The ten days

Decameron

VI. A rewriting of the Comoedia Lydiae

The Comoedia Lydiae attributed to Mathew de Vendôme and transcribed by Boccaccio among the papers in the Zibaldone Laurenziano XXXIII 31 is the source of novella 9. Set at Argus and in distant times, it is the only novella that has a different setting for time and place, in a day where all novellas are set in Italy (Florence and surroundings in 1, 6, 8; Naples in 2; Siena in 3 e 10; Arezzo in 4; Rimini in 5; Bologna in 7) and celebrative of contemporary times, almost as if the theme of the hoax were intimately tied to the reality of news. Lidia and her lover Pyrrhus fool the husband Nicostrato, having him believe that what happens under a pear tree is the deformed image of the magic plant and thus an inconsistent and mendacious fantasy. A very fine line separates dream from reality and marks the confines between truth and fiction, adding to the metaphor that could hint to the selfsame literary creation but would rather seem to resolve itself in an amused comical effect, sanctioned by the final felling of the enchanted pear tree.