Ninfale fiesolano

A mixture of oral tradition and psychological introspection

In the poem about Africo and Mensola Boccaccio contaminates the pastoral motif, experimented in the Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine or Comedy of Florentine nymphs, with the mythological theme of the origins of the city of Fiesole. A different level of participation accompanies the sad story of the lovers, in the style of Ovid, as compared to the more detached description of the foundation of Fiesole, to which is associated an appendix centred upon Florentine history, modelled upon Villani’s Cronica, which acts as a conclusive digression.

The sad destiny of Africo and Mensola is conceived within the entirely personal horizon of a passionate and intemperate love, in which the braking of the rules finds final punishment. This contrasts with Pruneo’s eros, circumscribed within matrimony, and thus hinged upon the rules of civil cohabitation, a presupposition and condition for the development of any community. The ideological conflict between individuality and groups anticipates one of the central themes of the Decameron, whilst a significant debt towards  Diana’s Hunt and the Comedia delle ninfe or Comedy of nymphs can be seen in the topical rivalry between Venus and the goddess of the woods, which projects the experience of the Ninfale back in time, to the author’s previous literary experiences. An outstanding novelty is an opening toward the popular oral tradition of the troubadour, with the addition of realistic details, which makes the poem less rhetoric than previous works by Boccaccio.

The poem contains no autobiographical elements, typical of the poet’s early works, and the work would seem to be dedicated to a generic “haughty lady”. The authors interference is greatly reduced and would appear to adapt itself, in the tones and means, to popular conventions, intrinsic to the dynamics of performances in popular oral tradition. Of a chronological continuity with the Fiammetta, the work that immediately preceded it, the Ninfale carries evident traces in its aptitude towards psychological introspection. This last is not the fruit of an interest in female identity, as in the Elegia or Elegy, but rather an indication of an analytical approach toward the observation of the  feelings of the soul, which involve indiscriminately all the characters in the tale.