The ten days

Decameron

IV. Contamination of various traditions

Guglielmo Rossiglione serves his wife her lover’s heart; the woman commits suicide out of desperation and is buried beside her beloved (9). The narrative ananlogy to that of the preceding novella extends also to where the events take place, again aristocratic and courtly. Behind the identity of the lover, Guglielmo Guardastagno, there is a clear reference to Guillem de Cabestaing, which the vidas of Provence remember as in love with the wife of his lord, Raimon de Castel-Rossillon, and by this last discovered and violently killed together with his lady.

The reproposal in different contexts of themes from the narrative code of the period is confirmed by the reproposition of the theme of the burial of lovers in the “popular” novella about Simona and Pasquino (7). To the modest social level of the two youths, who poison themselves with sage, is juxtaposed the authentic nobility of their amorous sentiment, suitably honoured by their friends with the erection of a joint tomb in the church of  Saint Paul.

Amongst the most interesting figures in the day is Lisabetta da Messina (5), the rich bourgeois lady who is in love with her brothers’ underling Lorenzo. The source of this popular tale is indicated at the end of the novella itself in the romance from Messina entitled “Quale esso fu lo malo cristiano” or who was that wicked Christian, probably constructed around a true crime of the time. The contamination of true chronicles of the time and classical literary models, the whole within the reduced dimension of a novella, is confirmed by Lisabetta’s premonitory dream, in which Lorenzo’s ghost discloses who his assassins were, indeed her brothers. There is also evidence that Boccaccio knew and was inspired by the tale of Laodamia, from the thirteenth epistle of Ovid’s Heroides. In this oneiric vision the shadow of Protesilaos, away warring against Troy, reveals to the lady his sad fate.