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Copyright by Molly Mezzetti Zaldivar 2004 copyright by Molly Mezzetti Zaldivar 2004 The Dissertation Committee for Molly Mezzetti Zaldivar certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: BOCCACCIO AND ROMANCE Committee: ___________________________ Wayne A. Rebhorn, Supervisor ___________________________ Douglas G. Biow, Co -Supervisor ___________________________ Dolora Chapelle Wojciehowski ___________________________ Guy P. Raffa ___________________________ William W. Kibler BOCCACCIO AND ROMANCE by Molly Mezzetti Zaldivar, B.A., M.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2004 In loving memory of my father, William Lawrence Mezzetti, B. B. A., 1951. For my mother, Roxie Davis Mezzetti. BOCCACCIO AND ROMANCE Publication No. __________ Molly Mezzetti Zaldivar, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin , 2004 Supervisors: Wayne A. Rebhorn and Douglas G. Biow This dissertation traces Boccaccio’s engagement with the gen re of romance as both a writer of romances and an avid critic of the genre. It will show that even when he wrote his masterpiece, the Decameron, he still struggled to resolve the conflict between his continuing attraction to the genre he tried to master, and his resistance to it because of its association with illness, in particular, lovesickness. After an introduction devoted to theories and definitions of romance relevant to Boccaccio’s own conception of the genre, the dissertation will examine his conti nuing engagement with the genre by looking at two moments in his literary production: 1) the time he spent in Angevin Naples composing romances; and 2) the period in republican Florence during which most of the Decameron was written. Each of the two phases under consideration reveals a distinct attitude on the author’s part toward romance, but all point to an irrepressible impulse to draw on his experience as a reader, writer, and critic of this v genre. Inasmuch as Boccaccio actively pursued a career as a writer of romances during his period in Naples, the works he wrote there will be examined to show what Boccaccio’s conception of romance was and how they prepared the author to write the Decameron. Then we will see how Boccaccio, in writing the Decameron, spurned the long-winded romance, the genre of his youthful literary debut, in favor of the more manageable novella , although even these short tales, which seem the opposite of romance, continue to use elements of that genre, either themes, structures, or im ages and motifs. A principal problem in the study of Boccaccio is a failure to consider fully that he was influenced by every type of romance available to him throughout his career. While critics have discussed this matter in terms of individual works, no one has examined why or how Boccaccio experimented with romance throughout his career. I am not denying that Boccaccio was influenced by the works of Dante and Petrarch, who openly spurned romance in their works. What I am saying is that he found somethin g worthwhile in romance and used it to his own ends. vi Table of Contents Introduction p. 1 Chapter 1 “The Early Romances: the Filocolo and the Filostrato ” p. 35 Chapter 2 “Health and Recreation in Storytelling: Boccaccio’s Attack on Roma nce, Decameron VI, 1” p. 69 Chapter 3 “… non che uno aringo ma diece …: The Storytelling Challenge of Day II” p. 97 Chapter 4 “Calandrino’s Interlaced Romance in the Decameron” p. 129 Conclusion p. 160 Bibliography p. 163 Vita p.170 vii Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Italian to English are by the author. viii INTRODUCTION When, in his prologue to the Decameron, Boccaccio informs us of his intention to recount cento novelle, o favole o parabole o istorie che dire le vogliamo (“a hundred stories or fables or parables or histories or whatever you choose to call them”), 1 he reveals his preoccupation with form. Because he understood that the label novella might prove too new for less adventurous readers, he alternated the term with generic labels more easily identified by his audience. He also subtitles the work Galeotto, the name of a widely popular romance that portrays the adventures of Lancelot. Clearly, before Boccaccio recounts the tal es themselves, he wants to give readers some idea of what to expect. Although each of the narrative forms mentioned above proves indispensable to Boccaccio when composing his one hundred tales, in these few introductory pages, he alludes in particular to terms his audience would have associated with medieval romance —Galeotto and istoria . These terms, together with novella , are problematized in his romances, the Filocolo and the Filostrato , as well as in the Decameron. At issue is how to interpret Boccaccio ’s deployment of terms generally associated with romance, Galeotto and istoria , in his prologue to the Decameron, a collection of one hundred relatively short tales, novelle . To Boccaccio, Galeotto, the simplest of these terms, spoke to a well -defined genre and work, both indicating the Prose Lancelot and evoking the scene in Dante’s Inferno in which the wayfarer speaks to Francesca about this same text. By contrast, istoria is more complicated. Michelangelo Picone suggests that, in mentioning istoria , lite rally “history” or “chronicle,” Boccaccio indicates the type 1 of cultural artifact that contributed material utilized by authors of romance. Picone says that istoria (or historia ) in Boccaccio’s time could mean a narrative of antiquity, be it recently composed (as in the case of Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae, one of Boccaccio’s sources for the Filostrato ) or an account of adventure (as in the case of the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri ). Though they might have been grounded in ancient his tory, the plots of these istorie fed the imagination of authors like Boccaccio, who drew from them to create the embellished narratives we tend to categorize as romance. 2 Finally, novella , a word that entered vernacular Italian during Boccaccio’s time, ref erred generally to something new and modern. One thinks of Boccaccio’s novella as a brief story in which the protagonist successfully exercises his wit, “whether it be in simple verbal interchange, in the operation of some clever plot (even fraud), or … defensively to cope with one’s enemies” and to avoid misfortune brought about by circumstance. 3 In this Introduction, I will examine theories of the genre, as well as theories of genre in general, and formulate a working definition of romance. Then I will look at two phases in Boccaccio’s literary production: the time he spent in Angevin Naples composing his romances, the Filocolo and the Filostrato , and his time in Republican Florence, during which he wrote most of the Decameron. Though each phase reveals a 1 Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron , ed. Vittore Branca (Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1987), 9. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron , trans. G. H. McWilliam ( New York: Penguin, 1995), 1. All future citations to The Decameron in Italian and English are to these editions. 2 Michelangelo Picone, “Il romanzo di Alatiel,” Studi sul Boccaccio 23 (1995): 197 -217. Picone asserts, “Col titolo historia si caratterizza in fatti nel Medioevo la produzione narrativa di materia antica, sia storica (come nel caso dell’ Historia destructionis Troiae di Guido delle Colonne) sia avventurosa (come nel caso della Historia Apollonii regis Tyri ); titolo che troviamo impiegato tanto nel le opere latine quanto nei loro volgarizzamenti.” [The title historia characterizes narrative production in the Middle Ages of matters of antiquity, whether historical (as in the case of the Historia destructionis Troiae by Guido delle Colonne) or adventur ous (as in the case of the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri ); we find this title used as much in Latin works as in their vernacular counterparts.] 2 distinct attitude toward romance, both point to Boccaccio’s impulse to draw on his experience as a reader, writer, and avid critic of the genre. I will examine how the works he produced in Naples prepared him to write the Decameron and show how the Decame ron’s short tales, although they appear to spurn romance in favor of the more compact novella , employ the themes, structures, images, and motifs of the genre. Unlike his most immediate literary predecessors and mentors, Dante and Petrarch, who openly condemned romance and preferred to compose poetic forms such as the lyric and the epic, Boccaccio allowed himself this risky undertaking. In doing so early in his career, he was practically guaranteed an audience, given the genre’s popularity. In the Decameron, however, he was more inclined to subvert the conventions of romance to point to its potential narrative faults and, perhaps, to signal its status as a relic of the world of the courts. We will see that he came to identify the meandering narrative of roman ce with sickness —especially lovesickness —and he deployed it in the Decameron as a foil to his novella , a narrative type he regarded as health -giving. In this dissertation, I seek to answer the following questions: Having written two exemplary romances, why does Boccaccio proceed to expose the genre’s inherent flaws in the Decameron, focusing on them at the geographical center of the work, the tale of Madama Oretta (VI, 1)? What does it mean that Boccaccio casts Calandrino, one of the work’s most comical cha racters, in the role of “mad hero” of what Giuseppe Mazzotta has dubbed his own romance cycle? 4 Finally, what motivates Boccaccio to treat romance 3 Thomas G. Bergin, Boccaccio (New York: The Viking Press, 1981), 289. 4 Giuseppe Mazzotta, The World at Play in Boccaccio’s Decameron (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
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