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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Courtship, Violence, and the Formation of Marriage in the Early Modern Italian Novella Tradition Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3nb1w9mn Author Russell, Sara E. Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Courtship, Violence, and the Formation of Marriage in the Early Modern Italian Novella Tradition By Sara Elizabeth Christina Russell A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Albert R. Ascoli, Chair Professor Barbara G. Spackman Professor Maureen C. Miller Spring 2010 Abstract Courtship, Violence, and the Formation of Marriage in the Early modern Italian Novella Tradition by Sara Elizabeth Christina Russell Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Albert R. Ascoli, Chair This dissertation examines the intersection of courtship, violence, and the formation of marriage in early modern Italian legal and fictional narratives. My investigation begins with the marriage causae of Gratian’s Concordia discordantium canonum, more commonly known as the Decretum, then moves on to a selection of novellas from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and culminates in a series of close readings from Bandello’s Novelle. My analysis of these texts reveals complexity and ambiguity in the representation of all stages of courtship and marriage formation in addition to depicting conflict between parents and offspring in the formation of marriage. Emphasizing the role of storytelling within canon law and the intrusion of legal systems (both real and fictional) into storytelling, my reading of coercion and violence is grounded in the broader historical context of courtship and marriage formation. This study comments on the changes in canon law on marriage between 1140 and the Council of Trent; during this span of time, the increasing attention paid to the will of both the man and the woman involved in a potential courtship or marriage called for the differentiation between forced sex and clandestine relationships. The works of Gratian, Boccaccio, and Bandello, written in the twelfth, fourteenth, and sixteenth century, respectively, suggest a movement toward a growing acceptance of the definition of marriage based on consent and an increasing differentiation between consent and coercion to sex, abduction, and marriage. Whereas other scholars have focused on identifying the narrators’ or authors’ attitudes or perspectives about women in general or violence more specifically, my dissertation undertakes the innovative task of analyzing the function of violence in relation to courtship and marriage. More specifically, I discuss the significance of Gratian’s, Boccaccio’s, and Bandello’s depiction of the slippage between consent and coercion, which struggle against each other in these texts, yet remain so tightly interwoven that it is often difficult to untangle them. In the works of Gratian, Boccaccio and Bandello, the representation of coercion and violence underscores the importance of consent. 1 Introduction to Dissertation Summary of Dissertation Project While many scholars have noted the numerous representations of sexual violence within Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and Matteo Bandello’s Novelle,1 the lack of critical attention to contemporary understandings of law has limited the reading of their novellas.2 This dissertation deals with the centrality of the concept of consent in early modern Italian legal and fictional narratives. Beginning with the causae of Gratian’s Concordia discordantium canonum (ca. 1140), more commonly known as the Decretum, the most important compendium of medieval canon law, my investigation then moves on to a selection of novellas from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and culminates in a series of close readings from Matteo Bandello’s Novelle.3 The resulting analysis of these 1 For violence in Boccaccio see for example Vittore Branca, Boccaccio medievale (Firenze: Sansoni, 1956); Millicent Marcus, “The Sweet New Style Reconsidered: a Gloss on the Tale of Cimone (Decameron V.1), Italian Quarterly 81 (1980): 5-16; Millicent Marcus, “Misogyny as Misreading: A Gloss on Decameron VIII, 7” Stanford Italian Review IV, (1984): 23-40; Millicent Marcus, “Cross-Fertilizations: Folklore and Literature in Decameron 4.5,” Italica 66 (4) (1989): 383-98; Ray Fleming, “Happy Endings? Resisting Women and the Economy of Love in Day Five of Boccaccio’s Decameron,” Italica 70.1 (1993): 30-45; Jessica Levenstein, “Out of Bounds: Passion and the Plague in Boccaccio’s Decameron,” Italica 73.3 (1996): 313-35; Albert Ascoli, “Pyrrhus’ Rules: Playing with Power from Boccaccio to Machiavelli,” MLN 114 (1999): 14-57; Marilyn Migiel, A Rhetoric of the Decameron (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: Toronto UP, 2003). Roberta Morosini, “Penelopi in viaggio ‘fuori rotta’ nel Decameron e altrove. ‘Metamorfosi’ e scambi nel Mediterraneo medievale.” California Italian Studies 1.1 (2009-2010). For violence in Bandello, see for example Adelin Fiorato, L’Image et la condition de la femme dans les nouvelles de Bandello,” Images de la femme dans la litterature Italienne de la Renaissance: prejuges misogynes et aspirations nouvelles: Castiglione, Piccolomini, Bandello, Ed. Andre Rochon (Paris: Univ. de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1980): 169-286; Nadia Setti, “Racconto di un destino e destini di un racconto: Il caso della Duchessa di Malfi,” in Trasgressione tragica e norma domestica: Esemplari di tipologie femminili dalla letteratura europea, ed. Vanna Gentili. Rome: Storia & Letteratura, 1983 (161-90); Adelin Fiorato, “Scrittura narrativa e patologia nelle Novelle del Bandello,” In Gli uomini le città e i tempi di Matteo Bandello. Il convegno internazionale di studi Torino-Tortona-Alessandria-Castelnuovo Scrivia 8-11 novembre 1984, Ed Ugo Rozzo (Tortona: Centro Studi Matteo Bandello e la cultura rinascimentale, 1985): 301-20; Daria Perocco, “Bandello tra la pratica dell’amore e il governo dell’onore,” in Gli uomini le città e i tempi di Matteo Bandello. Il convegno internazionale di studi Torino-Tortona-Alessandria-Castelnuovo Scrivia 8-11 novembre 1984, ed. Ugo Rozzo (Tortona: Centro studi Matteo Bandello e la cultura rinascimentale, 1985): 205-18; Josephine Donovan, “From Avenger to Victim: Genealogy of a Renaissance Novella,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 15.2 (1996): 269-88; Ullrich Langer, “The Renaissance Novella as Justice,” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 311-41. For violence in both Boccaccio and Bandello, see Nancy Elizabeth Virtue, Representations of Rape in the Renaissance Novella (Dissertation), University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1993; and Giancarlo Mazzacurati, All’ombra di Dioneo. Tipologie e percorsi della novella da Boccaccio a Bandello (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1996): 49-68. 2 The status of clandestine marriage is an important example of this phenomenon. Important novellas by both Boccaccio and Bandello are often read without reference to the role of clandestine marriage. Thus the novella of Andreuola and Gabriotto in the Decameron, a novella of clandestine marriage, is not consistently distinguished from novellas in which there is secret love but no marriage takes place; Bandello’s novella of Didaco and Violante, similarly, is often read as a feminist revenge narrative rather than as a novella that engages in complex ways with the legal and social problems surrounding the practice of clandestine marriage at the eve of the Council of Trent. 3 In spite of being the most important Italian novelliere of the sixteenth century, Bandello has been largely neglected by mainstream scholarship.. This issue cannot be discussed apart from the larger problem of relative scholarly paucity of work on sixteenth-century Italian novellieri. An additional factor to be taken i texts4 reveals the central role of consent within the complex and ambiguous web of relations between members of a potential couple and between parents and offspring. Emphasizing the role of storytelling within canon law and the intrusion of law and legal systems (both real and fictional) into storytelling, my reading of coercion and violence is grounded in the broader framework of courtship and marriage formation.5 The works of into consideration is the controversial, contradictory, and encyclopedic nature of Bandello’s work, which, along with the absence of a frame story, many readers find daunting. Beginning around the middle of the twentieth century, authors such as Petrocchi, Porcelli, Bragantini, and Mazzacurati discussed Bandello’s role within the Italian novella tradition. Subsequently, on the basis of the groundbreaking work by Adelin Fiorato, who wrote extensively on Bandello’s life and works within a historical context, and Delmo Maestri, who has written numerous books and articles on Bandello and served as editor of the most recent edition of the Novelle, Bandello has been most recently reevaluated by Reinier Leushuis, Marilyn Migiel, Elisabetta Menetti, and Daria Perocco. 4 During the course of my research, I came across a 1993 dissertation written by Nancy Elizabeth Virtue (Representation of Rape in the Renaissance Novella, U Wisconsin Madison, Department of French, 1993) which discusses Gratian’s Decretum, two of Boccaccio’s novellas (2.7 and 2.10), and Pierre Boaistuau’s greatly transformed