The ten days

Decameron

VI. The Valley of Women

Together with the comic insert which has as its protagonists the relatives of the brigade in the Introduction Boccaccio inserts into the Conclusion to the day a digression on the trip the female storytellers make to the Valley of Women. The place’s fabulous topography, which has at the centre of a crown formed by six hills a lake with crystal clear waters, is inspired to the topos of the  locus amoenus and appears to be the fruit of literary recollections, rather than personal reminiscences tied to a recollection of the beauty of the local countryside. The young women’s washing session of the afternoon is followed by the young men’s bathing in the evening; and the two ablutions, almost a purgatorial rite that marks a passage, are a break between the first and the second half of Boccaccio’s hundred novellas.

If the themes of Love and Fortune would seem to dominate the first five days, with Madonna Oretta’s novella (VI, 1) the theme here becomes human genius and virtue. The brief proemial tale also contains a strong erotic element, based on insistent recourse to the equine metaphor of the “trot”. The specific nature of the novella is however visible in the evaluation of the  metaliterary allusions, which make of the narrative a sort of set of instructions for the use of the Decameron. The incident occurred to Madonna Oretta would seem to cast a shadow upon the indication of how to more congruously utilise the work, which is, in the end, in the declaration of the novellas as it is made by the youths of the brigade within the framework.