual renewal. On the ideological significance of Boccaccio’s description of the plague, see Barsella, “Boccaccio and Humanism”; Shona, “Boccaccio and the Doctors”; and Nobili, “La consolazione della letteratura.” In comparison to contemporary historians, Boccaccio may have more overtly foregrounded the breakdown of familial and social bonds, perhaps to prompt consideration of how society could be improved. See Ferme, Women, Enjoyment, 27–46. 49.  Scholars have often reflected on differences between the opening sections of the Decameron and the initial cantos of the Comedy. They typically suggest that, whereas Dante depicts a personal and/or universal spiritual crisis, Boccaccio depicts a (communal) social and ethical crisis. See, for example, Picone, “Codici e strutture narrative,” 438–40; Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 167–68; Forni, “Boccaccio’s Answer to Dante,” 72–75; Forni, “Dante e la struttura,” 64–67; Papio, “Patterns of Meaning,” 52–53; and Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante, 21–27 and 101–2. 50.  Readers have often suggested that the title Decameron signals that the text’s erotic and humorous stories parody religious or theological writings. Others have noted that the text’s full title, Decameron: Galeotto, has a variety of cultural resonances, from religious to courtly. See Veglia, “Messer Decameron Galeotto”; and Martinez, “Also Known,” 27 and 36–39. 51.  On affective piety in medieval culture, see McNamer, Affective Meditation, 1–21 and 86–115; Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 141–78; Bestul, “Meditatio/Meditation”; and Davis, Weight of Love, 6–44. 52.  For example, see passages in the Testamentum (1226) and in Bonaventure of Bagnoregio’s Legenda maior (1260–63) and Legenda minor (1260–63). For the texts, see Brufani et al., Fontes franciscani, 227–32, 777–961, and 965–1013, respectively. On the leper and stigmata, see the Testamentum in general, and Bonaventure, Legenda maior 1.1–6; 13; and 15.2–4 and 9; and Bonaventure, Legenda minor 1.7–8. On the role of lepers and the sick in Francis’s vita and on the curative mission of the Franciscan order, see Johnson, “Franciscan Bodies and Souls”; Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine; Manselli, St. Francis, 33–61; and Davis, Weight of Love, 1–6 and 115–26. 53.  The relevant biblical passages in which Jesus cures lepers are Matthew 8:1–4, Mark 1:40–45, Luke 5:12–16 and 17:11–19; and see Luke 10:25–37 for a discussion of healing and compassion. In his extended credo in the Genealogie, Boccaccio notes that Jesus was a healer of those with deformed bodies, such as lepers (15.9.6–7). It was commonly thought that leprosy was caused by sin, particularly by sins of an erotic nature, and that God was a “healer” of these sins (through the sacraments). For medieval ideas concerning leprosy and healing, see Brody, Disease of the Soul, 107–46; Bynum, Holy Feast, 116, 121, 124–28, 196, 211, 234, and 273; and Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 327.

312   Notes to Pages 175–176 54.  On the role of the leper’s body and leprosy in Francis’s life and Franciscan thought, see Johnson, “Franciscan Bodies and Souls”; Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine; Manselli, St. Francis, 33–61; and Davis, Weight of Love, 1–6 and 114–26. 55.  On the visions and expressions of piety of medieval (female) contemplatives, see Bynum, Holy Feast, 113–49 and 245–59; McGinn, Flowering of Mysticism, 113–98; McGinn, Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 177–249; McNamer, Affective Meditation, 86–115; and Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 141–78. 56. See, for example, Angela of Foligno, Memoriale, pp. 126–401, chaps. 1.144–163 and 205–311 (Angela meditates on images of the Passion and embraces Christ); 3.43–51, 96–117, 209–66 (Angela becomes Christ’s spouse; sees Francis and Christ embrace; and meditates on the cross); and 5.109–41 (Angela washes a leper and drinks the water). 57.  See Catherine of Siena, Il dialogo della divina Provvidenza ovvero Libro della divina dottrina, 26–27 (Christ’s suffering body is a bridge between the human and divine); 76 (the soul eats the food of sin and tastes the compassion of the cross); and 78 (“giuoco d’amore” [lovers’ game] between the soul and Christ). 58.  For a general introduction to late medieval Italian art and Giotto, see Cole, Giotto and Florentine Painting; Harrison, “Giotto and the ‘Rise of Painting’ ”; Harrison, “The Arena Chapel”; King, “Effigies”; Cannon, “Giotto and Art”; and Tronzo, “Giotto’s Figures.” 59. For an introduction to the Arena chapel, see Jacobus, Giotto and the Arena Chapel; and Ladis, Giotto’s O. 60.  On ideas about the Passion in late medieval culture, see Fulton, From Judgment to Passion; and Madigan, Passions of Christ. 61.  For a comprehensive introduction to Jacopone’s life, thought, and works (including their circulation in manuscripts), see Menestò, La vita e l’opera. 62.  Jacopone da Todi, Donna de Paradiso, 147–50 (70). 63.  Johannes de Caulibus, Meditationes vitae Christi, Prol. 91–92. For matters concerning the genre, authorship, and circulation of the text, see Falvay and Tóth, “L’autore e la trasmissione”; McNamer, “Origins of the Meditationes”; McNamer, Affective Meditation, 86–115; and McNamer, introduction to Meditations on the Life of Christ. On medieval devotional literature and Christ’s passion, see Bestul, Texts of the Passion, 26–68 and 111–44; and the previous works mentioned about the Passion and female spiritual expressions. 64.  For examples of the pervasiveness of this rhetoric, see McNamer, Meditations [Meditazione], 2–5 (Prologo) and 6–13 (chap. 1). 65. On notions related to women and compassion, see Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 16–17 and 110–169; Bynum, Holy Feast; Beckwith, Christ’s Body; Elliott, Proving Woman, 47–116; and McNamer, Affective Meditation, 1–21 and 86–115. 66. For a succinct summary of and bibliography on these positions, see Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 12–13.

Notes to Pages 177–183   313 67.  This brief biographical account draws on the chronologies of Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, xxix–xxxv; De Robertis et al., Autore e copista, 61–64; and Branca, Giovanni Boccaccio: Profilo. 68.  On the circulation of Franciscan writings in Italy, see Bologna, “L’Ordine francescano,” esp. 759–51 (on the Franciscans and Franciscan writings in Naples). 69.  On passages in the Amorosa visione that are inspired by Dante’s engagement with Franciscan and affective concepts, see chapter 3 (section “The Integrated Carnal-­Spiritual Voyage”). 70.  The reference appears in BML, 33.31 at f. 3vB. See Petoletti, “Tavola di ZL + ML,” 308 (51). 71.  On Boccaccio’s engagement with Ovid’s Amores on Day 4, see Kriesel, “Boccaccio and the Early Modern Reception,” 417–21. 72. On Boccaccio’s allusion to Ovidian lightness to categorize the Deca­ me­ron’s register and style, specifically in the “Conclusion,” see Smarr, “Ovid and Boccaccio,” 250–51. 73. Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. invideo, invidia, and video (995–96 and 1988–89). 74.  In medieval culture, these concepts were bolstered by Christian views about the sin of envy. In the Purgatorio, the envious purify their sins by having their eyes sown shut with wire (Purg. 13.37–75); they thereby correct their poor views of reality and learn to have compassion for others (Purg. 13.37–42, 52–54, and 127–29). Inspired by antique and patristic sources, medieval writers proposed that envy was etymologically related to “not seeing.” In his Derivationes, Uguccione da Pisa explained: invideo-­es, ut “invideo tibi,” idest “non video tibi,” idest “non fero videre te bene agentem ” (invideo-­es, namely, “I envy you,” that is, “I do not see you,” or “I cannot stand to see you doing well”) (Deriv. U 26.15); cf. Isidore, Etymologiae 10.1.134. In his Comentum super poema Comedie Dantis, Pietro Alighi­eri comments, denotat auctor cecitatem invidorum, unde dicti sunt “invidi,” quasi “non videntes” (the author denotes the blindness of the envious, which is inspired by invidi, namely, “non seeing”) (Purg. 13.24). 75.  On Ovid’s repeated characterization of his critics as hateful (as livor and invidia), see Forni, Forme complesse, 65–67. 76.  On the formal and thematic reasons inspiring Boccaccio’s reference to Ovid’s missing title, see Branca, ed., Decameron, 460n1; and Sanguineti, “Quarta giornata,” 5. 77.  For a discussion of the various instances in which Ovid said his works did not have a title, see Rossi, “Presenze ovidiane,” 135–36. 78.  TLIO, s.v. asinaio. On Mount Asinaio, see Virgulti, “In Defense of a Literature,” 115. 79.  In medieval culture, writers debated what types of phenomena should engender wonder and whether marvels should also cause belief, fear, or delight. Moreover, authors of literature drew on concepts related to marvels to defend the properties, content, and utility of their writings. On Boccaccio’s engagement

314   Notes to Pages 184–187 with the marvelous, see Kriesel, “The Marvelous.” Boccaccio recalled ideas about marvels to distinguish the properties and novelty of his Decameron from what he thought were the properties and originality of Dante’s Comedy. He also drew on the marvelous to support his ideas about literature and ethics generally speaking. 80.  For the “naturalist” reading, see Virgulti, “In Defense of a Literature,” 115; and Picone, “Le papere,” 182. On interpretations related to the potential deadly consequences of indulging human desires, see Bernardo, “The Plague,” 47–52; Mazzotta, World at Play, 133–35; and Kirkham, Sign of Reason, 207–9. These two interpretations are critical commonplaces and have been repeated or refined by many readers (for other bibliography on the tale, see Psaki, “Giving Them the Bird,” 224–32). The brief story may also reflect debates about turpiloquium, namely, how to discuss and respond to topics of a vulgar nature. On the notion that Boccaccio was defending his license to use all types of language (to address moral issues), see Baxter, “Turpiloquium in Boccaccio’s Tale”; and Psaki, “Giving Them the Bird,” 224–32. 81.  On the various sources of the story, and on Boccaccio’s echo of Odo, who names women “goslings,” see Picone, “Preistoria della cornice,” 101–2; Picone, “Le papere,” 174–80; Frosini, “Fra donne, demoni e papere”; and Psaki, “Giving Them the Bird,” 225. 82.  For a related reading of Balducci’s dialogue with his son, see Marcus, Allegory of Form, 50–52; and Best, “ ‘La peste e le papere,’ ” 157–61. Marcus suggests that Balducci eventually learns to use metaphoric language to instruct his son. Best observes that the brigata, like Balducci, conceals (unsuccessfully) their fear of temporal things, especially the plague, though referring to it obliquely with figurative language. 83.  Scholars have noted in somewhat general terms that Boccaccio perhaps rejected the Muses, as Ovid did, for purposes of parody or humor. See Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction, 38–39; and Rossi, “Ironia e parodia,” 394. Other readers have suggested that the narrator’s defense of and desire for women signals Boccaccio’s championing of the “real.” See Mazzotta, World at Play, 69; Forni, Forme complesse, 60–62; and Cazalé Bérard, “Filoginia/misoginia,” 123–24. 84.  See Marchesi, Stratigrafie, 56–58. 85.  See Picone, “Le papere,” 171–72. 86.  Marchesi has also noted that Boccaccio’s definition of the Decameron’s style recalls discussions of register in the Novellino and in Horace’s Satires (Marchesi, Stratigrafie, 43–44). 87.  In commenting on these Dantean echoes in the Decameron, Marchesi notes that Boccaccio engages with Dante to suggest that their pedagogic missions are similar (to address every aspect of reality), but that their approaches are different. Whereas Dante focuses more directly on issues related to eternity, Boccaccio concentrates more overtly on specific aspects of temporal existence (Marchesi, Stratigrafie 18 and 40–58). Other scholars have proposed more generalized interpretations of the Dantean allusions, typically suggesting that they are related to Boccaccio’s valorization of the low with respect to Dante’s higher comedy. See

Notes to Pages 187–195   315 Rossi, “Ironia e parodia,” 375–79; Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante, 25–27; Rossi, “Presenze ovidiane,” 134–35; and Picone, “Le papere,” 172. 88.  For the different versions of the story that were circulating, see the works listed in note 81, above. 89.  This characterization of Petrarch’s views of Dante repeats in abbreviated form the analysis and interpretation of Barański. See Barański, “ ‘Piangendo e cantando,’ ” 630–33; and Barański, “Petrarch, Dante, Cavalcanti,” 57–73. 90.  Boccaccio and Petrarch were not the only writers in the later fourteenth century who were reflecting on the generic properties of Dante’s poem. For bibliography on and analyses of contemporary views of the Comedy, see Barański, “Petrarch, Dante, Cavalcanti,” 103–4n54; and Nasti and Rossignoli, Interpreting Dante. 91.  In his discussion of the “Introduction” to Day 4, Eisner suggests that Boccaccio names this group of authors to signal they all belong to a similar, emerging vernacular literary tradition. See Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 4–9. 92.  For example, see Branca, ed., Decameron, 1255n10; and Rossi, “Ironia e parodia,” 52–54. 93.  In considering this passage, scholars have typically argued that Boccaccio meant to imply that there is nothing inherently erotic about these objects and paintings; rather, they conjure up erotic ideas in the mind of a perverse reader. Scholars have not typically considered the ideological implications of Boccaccio’s final apology. On the relevance of painting in this passage, see Watson, “The Cement of Fiction,” 60–61; Gilbert, Poets Seeing Artists’ Work, 59–61; and Campbell, “Poetic Genealogy,” 61. 94. Painters, particularly in the earlier medieval period, did not usually depict Jesus nude or emphasize his sexuality. By highlighting Christ’s sexuality, Boccaccio and late medieval artists were drawing attention to his humanity. On the depiction of Christ’s penis, and on gendered divinity more generally, see Watson, “The Cement of Fiction,” 61–62; Steinberg, Sexuality of Christ; and Bynum, “The Body of Christ.” 95.  In the Genealogie, Boccaccio also defends the poets by noting that painters should be permitted to depict erotic scenes. See Gilbert, Poets Seeing Artists’ Work, 167–71. His particular remarks also seem to recall Ovid’s Tristia, and by extension the Decameron (Gen. 14.18.9). 96.  Medieval writers recognized that this period of Christ’s earthly life was distinct from his appearances on earth after the Resurrection. In the De monarchia (De mon.), Dante describes this period as Christ’s militia: Desinant igitur Imperium exprobrare romanum qui se filios Ecclesie fingunt, cum videant sponsum Christum illud sic in utroque termino sue militie comprobasse (Let those who pose as sons of the Church therefore cease to reproach the Roman Empire now that they see that the Church’s bridegroom, Christ, thus approved the empire at the beginning and end of his life [militie]) (De mon. 2.11.7). For the text and translation, see Dante, Monarchia (trans. Richard Kay). For the potential biblical resonances inspiring this concept, see Kay, ed., Monarchia, 193, §7n19.

316   Notes to Pages 196–208   97.  For example, Giotto depicted the circumcision in a decorative band in the Arena chapel. On Christ’s circumcision in medieval art, see Abramson and Hannon, “Depicting the Ambiguous Wound”; and Flora, “Women Wielding Knives.”   98.  See Smarr, “Ovid and Boccaccio,” 250–51.  99. Both Boccaccio and Petrarch had probably read Propertius’s poems (Petrarch’s manuscript copy is now lost). On the circulation of Propertius’s works in the late medieval period, see Paccagnini, “Il Corbaccio,” 128–32; and Thomson, “Propertius, Sextus,” 162. 100.  Propertius often commented on the thematic and stylistic properties of his works by comparing his poems to a boat: quid me scribendi tam vastum mittis in aequor? / non sunt apta meae grandia vela rati. / turpe est quod nequeas capiti committere pondus / et pressum inflexo mox dare terga genu (Why do you send my writing out to so vast a sea? Huge sails do not suit this my boat. It is shameful to put too heavy a weight on your head and then soon turn around buckling on bended knee) (Elegiae 3.9.3–6). 101. On the allusion to Cavalcanti in the Decameron’s “Conclusion,” see Smarr, “Ovid and Boccaccio,” 253. For an introduction to Decameron 6.9, see Durling, “Boccaccio on Interpretation”; Barański, “ ‘Alquanto tenea della oppini­ one’ ”; and Barań­ski, “Boccaccio and Epicurus.” 102.  On the reasons that Boccaccio may refer to Inferno 10, see, in particular, Durling, “Boccaccio on Interpretation,” 281–86; and Barański, “Boccaccio’s Cavalcanti,” 292–304. 103.  See Barański, “Boccaccio’s Cavalcanti,” 318–23. On the theological reso­ nances of lightness, see also Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 131–37 and 335–37. 104.  Various critics have reflected on the metatextual implications of Boccaccio’s story about Cavalcanti. It has been suggested that Decameron 6.9 enjoins readers to interpret texts carefully, so as not to be distracted or damned by seemingly harmful material. See Durling, “Boccaccio on Interpretation,” 281–84; and Barański, “Boccaccio and Epicurus,” 20–22. In addition, Barański notes that Boccaccio’s tale challenges Dante’s authority, promotes his own, and offers a positive message of hope to a troubled society. See Barański, “Boccaccio’s Cavalcanti,” 323–25. 105.  See Matthew 14:22–33; Mark 6:45–52; and John 6:16–21. 106.  On the early stages of Boccaccio and Petrarch’s relationship, see Monti, “Boccaccio e Petrarca.” CHAPTER FIVE

1.  On the diverse interpretations of the Corbaccio, see notes 2–8, below. 2.  For scholarship that proposes the text is a Petrarchan-­inspired criticism of erotic vernacular literature, see Bruni, “Dal De vetula al Corbaccio,” 208 and 212; Marti, “Per una metalettura,” 84–86; Porcelli, “Il Corbaccio,” 574; Veglia, Il corvo,

Notes to Pages 208–209   317 19–42; and Rico, Ritratti allo specchio, 97–131. Scholars, for example Hollander and Psaki among others, have also argued that the Corbaccio might be a parody of the views expressed in the text because it features elements that are not typical of visionary literature; for example, the narrator advocates un-­Christian hatred. Psaki has also suggested that Petrarch, like Boccaccio, might be parodying the visionary genre in his Secretum. See Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction; Psaki, “The Play of Genre,” 52–54; and Psaki, “Boccaccio’s Corbaccio,” 108, 111–13, and 125– 28. On matters related to the date of the text, see Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction, 26–33; Padoan, “Il Corbaccio,” 31–33; Hollander, “Boccaccio, Ovid’s Ibis,” 395–99; Rico, Ritratti allo specchio, 301, 311–14, and 318–19; and Carrai, “Corbaccio.” Hollander, who argues that the Corbaccio is ideologically consistent with the Decameron, believes the text was actually composed in 1354–55. Boccaccio’s retrodating of the work might support, not invalidate, Hollander’s view that the two texts are ideologically consistent. 3.  The work may, therefore, also be an example of the invective genre. On the Corbaccio and invective, see Panizza, “Rhetoric and Invective.” Panizza notes that the work is an example of invective, a genre that inspired Dominican sermons against the flesh and women, to suggest that the text may not be parodic. 4.  An updated chronology of Petrarch’s works may be found in Kirkham and Maggi, Petrarch: A Critical Guide, xv–xxii; and Ascoli and Falkeid, Cambridge Companion to Petrarch, xv–xviii. 5.  On Boccaccio’s knowledge and copy of Petrarch’s Canzoniere, see chapter 1 (section “The Genealogy of Literature”), and note 15, below. 6.  On Petrarch’s authorial biography and how supposedly he began his conversion or had converted at forty years old, see Cachey, “Between Petrarch and Dante,” 22–24. On Boccaccio’s knowledge of Petrarch’s critical attitude toward erotic acts, see Rico, Ritratti allo specchio, 305–7; and Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 79–82. 7. On the redactional history of the Decameron, see Cursi, Il Decameron, 19–45; Cursi, La scrittura, 107–28; Cursi, “Authorial Strategies”; Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, 76–85; and, more generally, Bertelli, “Codicologia d’autore.” 8.  Readers have hesitated to interpret the Corbaccio as a criticism of Petrarch’s writings out of uncertainty about when or even if Boccaccio read Petrarch’s works. For example, see Rico, Ritratti allo specchio, 309; and Psaki, “Boccaccio’s Corbaccio,” 120–22. The following reconstruction of Petrarch’s literary biography from 1350 on suggests that Boccaccio could have encountered positions contrary to his own in many of Petrarch’s works. For an account of Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s (early) relationship and dialogue, see Billanovich, “Il più grande discepolo”; Colussi, “Sulla seconda redazione”; Veglia, La strada più impervia, 65–124; and Monti, “Boccaccio e Petrarca,” 33–40. 9.  On Petrarch’s contradictory and negative remarks about women and their bodies, see Wallace, “ ‘Whan She Translated Was,’ ” 158 and 180–82; and Brose, “Fetishizing the Veil.”

318   Notes to Pages 209–213 10.  On the poetics of the Secretum, see Kahn, “The Defense of Poetry.” Kahn notes that in the Secretum Petrarch was critical of metaphoric and symbolic uses of the body and instead celebrated ideas related to aesthetic illusion and artistic pleasure (109). Given the analysis of Petrarch’s engagement with Boccaccio proposed here, he may have been reacting against Boccaccio’s poetics. 11.  2 Cor. 4:18: non contemplantibus nobis quae videntur sed quae non videntur quae enim videntur temporalia sunt quae autem non videntur aeterna sunt (We should not contemplate what things are seen, but what are not seen. For what things are seen are temporal, and what are not seen are eternal). Petrarch alters the passage to render it about not loving temporal things, whereas Paul discusses general matters related to contemplation. Petrarch’s change renders the passage a more poignant meditation on the dangers of worldly love, which suits the dialogue’s theme. 12.  For a discussion of Petrarch’s increasingly critical remarks about Ovid, in particular about his erotic elegiac poems, see Marcozzi, “Petrarca lettore di Ovidio,” 82–84; Zak, Petrarch’s Humanism, 122–30; and Legassie, Medieval Invention, 180–88. For Petrarch’s knowledge of and attitude toward Epicurus, see Barański, “The Ethics of Ignorance.” Petrarch does not always speak negatively of Epicurus, but Boccaccio would have been sensitive to the writings in which Petrarch did, especially when Petrarch addressed those writings to Boccaccio. 13.  Petrarch was referring to a brief passage of the Africa that had circulated against his will (Africa 6.885–918). 14.  Petrarch and Boccaccio may not have read Tibullus, perhaps read Catullus, and probably read Propertius (Petrarch owned a copy, which is now lost). On their knowledge of the elegiac poets and on the circulation of Propertius, see Paccagnini, “Il Corbaccio,” 128–32; and Thomson, “Propertius, Sextus,” 162. 15. The Canzoniere appears in BAV, Chigi L.V.176 at ff. 43v–79r. On Boccaccio’s copy of Petrarch’s Canzoniere and on its import in the context of “Chig,” see Billanovich, “Il più grande discepolo,” 266–68; Eisner, Boccaccio and the Invention, 74–94; Bettarini Bruni, “Il Petrarca chigiano”; and Bertelli, “Scheda 51: La seconda silloge dantesca.” 16.  On the import of RVF 189 in the Chigi form of the Canzoniere read by Boccaccio, see Cachey, “Between Petrarch and Dante,” 24–39. 17.  Colussi, “Sulla seconda redazione,” 258–60. 18.  That Boccaccio may be the guide has been noted, but not its negative or critical implications. For discussions of the guide’s possible identity, see Billano­ vich, “Il più grande discepolo,” 172–73n1; Branca, Boccaccio medievale, 372; Bernardo, “Triumphal Poetry,” 36; Pacca and Paolino, eds., Triumphi, 62–63n40; and Santangelo, “Petrarch’s Love,” 261–67. Santangelo discusses how the guide recalls Dante and Dante’s writings. 19.  Scholars have typically interpreted Petrarch’s translation as a humanist criticism of Boccaccio’s promotion of the vernacular, depictions of “low” or trifling

Notes to Pages 214–221   319 material, and ambiguous representations of moral and spiritual virtue. In particular, Griselda’s obedience to a stern Gualtieri may raise questions about theological ideas related to fidelity to God. For an introduction to Petrarch’s Griselda story, see Wallace, “ ‘Whan She Translated Was,’ ” 184–94; and Clarke, “On Copying.” The relevance of gender in the tale (a topic crucial for the reading proposed here) has also been considered in relation to Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s views about politics, tyranny, and patronage. See Wallace, “Letters of Old Age”; Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 158–79; and Barsella, “Tyranny and Obedience.” Candido suggests that the story involves Petrarch’s promotion of historia against Boccaccio’s championing of fabula. See Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 141–58. 20.  Zak notes that Petrarch was at times critical of what he characterized as effeminate emotional character traits (in Ovid’s writings) and instead—rhetorically and imperfectly—tried to adopt a virile, stoic disposition. This rhetoric complements Petrarch’s preferences for masculine genres. On the role of the emotions in Petrarch’s authorial identity, see Zak, Petrarch’s Humanism, 122–30; Zak, “Petrarch and the Ancients,” 146–48; and Legassie, Medieval Invention, 180–88, 192–92, and 199–200. 21.  For accounts of Boccaccio’s influence on Petrarch’s (vernacular) literary projects, see Cachey, “Between Petrarch and Dante,” 16–24; Billanovich, “Il più grande discepolo,” 167–77; and, in general, Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch.” 22.  The relevant works are discussed in the following notes. 23.  See notes 2–4, above. 24.  Scholars have often asserted that Boccaccio wrote the Corbaccio to deni­ grate his previous erotic works, just as Ovid had supposedly done. For Ovid’s medieval reputation as an author who criticized his earlier writings, see chapter 4 (sections “The Italian Elegiac Ovid” and “A Low Genre”). Scholars have also hypothesized that Boccaccio’s change in attitude was influenced by Petrarch’s own supposed moral and literary conversion. See works listed in note 2, above. Others suggest that Boccaccio, like Ovid, wanted to criticize foolish lovers in general and perverse male desires in particular. See Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 154–56 and 163–65; Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction, 2, 27, 29, 37, 39, and 42–43; and Hollander, “Boccaccio, Ovid’s Ibis,” 392. It has also been suggested that a better understanding of Ovid’s Remedia might help clarify interpretations of the Corbaccio. See Forni, “Boccaccio retore,” 194–95. 25.  For the text, see Capellanus, De amore. 26. The scholar’s misunderstanding and incorrect implementation of the rules of courtly love has been noted. See Marcus, “Misogyny as Misreading,” 136–37. 27.  On the possibility that the widow might write elegiac couplets, see Hollander, “Boccaccio, Ovid’s Ibis,” 390–91. 28.  Boas and Botschuyver, Disticha Catonis (1.26): Sic ars deluditur arte (Thus art is tricked by art). Cf. Branca, ed., Decameron, 945n1.

320   Notes to Pages 223–230 29.  Scholars who believe that Boccaccio, like Petrarch, champions the superior dignity of classical versus vernacular culture have adduced as evidence the dreamer’s and guide’s proto-­humanist interests. See again the works mentioned in note 2, above. 30.  Marcus proposes that specificity about Rinieri’s alma mater underlines his incompetence in understanding courtly love because Paris was associated with courtly culture (Marcus, “Misogyny as Misreading,” 132–33). 31. On the Ovidian intertext underlying the guide’s characterization of women’s self-­defense, see Nardo, “Sulle fonti classiche,” 251. 32.  Since the Middle Ages, readers have noted the (dis)similarity between passages about the Muses in the “Introduction” to Day 4 and in the Corbaccio. For an example of a medieval reader who compared the two passages in his own editions, see Clarke, “Taking on the Proverbial,” 136–38. Modern scholars have cited the passage as one of the primary pieces of evidence that Boccaccio was rejecting his vernacular writings. 33.  Several scholars have noted in passing that the guide might be alluding to or misunderstanding Ovid’s command not to hate. See Cassell, “An Abandoned Canvas,” 68–69; Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 155–56 and 162–63; and Houston, Building a Monument, 102–3. 34.  It has been noted that Ovid’s Remedia might have inspired Rinieri’s decision to hate. See Papio, “ ‘Non meno di compassion piena,’ ” 114. On a related note, Marcus suggested that misogynistic sentiments were parodied in French writings (e.g., in the Roman de la Rose), and that Rinieri might not have understood the satiric tone of these texts (Marcus, “Misogyny as Misreading,” 138–39). 35.  For examples of other passages in the Genealogie about compassion and the virtue’s relevance for reading, see, at least, Gen. 7, Pr. 2; Gen. 14.1.1–3 and 4–6; 14.3.6–8; 14.4.4–6; 14.21; 14.22.1–4 and 11; and, generally, 14.22; Gen. 15, Pr. 2; and Gen. 15.11.3 and 5. 36.  See, for example, Augustine, De doctrina christiana 1.36–40. On Boccaccio’s debts to this Augustinian concept in the Decameron, see Marchesi, Stratigrafie, 125–37. 37.  Hollander notes that in the Remedia Ovid was concerned that rejected lovers might hang themselves (Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction, 36). Hollander has also catalogued and discussed other possible linguistic echoes of the Remedia and the Comedy in the introductory sections of the Decameron and Corbaccio (see Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction, 35–39, 59–75 and 78–79; and Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante, 97–99 and 102–4). A lover who considers hanging himself might also recall Aristomenes’s failed suicide attempt in Apuleius, Metamorphoses (1.16). See Usher, “ ‘Desultorietà,’ ” 93–95. 38.  Marcus also notes that Rinieri breaks a commonplace rule of courtly love by choosing a lover based on physical appearances (Marcus, “Misogyny as Misreading,” 135).

Notes to Pages 231–241   321 39.  In arguing that Boccaccio meant to depict male emotional hysteria in Decameron 8.7, Hollander notes that being kept “in pastura” recalls the sinners of Purgatorio 14. For the relevance of Circe in the canto, see Guthmüller, “ ‘Che par che Circe.’ ” 40.  Individual phrases have been traced to various writings, from medieval French writers and Apuleius to Isaiah. On the potential sources, see Paccagnini, “Il Corbaccio,” 142–67; Peruzzi, “Giovanni Boccaccio e la cultura francese”; and Candido, Boccaccio umanista, 113–19. 41.  Several scholars have noted that Boccaccio may have drawn on Ovid’s advice in the Remedia about meditating on a woman’s faults. See note 33, above. 42.  Boncompagno da Signa, Rhetorica novissima 2:249–97 (9.2.12). 43.  Scholars have noted that Boncompagno’s discussion of descriptio might underlie the guide’s depiction of the widow, but they have not discussed its relationship to the transformation of the nymphs’ bodies in the Ameto. On the echoes of Boncompagno’s text in the Corbaccio, see Porcelli, “Il Corbaccio,” 567–68; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and the Infernal Body,” 89–93 and 102–4. Armstrong suggests that Boccaccio uses the technique to dehumanize the widow and “literalize” or “reify” her moral qualities (Armstrong, “Boccaccio and the Infernal Body,” 103). 44.  See Ovid, Amores 1.4.61–64; 1.6; 1.8.75–81; 1.9.15–19; 3.11a.9–16; and Ars 2.521–24. Papio has pointed out the possible Ovidian intertexts. He suggests that the elegiac theme increases the pathos one feels for Rinieri in contrast to Elena’s lack of compassion (Papio, “ ‘Non meno di compassion piena,’ ” 113–14 and 122n43–44). 45.  On ideas about courtesy in medieval culture, see Olson, Courtesy Lost, 6–8. 46.  Scholars have typically characterized the nature of Rinieri’s and Elena’s suffering in terms of the generalized and perhaps ambiguous notion of “literalization” of metaphors (a commonplace notion in Boccaccio criticism). The term means that the medieval metaphors for erotic sensations (burning or freezing) are depicted as real, physical torments for the fictional protagonists. For example, see Marcus, “Misogyny as Misreading,” 140. 47.  Other scholars have commented on the apparent general connection between desire and compassion in Rinieri’s voyeuristic view of Elena’s naked body. See Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction, 19–20; and Papio, “ ‘Non meno di compassion piena,’ ” 116–17. 48. On Rinieri’s lack of compassion versus Boccaccio’s promotion of the sentiment, see also Papio, “ ‘Non meno di compassion piena,’ ” 115–16; and Dur­ ling, “A Long Day in the Sun,” 274. 49.  Other scholars, in particular Psaki and Filosa, have noticed general thematic similarities between the Secretum and Corbaccio, many of which concern the age and scholarly pursuits of protagonists. See Filosa, “Corbaccio e Secretum,” 211–19; Psaki, “Boccaccio’s Corbaccio,” 112–20. See also Veglia, Il corvo, 12 and 40.

322   Notes to Pages 243–253 50.  In suggesting that Boccaccio wanted to pursue humanistic studies, critics have noted that the narrator and guide repeated Petrarchan clichés. In par­ticu­ lar, the duo recalls his ideas about the dignity of Latin studies, the pleasures of the solitary life, and the social status of the scholar. See also Billanovich, “Il più grande discepolo,” 76, 131–33, and 241–43. 51.  Many scholars have identified allusions to Dante’s Comedy, primarily but not exclusively related to the highly clichéd references to the opening cantos of the Inferno. For a discussion of the Dantean resonances, see Armstrong, “Dantean Framing Devices”; and Armstrong, “Boccaccio and the Infernal Body.” The Dantean echoes have engendered two interpretations. Several scholars believe that Boccaccio recalls Dante’s divine vision to disprove the guide’s and narrator’s undivine views about women and love (and thereby defend vernacular literature). See Houston, Building a Monument, 100–23. Others have argued that Boccaccio intends to cast doubt on Dante’s general truth claims but do not specify why Boccaccio might disagree with his predecessor. See Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction, 40–41; Psaki, “Play of Genre,” 43–44 and 50–52; and Psaki, “Boccaccio and Female Sexuality,” 132–33. 52.  Armstrong also hypothesizes that Boccaccio wanted readers to think of Dante. She notes that the description of the guide in the Corbaccio recalls the physical description of Dante in the Trattatello (§§112–13; see Armstrong, “Dantean Framing Devices,” 154–55). 53.  Again see Armstrong, “Boccaccio and the Infernal Body,” 90–93 and 97–99. 54.  On ideas about comedy in the Malebolge, see Barański, “Scatology and Obscenity,” 260 and 267. 55. In noting that the punishment of Elena recalls Dante’s contrapasso, other critics have suggested that Rinieri perhaps does not understand Dante’s or God’s notion of justice. See Almansi, “Alcune osservazioni,” 140–42; and Marcus, “Misogyny as Misreading,” 140. 56.  For a survey of interpretations of the work’s title, see Cassell, “The Crow of the Fable”; Watson, “An Immodest Proposal”; Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction, 33–35; Illiano, Per l’esegesi del “Corbaccio,” 13–21; Porcelli, “Il Corbaccio”; Nobili, “Per il titolo”; Giles, “Depluming the Author”; Panizza, “Rhetoric and Invective,” 184; and Zaccarello, “Del corvo, animale solitario.” 57.  See, in particular, Ghisalberti, “Medieval Biographies,” 14, 22, 32, and 59. 58.  Other scholars have suggested more generally that Boccaccio may have intended to allude to Ovid’s myth to warn those who gossip. See Giles, “Depluming the Author,” 630. 59.  See Hollander, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses, 139–40; Hollander, Boccaccio’s Last Fiction, 34; Watson, “An Immodest Proposal,” 322n21; and Nobili, “Per il titolo,” 100–101.

Notes to Pages 255–264   323 E P I LO G U E

1.  On Boccaccio’s fourteenth-­century cultural context, see Tanturli, “Giovanni Boccaccio”; Smarr, “Man of Many Turns”; Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, “Boccaccio as Cultural Mediator”; and Gittes, “Boccaccio and Humanism.” 2.  For information about the manuscripts, see chapter 1 (section “Boccaccio’s Dante”). 3.  On Boccaccio’s engagement with Greek culture, see Pertusi, Leonzio Pilato tra Petrarca e Boccaccio; Lummus, “Boccaccio’s Hellenism”; and Bertelli and Cursi, “Homero poeta sovrano.” 4.  On the medieval genera dicendi, see Barański, “Libri poetarum in quattuor species”; Barański, “Dante and Medieval Poetics”; and Barański, “Dante Alighieri: Experimentation,” 574–82. 5. On the origins and characteristics of humanist culture in fourteenth-­ century Italy, see Witt, Footsteps of the Ancients; Gittes, “Boccaccio and Humanism”; and Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch.” 6.  Scholars have traditionally argued that Petrarch inspired many of Boccaccio’s cultural views, but Boccaccio rarely influenced Petrarch’s. For examples or discussions of this scholarship, see Veglia, Il corvo, 19–42; Veglia, La strada più impervia, 9–17; Rico, Ritratti allo specchio, 9–13 and 97–131; and Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch,” 139–40. For examples of studies that challenge this historiographical commonplace, see Zak, “Boccaccio and Petrarch,” 144–48; Cachey, “Between Petrarch and Dante,” 16–24; and Eisner, “Petrarch Reading Boccaccio.” 7.  On ideas related to literature being a science, and Aristotle’s influence on this notion, see Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 4–29; and Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, Medieval Literary Theory, 2–5; and, in general, Greenfield, Humanist and Scholastic Poetics. 8.  For ideas about Boccaccio’s supposed realism, see Ferme, Women, Enjoyment, 1–4; Leavitt, “Il realismo”; Quondam, introduction to Decameron, by Boccaccio; Cervigni, “Introductory Note”; and Steinberg, “Mimesis on Trial.” 9.  Several quotations are cited as examples of how scholars have characterized Dante’s views about eros (as expressed in the Paradiso) and the pilgrim’s relationship with Beatrice. Psaki: “That Dante hypothesized a redeemed or even redemptive eroticism that makes a place for human sexual love not only in earthly life but in beatitude, that he posits for Beatrice a love that is no less sexual than blessed, no less erotic than salvific. I cannot conclude that for Dante ideal erotic love is desexualized, purged of the corporeal, superseded by a generalized and purely mental communion” (Psaki, “Love for Beatrice,” 119; emphasis added). Kay: “Dante’s erotic and affective response to Beatrice is not confined to Eden. References to her beauty abound in the final cantica, where her presence is more overtly physical than in the Vita nova. While human love was not rejected in the libello, Beatrice became increasingly ethereal and dematerialized, and a vital part

324   Notes to Pages 265–266 of Dante’s spiritual growth lies in his capacity to love her beyond the grave, overcoming his attachment to her body. The Paradiso, by contrast, continually foregrounds Beatrice’s humanity and embodied beauty” (Kay, Dante’s Lyric Redemption, 80; emphasis added). Webb: “The complicated issue in such debates [about eros in the Paradiso] is the double nature of our experience of Paradiso. Even if Paradiso were understood to be a generalized and, let us say, spiritual communion, it is viewed through the gaze of an embodied Dante who witnesses it and reports it as an embodied and desiring poet, conscious of the fact that his readers are likewise embodied, desiring creatures. Thus the third canticle must contain both the bodily and the spiritual, and it most definitely speaks the language of the body, even as that language enacts unions and communions that the earthly body cannot experience” (Webb, Dante’s Persons, 127; emphasis added). My research suggests that Boccaccio was concerned about the dignity of unredeemed, unidealized eros; about the fact that the pilgrim in Paradise desires an exceptional Beatrice; and about the fact that Dante did not overtly depict an act of embodied intercourse. In sum, Boccaccio pondered what relevance depictions of idealized eros in the Paradiso (no matter how interpreted) might have for humans on earth. 10.  Moevs discusses several currents of thought about the body and self in medieval contemplative, mystical thought. He describes the apophatic current— only one within the contemplative tradition—in these terms: “We come to it [giving birth to Christ] by turning away from ourselves and created things, accepting or seeking nothing outside ourselves, diving into the bottomless well within us through absolute detachment and renunciation, annihilating or abandoning ourselves, wanting nothing, knowing nothing, having nothing, being as free and empty as before we came from God”; and also “a mind willing to be nothing, no longer petrified by its obsessive self-­identification with the body, memories, expectations, family, and other attachments, is freed to experience itself as all, to recognize itself in, and as, each thing that exists; such an intelligence awakens to its own immortality and transcendence” (Moevs, Metaphysics, 68). 11. On the depiction of Florence in the Decameron and on Boccaccio’s realism, see Wallace, Giovanni Boccaccio, 1–4; Forni, “Realtà/verità”; Balduino, “Vittore Branca”; and Smarr, “Man of Many Turns,” 6–7. In writing about the Decameron’s novelty, Wallace also underscores the modern nature of Boccaccio’s vernacular prose, which could be highly formal, like Dante’s in the Convivio, but also colloquial: “The Decameron responded to the needs of a politically precocious society with a language and organizational form that would answer to European experience for many centuries to come” (Wallace, Giovanni Boccaccio, 4). 12. With respect to Boccaccio’s Renaissance reception, scholars have also addressed Boccaccio’s influence on vernacular prose and the short story, the impact of his Latin erudite works on humanist thought, the influence of his writings on painting, his role in Dante’s reception, and the copying and editing of his Latin and vernacular writings. Less attention has been given to Boccaccio’s impact on ideas about allegory, images, genre, ethics, and spirituality. For recent

Notes to Pages 266–271   325 studies of Boccaccio’s reception, see Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book; Armstrong, The English Boccaccio; Kriesel, “Chastening the Corpus”; Kriesel, “Boccaccio and the Early Modern Reception”; Anselmi et al., Boccaccio e i suoi lettori; Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, “Transmission and Adaptation” (part 4), in Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio; and “Umana cosa è aver compassione,” special edition of Levia Gravia 15–16 (2013–14). 13.  On Boccaccio’s authorial identity and achievement, see the works listed in note 1, above. 14.  On Boccaccio’s autograph of the text (Zibaldone Magliabechiano; BNC, Banco Rari 50, ff. 99v–100r [123v–124r]), see Petoletti, “Tavola di ZM,” 318 (40); and De Robertis, “Boccaccio copista,” 330. For an introduction to the De Canaria, and to Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s different reactions to the Isole Fortunate (Boccaccio reacted more positively to the new culture and the “other,” Petrarch less so), see Cachey, Le isole Fortunate, 83–121; Coleman, “Boccaccio’s Humanistic Ethnography”; Bocchi, “Appunti di lettura.” 15.  For an introduction to the text, see Tanturli, “Consolatoria a Pino de’ Rossi.” 16.  For summative accounts of Boccaccio’s engagement with matters pertaining to women and gender, see Migiel, “Boccaccio and Women”; and Psaki, “Voicing Gender.” For more extensive bibliography concerning the import of women and gender in Boccaccio’s writings, see the introduction herein. 17. On the exceptional nature of Boccaccio’s writings about women, see Armstrong, Daniels, and Milner, “Boccaccio as Cultural Mediator,” 15–18. 18.  The following notes repeat select works on these issues cited in the introduction and in previous chapters. 19.  On matters related to women, epistemology, and female spiritual expressions, see Elliott, Proving Woman, 1–8 and 47–116; and Elliott, Bride of Christ. 20.  On Christ’s passion and late medieval devotion, see Bestul, “Meditatio/ Meditation”; Bestul, Texts of the Passion; McNamer, Affective Meditation, 1–21; and Davis, Weight of Love. 21. On feminine expressions of devotion and piety, see Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 16–17 and 110–169; Bynum, Holy Feast, 113–49 and 245–59; Beckwith, Christ’s Body; McNamer, Affective Meditation, 1–21; and Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 12–13. 22. On Boccaccio’s knowledge of contemporary critiques of women and marriage, see Vecchio, “De uxore non ducenda”; and Holmes, “Beyond Exemplarity.” 23.  The autograph, BML, 90 sup. 98I (LI), is dated to ca. 1373. On Boccaccio’s autograph, see Bertelli, “Scheda 40: L’autografo del De mulieribus claris.” 24.  For an introduction to the De mulieribus, see Filosa, Tre studi, and see esp. 32–37, 51–59, and 168–72; and Kolsky, Genealogy of Women. 25.  On matters related to the narrator and narration in the De mulieribus, see Shemek, “Doing and Undoing”; and Migiel, “Boccaccio and Women,” 180–83.

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INDEX

affect, 12–14, 15, 16, 70–71, 83, 149, 150, 151, 159, 271 affective piety Boccaccio and, 15, 16–18, 24, 136, 144, 149–51, 154, 159–60, 177–79, 196, 235, 269–71 concept of, 12–18, 147–49, 160, 175–76, 269–71, 281–82n59 influence on literature, 12–13, 16, 70–71, 83, 160, 177, 179, 270–71 women as practitioners, 13–14, 18, 148–49, 160, 175–76, 270–71 Agapes (nymph character), 94–98, 103, 136, 150 Alan of Lille, 68–69, 78, 80, 86–87 Anticlaudianus, 68, 80, 127 De planctu naturae, 68 Alighieri, Dante authorial identity, 19–20, 64, 105, 128 biography, 27–28, 150, 173 Boccaccio’s anthologies of (see under manuscripts) Boccaccio’s views of, 4, 19, 20–21, 26, 27–28, 29, 30, 38–41, 50–51, 52–54, 57, 87, 99–100, 117, 129, 133, 143, 155, 161, 162, 189, 191–92, 196–97, 199, 207, 257, 264–66, 284n76, 302n12 medieval reception, 20, 30–31, 33–36, 40, 64, 187, 299n62, 315n90

Petrarch’s views of, 11, 28, 51, 189, 190, 191, 211 as prophet, 10, 31, 41, 258 Alighieri, Jacopo, 30, 31, 35, 40 Alighieri, Pietro, 31, 40 allegoresis (allegorical reading) Boccaccio’s views of, 85–86, 88–89, 93–94, 219–21, 232–33, 257, 259 concept of, 9–10, 39–40, 47–49 See also allegory; readers Allegoria mitologica (Boccaccio), 7 allegory in Boccaccio’s manuscripts, 50–52, 56–58 Boccaccio’s views of, 4, 5, 8–9, 15–16, 22–23, 42–49, 54–56, 57–59, 110–11, 150–51, 265–57 Boccaccio’s views of Dante’s, 5, 9, 22, 26, 28–30, 31–36, 38–41, 48–49, 50–54, 150–51, 191 Boccaccio’s views of Petrarch’s, 11, 36–39, 47–48, 50, 51–54 concept of, 2, 9–10, 30–31, 36–37, 39–40, 64 Dante’s views of, 10–11, 15–16, 31–32, 33–34, 38–40, 48–49, 93–94, 115–16 Petrarch’s views of, 30, 36–37, 38–39, 43, 45–49, 52–53, 257–58 in secular literature and the Bible, 9–10, 47–49 363

364  Index Ameto (Boccaccio) and Dante’s Comedy, 62–63, 72–76, 88–94, 95, 97–98, 100–102, 105, 106 and Dante’s Vita nova, 78–79, 98–100 descriptio corporis, 70–71, 77, 81–84, 94–96 erotic or chaste images, 62–63, 72–76 erotic poetics, 61, 62–63, 78, 94–95, 105 ethics, 97–98, 99–100, 106–7, 262–63, 272 female body as image, 7, 16, 75–76, 80–81, 85–86, 102–3, 104, 105–6, 259, 262–63, 270 female body as textual symbol, 81–82, 83 as female literature, 47, 53 genre (comedy), 72–74 grammar, 68, 87–88, 89 imagination, 60–61 influence on readers, 24, 85–86, 88, 105 interpretation, 79–80, 82, 83–84, 86–87, 257 liberal arts, 85–86, 87, 259 modern readings of, 64 Mopsa episode, 85–94 narrative structures, 77–78 nymphs in (see Agapes; Lia; Mopsa; nymphs) Ovid’s influence on, 76–77 plot, 7, 59 recalled in Amorosa visione, 135, 143–44 recalled in Corbaccio, 205, 206, 230–33, 234 recalled in Genealogie, 46–47 revelation, 96, 100 Ulysses, 63, 88–94

Ameto (character), 7, 46, 60–61, 62, 63, 78, 81–82, 83, 84, 87, 93–94, 95, 96, 100, 102, 103–4, 105, 106, 133, 144, 209, 226, 230, 231–32, 252–53, 263 Amorosa visione (Boccaccio) acrostic sonnets, 112–13 affective piety, 147–51, 270 and Ameto, 135–36, 143–44 Dante, in triumph of Wisdom, 128–30 and Dante’s Comedy, 110–12, 113–15, 119–20, 125–28, 129–32, 140–43, 150–51, 155, 265 and Dante’s Vita nova, 143, 149 and Dante’s “Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete,” 115–17 dreamer (Boccaccio character), 109, 110, 113, 117–19, 122, 124, 130, 140 ekphrasis, 125–28 erotic, mundane poetics, 128, 129–30, 132, 135–36, 143 ethics of erotic, mundane experiences, 17, 110, 117, 120, 122–24, 138–39, 141, 150–51, 153–54, 155–56, 257 female body as image, 135–36, 143–47, 270 as female literature, 46–47, 270 genre (dream vision), 109, 111, 112–13, 152–53, 305–6n50 Giotto, 127–28, 177 history vs. fiction, 152–53 humanity’s earthly voyage, 111–12, 122, 140–41, 150 images and imagination, 112–13, 125, 128, 132, 135–36, 139 Incarnation, 145–47 influence on readers, 113, 259 interpretation, 133–35, 139, 259 lightness, 120–21, 124–25, 199

Index  365 meaning of title, 154 modern readings of, 110–11 and Petrarch’s writings, 155–56, 212, 213, 258 plot, 7–8, 109 recalled in Corbaccio, 204–5, 206 recalled in Genealogie, 46–47 Ulysses, 122–23, 136–38 wealth, 133–35 Angela of Foligno, 13, 18, 148, 175, 312n56 Apuleius Metamorphoses, 37, 42, 46–47, 77, 96 Argonauts’ voyage, myth of, 103 Aristotle, 45, 68–69, 125, 223, 245 imagination, 60, 61, 69–70 poet-theologian, 30 theory of causes, 258 Armstrong, Guyda, 300n79, 321n43, 322n52 Arrigo da Settimello Elegia de diversitate fortunae, 165 ars praedicandi (art of preaching), 14, 71, 177 artes poetriae (treatises on poetry), 70–71, 135 Asinaio (spiritual retreat), 183 Augustine of Hippo, 66, 84, 86, 110, 228, 267–68 Confessiones, 66 De civitate Dei, 267–68 De doctrina christiana, 66, 228 images, 66–67, 84 liberal arts, 86 Augustinus (character), 50, 209, 241, 242 Barański, Zygmunt G., 316n104 Bartuschat, Johannes, 301n5, 303n21 Beatrice (character), 13, 20, 21, 62, 74, 75, 76, 78, 88, 92, 97, 98, 99, 100,

110, 119, 131, 132, 143, 149, 188, 191, 264, 285–86n86, 300n77, 304n34, 323–24n9 body of, 12, 20, 21, 62–63, 75– 76, 97, 100, 110, 119, 143, 264, 285–86n86, 300n77, 304n34, 323–24n9 Beatrice Portinari, 143, 304n33 Benvenuto da Imola, 40 Bernard of Clairvaux, 12–13, 148, 175 Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, 12 Bernard of Clairvaux (character), 13 Bernardo, Aldo S., 305nn49–50 Bernardus Silvestris, 110 Cosmographia, 68, 69 Bersuire, Pierre, 49, 291n51 Ovidius moralizatus, 40 Bible, 39, 76, 88, 111, 131, 133, 146, 153, 258 literary properties, 9, 10, 12, 30, 31, 33, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45, 48, 65, 66, 75, 83, 88, 94, 96, 106, 135, 148, 152, 224, 226, 228, 250, 258, 259, 291n51 medieval interpretations, 27, 31, 40, 45, 49, 65–66, 67, 146, 149, 194, 228, 240 Song of Songs (see Song of Songs) Boccaccio, Giovanni authorial identity —allegorical writer, 2, 5, 15 —author of diverse literatures, 7–8, 25–26, 54–56, 255–56 —author of female texts, 3–4, 26, 47, 166–70, 270–72 —author of vernacular erotica, 2, 4, 5, 7–8, 71–72, 157, 170–71 —contributions to Greek studies, 3, 25 —cultural and social mediator, 2, 3, 255–57, 266–67

366  Index Boccaccio, Giovanni (cont.) —cultural interests, 3–4, 5–7, 25–26, 130, 132–33, 255–56, 266–67 —between Dante and Petrarch, 3–4, 52–54, 57, 257–59, 264–66 —humanist scholar of antiquity, 4, 5–7, 41–42, 255 —orthodox writer, 16–17, 157–58, 195–96, 199, 224–26, 228, 239– 40, 250–51, 261, 263–64, 272–73 —Ovidian elegist, 8, 158–59, 161–62, 170–71, 200, 205, 239–40 —poet-theologian, 196, 199 —promoter of compassion, 17–18, 106–7, 148–51, 154, 159–61, 177–79, 195–96, 228, 239–40, 269–70, 272–73 —scholar of Dante, 3–4, 8–9, 26, 27–29, 30–36, 39–41, 51–52 —scholar of Petrarch, 4, 11, 49–50, 155–56, 158 —views about human dignity, 266–69 —views about multiculturalism, 3, 268–69 —views about religion, 3, 14 —views about revelation, 266–68 biography of —birth and death, 1, 173, 208–9 —chronology of writings, 7–9, 22, 23, 25–26, 27–28, 41–42, 49–50, 51–52, 59, 109, 155–56, 157–58, 161–62, 188, 207–9, 255–56, 257 —diplomatic career, 14 —education, 3, 14, 61–62, 63–64, 69, 77, 158, 161–62, 177, 212, 322n50 —holy orders, 14, 177 —Italian peninsula, 3, 25 —lectures on Dante, 9, 28 —meetings with Petrarch, 27, 207–9, 212

—relationship with Maria d’Aquino (Fiammetta), 145–47, 153 —travels, 3, 7, 14, 23, 49–50, 63, 151, 161–62, 177, 207–9, 212, 256 medieval (critical) views of, 2–4, 11, 16–17, 40, 179–81, 212–16, 245, 253, 261 modern views of —author of allegory, 5, 29–30, 40–41, 56–57, 288n13, 288n15 —author of erotica, 5, 64, 110–11, 263, 266, 310n44 —author of texts for women, 4, 26, 166–67, 269–70 —Christian moralist, 5, 158–59, 184, 263, 266 —compared to Dante, 19–22, 40–41, 64, 110–11, 310n42 —compared to Petrarch, 19–22, 217, 257–58 —cultural and social mediator, 255–56, 266 —humanist, 5, 217, 226 —imitator of Ovid, 158–59 —inspiration for early modern culture, 266, 324–25n12 —protodeconstructionist, 5, 18–19, 56–57, 133, 261–62 —protofeminist, 4, 14–15, 166–67, 269–70 —protorealist, 5, 266 body/bodies in the Bible (Song of Songs), 9, 65–66, 96, 124 Boccaccio’s ethics concerning (women’s), 17–18, 21, 22, 99–100, 105–7, 111–12, 113, 124–25, 136, 141, 143, 147, 152, 154, 156, 159–60, 178–79, 184–85, 188, 195–96, 199, 206–7, 230, 240, 250–51, 259, 261, 263–65, 271

Index  367 Boccaccio’s symbolic uses of (women’s), 1–3, 16, 17–18, 19, 59, 61, 63, 71, 76–77, 80–83, 85–86, 92, 94, 95, 105–7, 132, 135–36, 143–44, 146, 150, 151, 159–60, 173–75, 178–79, 183, 184–86, 194–95, 206–7, 222–23, 225, 249, 250–51, 262–63, 270 Christ’s body (see Christ: body of ) in Dante’s writings, 20–21, 62–63, 75–76, 78, 87–88, 90–91, 93, 100, 110, 120, 142–43, 151, 285n83, 285–86n86, 323–24n9, 324n10 debates about (women’s), 12, 13–14, 61, 68–69, 78, 83, 105–6, 110, 148–49, 153, 175–76, 269–71 epistemological topics concerning, 17, 61, 105–6, 110, 259–60 ethics concerning, 13, 71, 110, 175–76 in Petrarch’s writings, 22, 155, 189, 200, 209–10, 215–16, 242, 318n10 of the sick (plague, leprosy), 13, 17, 147, 160, 174, 175, 178 as symbol for text, 1–2, 10–11, 12 See also Beatrice (character); descriptio corporis; images; women Boethius, 67, 78, 104, 110, 122, 125, 164, 165, 294n15 De consolatione philosophiae, 91, 104, 122, 164, 165 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, 148, 175, 269 Boncompagno da Signa, 321n43 Rhetorica novissima, 234 Branca, Vittore, 303n31, 305n47, 305n49 Buccolicum carmen (Boccaccio), 22, 54, 56, 161–62, 255, 293n72 Ovid’s influence on, 8, 61–62, 165

Buccolicum carmen (Petrarch), 30, 48, 50, 53, 54, 161 bucolic poetry, genre of, 53, 54, 161, 165, 308n23 Caccia di Diana (Boccaccio), 7, 56 Cacciaguida degli Elisei (character), 186, 187, 190 Caleone (character), 98, 99, 140, 300n75 Candido, Igor, 291n55, 305n49, 318–19n19 Canzoniere (Petrarch), 11, 188–89, 191, 243 Boccaccio’s views of, 50, 155–56, 216–17, 241 love and earthly experiences, 22, 155–56, 189, 208, 212, 242 Capellanus, Andreas, 72, 218, 229–30, 235–36 De amore, 72, 218, 230, 236, 303n31 Catherine of Siena, 13, 18, 148, 175–76 Catullus, Gaius Valerius, 164, 166, 210, 211, 218–19 Cavalcanti, Guido, 8, 21, 28, 52, 60, 64, 69–70, 124–25, 127, 186, 191, 198–99, 200, 257, 259–60, 316n104 in Boccaccio’s anthologies, 8, 28, 52 character in Decameron, 124–25, 186, 191, 198–99, 259–260 “Donna me prega,” 8, 52, 60, 69–70 Christ, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 30, 37, 39, 44, 46, 65, 66, 68, 71, 83, 88, 100, 125, 131, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 159–60, 173–74, 175, 176, 178, 192, 193, 195, 196, 199, 210, 225, 239, 240, 251, 260, 269, 270, 271, 281nn58–59, 283n71, 305n45, 306n5, 315n94, 315n96, 324n10

368  Index Christ (cont.) in Amorosa visione, 145–46, 147, 148, 149 artistic images of, 16, 71, 148, 176, 178, 192, 193, 196, 269–71, 281n58, 312n56, 315n94 body of, 9, 71, 147–48, 149, 150, 159–160, 173–74, 175, 176, 178, 192, 193, 196, 210, 225, 251, 270, 281nn58–59, 283n71, 315n94 compassion of, 17, 147, 148, 149, 150, 159–160, 175, 176, 196, 239–40, 251, 269–70, 271, 283n71, 306n5 in Corbaccio, 225, 251 in Decameron, 16, 17–18, 71, 159–60, 173–74, 175, 178, 192, 193, 195, 196, 199, 210, 225, 270 Incarnation of, 2, 16, 17, 18, 71, 145–46, 147, 159–60, 173–75, 178, 195, 196, 225–26, 270, 306n5 Passion of, 13–14, 18, 145–46, 148, 159–60, 175, 176, 178, 193, 196, 269–70, 281nn58–59 Resurrection of, 16, 44, 71, 195, 199 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 42–43, 44, 140, 223, 245 De re publica (Dream of Scipio), 44 Pro Archia, 42–43 Cino da Pistoia, 186, 189, 191, 200 Circe, mythological figure, 89, 90, 91–92, 231, 238, 241, 246 Collatio laureationis (Petrarch) ancient poets, 30 poetic inspiration, 42–43 properties of poetry, 30 Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (Boccaccio). See Ameto (Boccaccio) comedy, genre of, 20, 72–74, 157, 165, 173, 181, 249–50, 310n47

Comedy (Dante) allegory and poetics, 10–11, 62, 87–88, 110, 111, 125–27, 128, 160, 174–75, 249–50 Boccaccio’s views of, 4, 20–21, 28, 31–36, 39–40, 46, 48–49, 50–51, 72–74, 83–84, 91–94, 97–98, 105, 106, 111–12, 119–20, 122, 127–28, 129–30, 132, 138, 141, 142–43, 150–51, 155, 160–61, 171, 173, 175, 179, 186, 188, 189–90, 191, 199, 249–51, 264–65, 285n86, 290n36, 310n44, 313n79, 323–24n9 body as symbol, 12, 20–21, 62–63, 74–76, 97, 102, 103–4, 143, 148, 151, 264–65 Church Triumphant, 76, 111, 130–32 contrapasso, 250 Earthly Paradise, 75–76, 141–42 ethics concerning mundane experiences, 63, 76, 80, 91, 119–20, 124–25, 138, 141, 145, 198–99 ethics concerning the (erotic) body, 12, 20–21, 76, 91, 97, 110, 119–20, 141, 142, 170–71, 231 genre (comedy, dream vision), 10, 32, 173, 249–50 Geryon, 10–11, 122 Matelda, 141–43 modern perceptions of, 19–21, 76, 91, 285n86, 297n42, 323–24n9, 324n10 Neoplatonic, contemplative dimensions, 13, 105, 122, 264, 324n10 Petrarch’s views of, 188–89, 190, 212 Siren, 90–91 Ulysses, 89–91, 122–23, 136–38 as vernacular literature, 3

Index  369 Virgil, 84, 93, 120–21, 247 See also Beatrice (character) compassion in affective piety, 13–14, 148–49, 160, 175, 269–70 Boccaccio’s ethics of, 17–18, 106–7, 150, 154, 159–61, 171–72, 177–78, 195–96, 204–5, 228–29, 239–40, 270 Boccaccio’s hermeneutic uses of, 17, 149, 179, 228, 253, 257, 271, 272–73 concept of, 14, 148, 231, 283n71, 306n5, 311n53, 313n74 in elegy, 165, 167–68, 195–96, 239–40 perceptions of women and, 13–14, 17, 148–49, 160, 176, 178–79, 271 Consolatoria a Pino de’ Rossi (Boccaccio), 269 Convivio (Dante), 10, 27, 49, 78, 115, 116, 288n16, 289n30, 324n11 Corbaccio (Boccaccio) and Ameto, 204–5, 230–34, 252–53 bad readers, 28, 203–5, 206–7, 217, 218–19, 220–21, 222–23, 224, 225–26, 228, 229–30, 232–33, 240, 250–51, 253 compassion, 206–7, 228–29, 231, 236–38, 250–51, 272 compassion as hermeneutic concept, 228, 239–40, 250–51, 253, 257 contrapasso of Dante, 250 and Dante’s Comedy, 207, 221–22, 231, 245–51, 321n39, 322n51 and Decameron (Proemio, “Introduction” to Day IV, “Conclusion”), 204–5, 224–26, 227–29, 230, 235–36, 253 and Decameron 8.7, 205, 206, 218, 221–23, 227–28, 229–30, 231, 235–36, 237–38, 239–40, 250

and Decameron 10.10, 205, 213–16 descriptio corporis, 205, 230–34 dreamer, 206, 207–8, 217–18, 219–21, 222–24, 227–28, 229, 232–33, 235, 240–42, 243–44 elegiac poetics, 205, 206, 219–23, 226–28, 233–35, 249–50 ethics concerning the (female) body, 206–7, 208–9, 215–16, 226–27, 228, 229–30, 233–35, 236–41, 242–43, 263 female body as (textual) symbol, 206–7, 209, 215–16, 222–23, 224–26, 227–28, 231–33, 234–35, 242–43, 249–50 and Genealogie, 204–5, 206, 207, 218–19, 226, 228, 230, 240 genre (dream vision, elegy, invective), 203–4, 206, 207–8, 217, 316–17n2, 317n3 guide (as Dante), 249, 250, 322n52 guide (as Dante or Petrarch), 203–4, 206, 208, 217, 220, 223–26, 227–28, 231–35, 238, 241 guide (as Petrarch), 241–42, 243–45, 246 hatred, 205, 206–7, 211, 226–27, 231, 236–39, 242–43, 250–51, 316–17n2 hatred as hermeneutic concept, 205, 206, 207–8, 226, 227–28, 320n34 humanists, 216–17, 223–24, 230, 243–45 interpretation of title, 251–53 modern readings of, 207–8, 217, 226, 316–17n2, 317n8, 319n24 and Ovid’s elegiac poems (Ars amatoria, Remedia), 205, 206, 207, 217–19, 220–23, 224–25, 226–28, 229–30, 233–35, 238–39, 240, 251, 252–53

370  Index Corbaccio (Boccaccio) (cont.) and Petrarch’s writings (Canzoniere; De remediis utriusque fortune; De vita solitaria; Familiares 21.15; Seniles 5.2, 17.3, 18.1; Secretum; Triumphi), 22, 205, 207–17, 240–44, 245–46, 257–58, 317n8, 320n29, 322n50 plot, 8, 203–4 Ulysses (-Ameto), 231–33 widow, 47, 203–4, 208, 219–21, 222, 223–24, 231–33, 234–35, 236–37, 241, 244–45, 247–49 women vs. Muses, 224–25, 320n32 corpus. See body/bodies crow, myth about, 251–52 Crucifixion. See Christ: Passion of Cupid and Psyche, myth of, 46, 69, 77, 96–97, 291n55 curiosity (curiositas), ethics of, 71, 89, 138, 140, 260 Decameron (Boccaccio) allegory, 55–57, 162 body as symbol, 159–60, 173–75, 183, 184, 185–86, 189–90, 192–93, 194–95, 196, 215–16, 259, 270 body as textual symbol, 71, 174, 178, 185, 195, 196–97, 215–16, 226 characterization of readers, 259–62 comparison to Christ’s body, 16–17, 71, 175, 178, 192–93, 194–96, 199, 270 critics of, 178–80, 184–86, 190, 191, 192–93, 196–98, 204 and Dante’s Comedy, 160–61, 173– 75, 179, 186–91, 196–99, 314n87 date, 3, 16–17, 162, 173, 209, 278–79n30 depiction of the plague, 149, 173–74, 177–78, 179, 195, 214, 310–11n48

elegiac, erotic poetics, 5, 8, 16–17, 71, 159–60, 162, 167–70, 172–73, 181–86, 187, 188, 189–90, 192–95, 196–98, 214–16, 221–23 and Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, 167–68 envy, 179–81, 185, 190, 205, 236–40, 271 envy as hermeneutic concept, 182, 185, 190, 206, 227–28 ethics of compassion, 17–18, 72, 160–61, 167–68, 178–79, 195–96, 228–29, 237, 239–40, 257, 271, 272–73 ethics pertaining to the (erotic) body, 17–18, 159–61, 183–85, 188–89, 191, 195–96, 199, 222–23, 235–36, 261, 263 female genre, 17–18, 46–47, 166–70, 184–86, 196–98, 214–15, 270 gender of creation, 192–93, 224–25 genre (comedy, elegy, fable, history, parable, short story), 55–56, 157–58, 171–74, 182–83, 266 as hexameral literature, 175 influence of (Franciscan) affective thought, 16–18, 148–49, 160, 175–79, 196, 270 linguistic register, 160–61, 168, 179–80, 181–82, 187, 190, 196–98 modern views of, 5, 18–19, 159, 167, 170–71, 184, 266, 277n19, 277–78n25 narrator, 168–72, 173, 179–80, 184–85, 192–93, 196–97 and Ovid’s poems (Amores, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, Tristia), 158–60, 162, 166, 168–71, 179–83, 185–86, 193–95, 197–98, 200, 205, 222, 270 painting and literature, 192–95, 196

Index  371 Petrarch’s views of, 188, 200–201, 205, 213–16 and Petrarch’s writings (Canzoniere, Triumphi), 188–89, 190–91 preachers, preaching, homiletics, 14, 71, 177 rubrics, 71, 178–79 as vernacular literature, 179–80, 214 women as dedicatees, 17–18, 47, 160, 166–67, 168–70, 178–79, 184–85, 214–15 women as readers, 79–80, 148–49, 166–67, 178–79 women vs. Muses, 185–86, 224–25 Decameron (Boccaccio), specific sections of (in order) title Decameron, 175, 311n50 text “without a title” (“senza titolo”), 182–83 subtitle Galeotto, 170–71, 256, 310n42, 311n50 Proemio, 17, 55, 56, 72, 149, 158, 159, 166–67, 169–70, 171–73, 175, 177–79, 204–5, 214, 228–29, 244, 271, 272–73 “Introduction” to Day 1, 16, 17–18, 71, 149, 159, 160, 162, 173–74, 175, 177–79, 195–96, 270, 271 1.1 (Ciappelletto), 3, 14, 18, 260 1.2, 3, 260 1.3 (Melchisedech and Saladin), 3, 266–67 2.5 (Andreuccio da Perugia), 260 “Conclusion” to Day 3, 8 “Introduction” to Day 4 (Filippo Balducci), 158, 160, 179–80, 182–88, 189–91, 200, 204, 205, 206, 210, 214, 215, 224–25, 226, 227–28, 230, 235, 253, 261 4.1 (Ghismonda and Tancredi), 260, 261

6.5 (Giotto), 177, 195, 259 6.9 (Cavalcanti), 124–25, 198–99, 210, 259–60 6.10 (Frate Cipolla), 14, 177, 260 8.3 (Calandrino), 195, 260–61 8.6, 195 8.7 (scholar Rinieri and widow Elena), 205, 207, 218, 221–22, 223–24, 227–28, 229, 230, 231, 235–36, 237–38, 239–40, 250 (see also Corbaccio) 8.8, 240 9.3, 195 9.5, 195 10.3 (Natan and Mitridanes), 265 10.10 (Griselda and Gualtieri), 205, 215–16, 265, 291n55, 318–19n19 “Conclusion” to Day 10, 265 “Conclusion,” 8, 16, 18, 71, 79, 158, 177–79, 192–93, 194, 195–97, 198–99, 204, 210, 214, 224–25, 261, 270 De Canaria (Boccaccio), 3, 268–69 De casibus virorum illustrium (Boccaccio), 23 De mulieribus claris (Boccaccio), 23, 56, 91–92, 271 De remediis utriusque fortunae (Petrarch), 166, 209–10, 215, 242 descriptio corporis (description of the body), 65–66, 69, 70–71, 77, 83, 84, 94–96, 135, 204–5, 231–33, 234 De vita et moribus Domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia (Boccaccio) Laura, 11, 50, 155 Petrarch, 4, 11, 50, 155, 158, 209 De vita solitaria (Petrarch), 243 De vulgari eloquentia (Dante), 64, 87–88 Dino del Garbo, 8, 52, 69–70

372  Index Dominican views of literature, 9, 11, 22, 152, 270 views of women, 14, 83, 270, 317n3 Donatus, Aelius, 289n32 dreams and visions literary relevance of, 10, 31–33, 38, 45, 152–53, 289–90n35, 290n36 medieval perceptions of, 31, 32, 60 of women, 13, 150, 175–76, 281n58, 312n56 effictio, trope of, 234 Eisner, Martin, 293n75, 315n91 ekphrasis, trope of, 111, 125, 126, 127, 128, 132, 303n21 Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (Boccaccio) compassion, 167–68 eros, 23 female genre, 23 Ovid’s influence, 8, 161 plot, 8, 161 properties, 161, 167–68 elegy Boccaccio’s views of, 158–62, 167–71, 172–73, 178–79, 181–83, 185–86, 193–96, 197–98, 200, 205–7, 217, 218–19, 221, 222–23, 239–40, 249–50, 270, 308n31 ethics, 165, 168, 195–96, 239 etymology, 165, 195–96, 239 as female genre, 11, 167, 170, 178, 214 medieval and ancient perceptions, 164–66, 167–68, 171–73, 206 Ovid’s reputation as author, 158–59, 162, 163–66, 250, 252, 308n32 Ovid’s views of, 11, 47, 164, 168–71, 180–83, 186, 193–94, 197–98, 205, 206, 226–27, 250

Petrarch’s views of, 210–11, 214–16, 316n99, 318n14 properties, 164–66, 167–68, 170, 171, 179–82, 193–94, 197, 206, 214–15, 219, 221, 226, 250, 308n31, 310n47 Elena (character), 222, 229, 230, 231, 235, 236, 237, 239, 240, 321n44, 321nn46–47, 322n55 envy metaliterary resonances, 180–81, 182, 185, 205–7, 208, 226, 227–28, 235 personification of, 182 vice, 95, 153, 179, 206–7, 226, 227–28, 231, 235, 236, 238–39, 242, 252, 263, 271, 313n74, 316–17n2 See also Corbaccio (Boccaccio): hatred; Decameron (Boccaccio): envy; readers: bad, hateful, misogynist Epicurus, 198, 210, 318n12 “Epistle to Can Grande” (Dante), 31, 33–36, 39, 187, 288n16 eros (erotic love) Boccaccio’s views of, 5, 17, 23, 72, 84, 94, 97–98, 112, 117, 138–39, 140–41, 142–43, 151–52, 154, 184–85, 191, 192–93, 212, 263 Dante’s views of, 20–21, 76, 78–79, 80, 90–91, 117, 141, 142–43, 285n86, 323–24n9 medieval perceptions, 60, 66, 69–70 Petrarch’s views of, 155, 157–58, 200, 208–9, 211–13, 240–43 See also Venus erotic literature Boccaccio’s views of, 5, 16–18, 46–47, 49, 58, 63, 83–84, 87, 94, 100, 111–12, 157, 159–58, 160–61, 171, 178–79, 190, 192–93, 200,

Index  373 207, 218–19, 226, 228, 230, 257, 259, 263, 270, 310n42, 319n24 as female literature, 11–12, 47, 170, 244–45, 269, 270 misreading, 163, 179–81, 182, 194, 205, 206–7, 218–19, 220, 222–23, 224, 225, 230, 261 perceptions of, 4, 11, 44, 61–62, 79–80, 147–48, 162, 163–65, 205, 256–57, 270 Petrarch’s views of, 11, 19, 21, 157–58, 200, 208, 209, 210, 214–16, 244–45 Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante (Boccaccio) allegory and poets, 37–39, 61–62 biography of Ovid (see Ovid: Boccaccio’s biography of ) composition, content, and structure, 9, 28, 30, 209, 263 Dante’s Comedy, 20, 26, 29, 33– 36, 39–40, 48–49, 72–74, 190, 264–65 ethics Boccaccio’s ideas about mundane experiences and, 63, 92, 94, 106, 198–99, 232–33, 251, 257, 259–62, 263–64, 265–66 (see also Amorosa vision: ethics of erotic, mundane experiences) of Dante’s writings, 20–21, 76, 89, 111–12, 115–17, 120, 122–23, 141, 142–43, 155, 174, 186–87, 198–99 of medieval literature, 9–10, 12, 28, 31, 57, 109, 163, 171, 194, 228, 230, 233–34, 256, 286n88, 300n1 of Petrarch’s writings, 21–22, 155–56, 207–8, 209–10, 211–12, 213, 215–16, 241–43 of pursuing knowledge, 89, 92, 94, 122–23, 133, 136–139, 150, 198–99, 257

of reading, 9–10, 79–80, 182, 205, 206–7, 218–19, 226, 228 (see also readers) tensions concerning erotics and (physical/metaphysical; carnal/ spiritual), 18, 113, 115, 117, 152, 264, 302n12 See also body/bodies: Boccaccio’s ethics concerning (women’s); compassion: Boccaccio’s ethics of Eve, 225 artistic depictions of, 192–93, 194 fable (fabula, favola), 35, 44–46, 55–56, 172, 213, 318–19n19 faith, notion of, 94, 100–101, 267 Familiares (Petrarch) 10.4 (on poetry), 30, 37, 38–39, 48, 53 21.15 (on Dante), 11, 21, 28, 51, 188, 205, 211, 245, 258, 286–87n3 female body. See body/bodies Fiammetta (character), 8, 23, 98, 99, 100, 113, 117, 146, 147, 167–68, 172–73, 240, 300n75 Boccaccio-characters’ relationship with, 17, 99, 109, 111, 149–51, 152, 153–54, 177, 212, 305n45, 305n47, 305n49 See also Boccaccio, Giovanni, biography of: relationship with Maria d’Aquino (Fiammetta) fiction Boccaccio’s views of, 15–17, 29, 31–33, 36, 38, 40–41, 44–45, 47, 48–49, 55–57, 62, 152–53, 204, 257, 259, 262–63, 273 critical perceptions of, 3, 9–10, 11, 36, 44, 56–57, 65, 66, 79, 152, 206, 209, 256, 291n53 See also allegory; erotic literature; vernacular (literature)

374  Index Filippo Balducci (character), 183–84, 185, 187, 188, 189–90, 314n82 Filocolo (Boccaccio), 7, 63, 98, 138, 140, 147, 161, 244, 298n50, 300n75 Filosa, Elsa, 321n49 Filostrato (Boccaccio), 7 Francesca da Rimini (character), 20, 21, 47, 69, 80, 170, 171, 257, 298n50 Francesco da Brossano, 213 Franciscan thought. See affective piety Franciscus (character), 50, 209, 242 Francis of Assisi, 13, 147, 148, 149, 175, 177, 178, 281n58, 312n56 gender Boccaccio’s literary uses of, 14–16, 17, 18, 26, 47, 53–54, 83–84, 87, 111–12, 149, 160, 166–67, 168–70, 171, 172–73, 178–79, 192–93, 214–15, 224–25, 269, 270–72, 283n68 Boccaccio’s views about creation and, 192–93, 224–25 of literary genres and properties, 11, 12, 47, 160, 164, 166–67, 168–70, 270 medieval perceptions of, 11, 12, 13–14, 17–18, 83, 148–49, 158, 160, 167, 168–70, 176, 178, 184, 209, 270–71 modern studies of, 13–14, 148–49, 176, 269, 271, 275n6, 282n67, 283n68 Petrarch’s views and literary uses of, 26, 213–16, 245, 319n20 of reading and readerships, 26, 47, 79–80, 166–67, 168–70, 172–73, 179, 224, 244–45, 270, 271, 282n67

of vernacular and Latin literatures, 11–12, 53–54, 87–88, 166–67, 214, 245, 270 Genealogie deorum gentilium (Boccaccio) allegory, 8–9, 15, 30, 43–49, 52–53, 54–56, 162, 256–57, 290n36 and Ameto, 46–47 and Amorosa visione, 46–47 ancient poets, 42–43, 44, 45, 46, 55, 315n95 bad readers (of erotica), 61–62, 204, 205, 206, 207, 218–19, 222–23, 226, 228, 230, 240, 315n95 compassion, 228, 240 composition, content, and structure, 6–7, 8–9, 25, 41–42 and Corbaccio, 24, 204–5, 206–7, 218–19, 228, 230, 240 creative inspiration, 42–43 Dante and Petrarch, 26, 48–49, 52–54, 210 and Decameron, 46–47, 54–56 fabula, 44–47 female literatures, 45–47 Greek studies, 3 images and carnal symbols, 62, 65–66 medieval readers of, 41 modern studies of, 29, 276–77n17, 288n13, 288n15 poesis, 42, 47–48, 288n15 revelation, 267–68 theory of love, 70, 72 George (saint), 192, 193 Giotto, 126–28, 176, 177, 195, 196, 259, 316n97 Giovanni del Virgilio, 91, 256, 299n62 Gittes, Tobias Foster, 310n44 grammar, 9, 87–88, 163 iconographic tradition of, 68, 87, 89, 296n29

Index  375 Gregory I (pope), 71, 297n38 Griselda (character), 215–16, 265, 318–19n19 Guido da Pisa, 30–31, 33, 36, 39, 40 Guido del Duca, 90 Guinizzelli, Guido, 64, 126–27, 187 Guittone d’Arezzo, 189, 191 hatred. See envy Hercules, 38, 90 hermeneutics. See allegoresis; readers Hexameron, 175 Hollander, Robert, 303n31, 305n47, 316–17n2, 320n37, 321n39 Homer, 45, 51, 52, 128, 190, 211, 223, 244, 255 Horace, 51, 85, 128, 190 Ars poetica, 30 Odes, 298n58 reading, 79, 82, 113 Hugo IV of Cyprus (king), 41, 228 humanists Boccaccio’s representation of, 217, 223–34, 243, 244, 245, 271, 288n13, 320n29, 322n50 views of Latin literature, 11, 30, 42, 54, 128–29, 223, 256 views of vernacular literature, 11, 47, 51, 54, 62, 128–29, 157–58, 191, 200, 244, 256 images aesthetic pleasure, 66, 84, 85–86, 105–7 Boccaccio’s studies of, 62, 65–72 Boccaccio’s use of, 14, 16–17, 63, 71, 79–84, 86–87, 95, 96, 106–7, 111, 112–13, 135–36, 144–45, 150, 160, 177–78, 179, 183, 185–85, 194–95, 204, 230–33, 235, 270, 301n5 Boccaccio’s views of Dante’s, 62–63, 83–84, 88–89, 94, 98, 100, 104–6,

111, 125, 127–28, 132, 143, 150–51, 173–75, 189–90, 300n79 in Dante’s Comedy (See Comedy: body as symbol) emotive influence on readers, 12, 13, 60, 70–71, 147–48, 160, 175, 269–70 in epistemology, 60, 61, 65, 66, 67–68, 69–70, 122, 256 in love, 71–72 medieval concept, 16, 59, 60 in memory, 13, 71 Petrarch’s views of, 215–16 universe as image, 9, 61, 68, 104–5, 110 imagination ancient and medieval views of, 12–13, 60, 69–70 influence of images on, 12–13 and visions, 10 Incarnation. See under Christ Innocent VI (pope), 14, 177 integumentum (wrap, covering), 10, 43–44, 81, 86–87. See also Neoplatonic interpretation. See allegoresis; readers Isidore of Seville Etymologiae sive origines, 165, 166, 313n74 Jacopone da Todi Donna de Paradiso, 176 Jesus. See Christ Johannes de Caulibus, 281–82n59. See also Meditationes vitae Christi John of Garland, 165 Parisiana poetria, 308n23 Kahn, Victoria, 318n10 Kay, Tristan, 323–24n9 Kirkham, Victoria, 276–77n17, 303n28, 305n45

376  Index Latini, Brunetto, 64, 294n13 Laura (character), 11, 50, 155, 156, 209, 212, 242, 264 laurel crown of Dante, 27–28, 32, 33, 50–51, 128–29, 290n36, 302n17 of Petrarch, 11, 27–28, 50, 155, 156 leprosy, 13, 147, 175–76, 178, 281n58, 311n53, 312n56 “Letter to Posterity” (Petrarch). See Seniles: 18.1 Lia (nymph character), 60, 81–82, 93, 100, 144 lightness erotic connotations, 197–98 experience of, 120, 124, 198–99 Ovidian notion, 181, 183, 197 theological concept, 124–25, 198, 199 love courtly, 235–37, 320n30 illness resulting from, 60 medieval treatises on, 70–71, 72 nature of, 64, 69–70, 71–72, 209–10, 300n75, 303n31, 305n47 rules of, 217–18, 220–21, 227, 229–30, 233 threefold classifications, 140 See also eros; Venus Lummus, David, 276–77n17, 287n12, 288n15, 291n55 Macrobius, 32, 44, 45–46, 49, 56, 67, 270, 310–11n48 manuscripts (Boccaccio’s autographs and compilations), 57–58 anthologies and copies of Ovid’s works —BML, 33.31, 306n2 —BR, 489, 306n2 anthologies of Apuleius’s works —BML, 29.2, 291n54, 297–98n45 —BML, 54.32, 291n54, 297–98n45

anthologies of Dante’s works and vernacular poetry —“Chig” BAV, Chigi L.V.176 (with Trattatello, Ytalie iam, Cavalcanti’s “Donna me prega,” Petrarch’s Canzoniere), 4, 8, 28, 51–52, 212, 279n32, 292–93n70, 302n11, 318n15 —“Chig” BAV, L.VI.213, 52, 279n32, 302n11 —“Ri” BR, 1035, 287n4, 302n11 —“To” ABC, Zelada 104.6 (with Trattatello), 4, 8, 27, 50, 287n4, 302n11 —“Vat” BAV, Vat. Lat. 3199, 27, 50, 286n2 Buccolicum carmen —BR, 1232, 8 Decameron —[B], 278–79n30 —Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Hamilton 90 De Canaria —BNC, Banco Rari 50, 3, 275n8, 297n44, 325n14 De mulieribus claris —BML, 90 sup. 98I (LI), 23, 325n23 Genealogie deorum gentilium —BML, 52.9, 3, 41–42 Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia —BML, Acquisti e doni, 325, 7, 63–64 Zibaldone membranaceo —Miscellanea Laurenziana; BML, 33.31 (with Bernardus Silvestris’s Cosmographia), 295–96n11, 297n44 , 306n2, 313n70 —Zibaldone Laurenziano; BML, 29.8 (with Allegoria mitologica; Dante’s Eclogues; Mavortis milex

Index  377 to Petrarch), 7, 50, 155, 278n27, 292n64, 294n11, 297n44, 299n62, 306n52, 307n10 Marchesi, Simone, 288n15, 314nn86–87 Marcus, Millicent, 293n75, 314n82, 320n30, 320n34, 320n38 Martianus Capella, 127 De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 67–68, 122, 164 marvels, concept of, 313–14n79 Matthew of Vendôme Ars versificatoria, 71, 164–65 Mavortis milex epistle (Boccaccio), 7, 49–50, 155, 278n27, 283n72, 292n64 McKinley, Kathryn L., 277–78n25, 302n13 Meditationes vitae Christi, 13, 148, 176, 281–82n59 megacosm vs. microcosm, 68, 69. See also Neoplatonic: views of creation and cosmos Menetti, Elisabetta, 288n15 Mensola (nymph character), 8 mera poesis (pure literature), 15, 43–44, 47–48 Michael (archangel), 192, 193 Migiel, Marilyn, 277–78n25 Milner, Stephen J., 277–78n25, 288n15, 309n41 misinterpretation. See readers: bad, hateful, misogynist misogyny. See readers: bad, hateful, misogynist; women: perceptions of modi tractandi (modes of treating a subject), 30, 31, 34, 44, 70, 83, 171 Moevs, Christian, 324n10 Mopsa (nymph character), 63, 85–86, 87, 88, 92–93, 103, 232, 299n62, 305n48

Mopsus (seer in mythology), 86–87, 299n62 Muses, 2, 50–51, 55, 77, 85, 92, 128–29, 223, 244, 255 vs. women, 85–86, 224–25, 320n32 Mussato, Albertino, 26, 28, 30, 36–37, 38, 256 Neoplatonic views of creation and cosmos, 61, 67–68, 104–5, 152, 279n35 views of female bodies, 46, 60, 68–69, 78, 83, 106, 110, 122, 270 views of literature, 9–10, 11, 22, 44, 56, 62, 67–68, 78, 80–82, 122, 135, 136, 152, 205, 270, 283n70 See also integumentum; School of Chartres Ninfale fiesolano (Boccaccio), 8 nymphs in Boccaccio’s writings, 7, 8, 59, 61, 71, 74, 76, 77, 78, 80–81, 82, 84, 94, 102–4, 205, 209, 231, 234, 298n54 connotations of, 297n41, 308n23 in Dante’s Comedy, 62–63, 74–75, 76, 143 See also individual nymphs Agapes; Lia; Mensola; Mopsa Oderisi da Gubbio, 126–27 Odo of Cheriton, 184 Ovid advice for lovers, 217–18, 220–21, 227, 229–30, 233 Amores, 11, 47, 158, 159, 163, 164, 170, 171, 182–83, 197–98, 306, 307, 310n43 Ars amatoria, 7, 9, 47, 159, 161, 163, 166, 170, 171, 183, 186, 206, 217–18, 220–21, 222–23, 224, 230, 238, 298n50, 306n2

378  Index Ovid (cont.) Boccaccio’s biography of, 159, 162–63, 182–83, 219, 252, 306n2 on envy, 180–81, 182, 185, 186, 226 Ex ponto, 159, 166 Fasti, 159 on hatred (of women), 207, 226–28, 233–34, 238, 239 on hermeneutics, in relation to envy and hatred, 180–81, 182, 185, 205, 207, 227–28, 233–34 Heroides, 8, 47, 158, 159, 161, 163, 166, 168–69, 170, 172, 173, 309n40 Ibis, 159 influence on Boccaccio’s writings (see Buccolicum carmen (Boccaccio); Corbaccio: and Ovid’s elegiac poems; Decameron: and Ovid’s poems; Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta) Medicamina faciei femineae, 162 medieval reception of, 8, 9–10, 24, 159, 161, 163–66, 182–83, 206, 217, 218–19, 226, 308n32 Metamorphoses, 9, 77, 86, 91, 159, 162, 182, 251–52, 299n67 Petrarch’s views of, 205, 210–11, 213–16 Remedia amoris, 11, 47, 158, 159, 163, 164, 179, 180–81, 182, 183, 186, 190, 205, 207, 226–27, 233, 234, 250, 309n40, 319n24, 320n34, 320n37, 321n41 Tristia, 158, 159, 163, 165–66, 183, 193–94, 197, 252, 315n95 views of elegy (see under elegy) painting, relationship to literature. See Decameron (Boccaccio): painting and literature

Pampinea (narrator and character), 99, 161, 221–22, 227, 229, 230, 231, 237, 239–40, 300n76 Panizza, Letizia, 317n3 Papio, Michael, 287n12, 295n22, 300n80, 321n44 Passion. See under Christ Petrarch, Francis authorial identity, 11, 12, 21–22, 26, 50, 57, 156, 158, 201, 208, 212, 214–15, 319n20 Boccaccio’s influence on, 11, 27, 39, 133, 216, 257–58, 286–87n3, 318n10, 323n6 Boccaccio’s views of, 4, 11, 19, 21–22, 27–28, 29, 30, 37, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49–50, 52–54, 56, 57, 155, 157–58, 200, 208–9, 210, 212, 213, 216, 240–41, 242–43, 245–46, 250–51, 257, 264, 265–66, 271 influence on Boccaccio, 11, 21–22, 28, 42–43, 51, 205, 207–8, 210, 211, 212–13, 216, 258, 271, 318n12, 319n24 Pilatus, Leontius, 25, 255 plague, depiction of the. See under Decameron (Boccaccio) Plato, 31, 61, 235 poesis, definition of, 42 poetic inspiration, 40–41, 42–43, 127, 185–86, 288n13 poet-theologian (poeta-theologus), 26, 30, 36–37, 39, 40–41, 42, 46, 51, 106, 196–97, 199 polysemy, concept of, 31, 33, 40, 48, 288n16 Porcelli, Bruno, 303n31 Propertius, Sextus, 47, 164, 166, 210–11, 218–19, 316n99, 318n14 Elegiae, 170, 197, 310n43, 316n100

Index  379 Psaki, Regina F., 276–77n17, 316–17n2, 321n49, 323n9 Pseudo-Bernard De passione Christi, 177 Pseudo-Bonaventure, 13, 176 Pseudo-Dionysius, 13, 16, 18, 83, 106, 110, 148, 151, 226, 263 De caelesti hierarchia, 12, 65–66, 281n51, 294–95n16 Quintilian, Marcus Fabius, 85 Institutio oratoria, 275n3, 280n46, 298n58 Raja, Elisa Maria, 303n26, 303n31, 304n35, 305n49, 306n53 Ratio (character), 209–10, 215, 242 readers ambiguities related to, 18–19, 56–57, 100, 105, 132–33, 188, 259, 261–62, 264, 265, 266, 277–78n25, 288n15, 293n75, 302n13 bad, hateful, misogynist, 47, 179–81, 182, 185, 190, 194, 205, 206–7, 215, 217, 218–19, 222–23, 224, 225–28, 230, 232–34, 235, 236, 238, 240, 245, 251, 253, 259–61, 271–72, 310n42, 315n93, 320n34 erotic pleasures for, 83–84, 85–86, 87, 88, 111, 154, 156, 170–71, 172, 270, 298n55, 309n41 good, compassionate, 5–7, 17–18, 57, 63, 85, 86, 87, 94, 106–7, 122, 139, 154, 160, 168, 172, 177–78, 179, 192, 204–5, 228, 229, 251, 257, 259, 262, 263, 265–66, 271, 272–73, 288n15, 301n3, 301n5, 316n104 medieval theories related to, 10, 12, 13, 30, 48, 65, 66, 69, 70–71, 79–80, 84, 93, 113, 147–49, 172, 173, 176, 219, 269–70, 297n38

symbolic connotations of, 26, 47, 79–80, 166–67, 211, 244–45, 270 women as (see under women) Resurrection. See under Christ Rinieri (character), 218, 221, 222, 223, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 235–38, 239, 240, 250, 320n30, 320n34, 320n38, 321n44, 321n46, 321n47, 322n55 Robert of Anjou (king), 14, 46, 98, 146, 177, 232 Roman de la Rose, 64, 320n34 School of Chartres, 9–10, 68, 83 Secretum (Petrarch), 50, 316–17n2 body and creation, 209, 242, 318n10 Franciscus, 208, 241–42, 321n49 Laura, 209, 242 Seniles (Petrarch) 2.1 (on Africa, Epicurus, Ovid), 205, 210 5.2 (on Boccaccio’s vernacular texts), 11, 21, 205, 208, 211, 212, 243, 258 17.3 (translation of Dec. 10.10, Griselda), 21, 213, 214–16, 258, 291n55 18.1 (“Letter to Posterity”), 158, 208, 241 Sennuccio del Bene, 188–89 short story (novella), genre of, 24, 47, 157, 200 “S’io ho le Muse” sonnet (Boccaccio), 1–2, 3, 4, 24 Siren, mythological figure, 12, 90–91, 92 Smarr, Janet L., 276–77n17, 294n15, 301n5 Song of Songs, 31, 75, 83, 106, 148, 149 descriptio corporis (in singulis membris), 65–66, 96, 135

380  Index Song of Songs (cont.) medieval interpretations, 9, 66 Steinberg, Justin, 277n19 Terence (Publius Terentius Afer), 250 Eunuchus, 248 Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia (Boccaccio), 7, 63–64 Thais (character), 186, 248–50 Thomas Aquinas, 69, 84, 146 Tibullus, Albius, 164, 166, 210–11, 318n14 tragedy, genre of, 11, 47, 170, 171, 180–81, 182, 190, 214 transumptio, trope of, 234 Trattatello in laude di Dante (Boccaccio) allegory, 8, 29, 36–37 composition, in “To,” 3–4, 8, 27, 51 Dante, 26, 27–28, 32, 33, 39–40, 51, 52, 99–100, 143, 191, 322n52 Dante’s writings, 3–4, 31–33, 39–40, 50, 263, 302n12 defense of poets and poetry, 28, 36–37, 40–41 Petrarch’s influence on, 27–28, 29, 36–37, 38–39, 51–52, 216, 258 revision, in “Chig,” 3–4, 8, 28, 51–52, 290n36 Triumphi (Petrarch), 11, 188, 216, 241 Boccaccio’s views of, 212–13 elegy, 210–11 imitation of Amorosa visione, 133, 156, 258 love, 208, 212–13 Uguccione da Pisa, 168 Derivationes, 165, 195–96, 313n74 Ulysses (character), 21, 63, 88–94, 122–23, 136–38, 212, 230–33, 257, 299n66

velamen (veil). See integumentum; Neoplatonic Venus in Boccaccio’s writings, 7, 8, 72, 77, 81, 82, 95–98, 100, 102–3, 115, 116–17, 135, 136, 150, 154 terrestrial vs. celestial, 8, 98, 154 See also eros vernacular (literature) Boccaccio’s views of, 5, 22–23, 25, 26–27, 29, 32, 49, 51, 52, 55–56, 57, 87–88, 94, 107, 128–29, 178, 180, 191, 200, 208, 209, 245, 255, 320n29, 320n32, 322n51 Dante’s views of, 3, 64, 87–88 feminine connotations, 11–12, 47, 53–54, 87–88, 167, 214, 244, 256, 269, 299n62 vs. Latin (literature), 11, 49, 57, 211, 243, 256 medieval perceptions of, 2, 11, 15, 19, 21–22, 200, 256 Petrarch’s views of, 11, 19, 21–22, 26, 27, 49, 157–58, 205, 208, 211, 214, 216, 243, 245, 258, 318–19n19 women as readers of, 11–12, 47, 167, 244–45, 256, 270, 271 See also fiction Virgil, 27, 32, 45, 46, 51–52, 63, 69, 84, 87, 91, 93, 120, 127, 128, 145, 161, 162, 190, 194, 210–11, 223, 244, 245, 247 Aeneid, 47, 66, 84, 89, 194 Eclogues, 86, 209, 293n72 visions. See dreams and visions Vita nova (Dante), 124, 199 Beatrice, 12, 21, 60, 143, 149, 264, 285n86, 302n12, 304n34, 305n47, 323–24n9 Boccaccio’s copying of, 8, 25, 27–28, 51–52

Index  381 Boccaccio’s perceptions of, 98–100, 143, 264–65 love, 76, 78–79, 98, 99–100, 149 properties, 47, 62, 64, 78–79 “Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete” (Dante), 115–16, 117 Wallace, David, 324n11 Webb, Heather, 323–24n9 William of Conches, 91 William of Moerbeke, 61 William of Ockham, 18, 56, 259 women and affective piety (see affective piety: women as practitioners) in the Bible, 65, 106, 147, 224 bodies of, 12, 17, 63, 66, 76, 206, 207, 209, 222, 231–33, 269–70 compassionate nature of, 13–14, 17, 148–49, 160, 168, 176, 178, 179, 269–70, 271 cultures associated with, 11, 26, 45, 47, 54–55, 77, 83–84, 87, 88, 167, 170, 214, 244–45, 256, 269–70

as inspiration (vs. Muses), 185–86 perceptions of, 12, 47, 78–79, 87, 111, 151–52, 158, 168–70, 174, 176, 178, 184, 203, 209, 218, 224–25, 242, 269–70, 271, 272, 317n3 as readers, 14, 16, 26, 79–80, 149, 158, 160, 166–67, 170–71, 176, 178, 179, 214, 218–19, 229, 269, 270, 271, 282n67, 309n34 as symbols, 12, 21, 71, 80–81, 83–84, 85–86, 91, 93, 99–100, 135–36, 143, 178–79, 185, 215–16, 231–33, 242, 270, 283n68 (see also body/bodies) Ytalie iam certus honos (Boccaccio), 8, 279n32, 286–87n3, 292–93n70 allegory, 50–51, 52 in “Chig,” 51–52, 57 Dante, 27, 50–51 Zak, Gur, 319n20

James C. Kriesel is assistant professor of Italian at Villanova University.