VIII. The widow and the scholar

There are evident analogies between  Barat and Haimet’s  fabliau and the novella of the pig stolen from Calandrino (6)[1]. This borrowed theme Boccaccio seems to have used also in another episode in the cycle, that in which Maso del Saggio, consultant to Bruno and Buffalmacco in the heliotrope hoax at the expense of Calandrino (3), whips the trousers off a judge, who had come to Florence from the Marche to administer justice, during a court case (5). Albeit set locally in Florence, Boccaccio’s novellas do not limit themselves to mere news and are linked to a variety of antecedents, which raise them onto an exquisitely literary plane.

In novella 7, the story of the hoax played on the widow by the scholar, Boccaccio’s misogyny we can akin to the position expressed in the short pseudo-Ovidian poem De vetula. The thematic continuity that ties the story to that of the Corbaccio makes this novella the point of rupture in the biographic and literary story of the author, when he started composing in Latin, in a moral and erudite stance. The considerable length of novella 7, which is more voluminous than the whole sylloge, underlines its programmatic importance, confirmed by the fact that the final words could be read allusively. In a heated exchange with Elena, Rinieri declares himself taken with another lady, which the widow qualifies as  “wise”. This attribute could reveal the reference the young intellectual makes to the personification of Philosophy, rather than indicate the arrival of another female character in the plot. Aligning himself on a theme attempted by Boezio in his De Consolatione philosophiae and Dante in the Convivio, Boccaccio would, with the story about Elena and Rinieri, seem to wish to express an exaltation of speculative activity.

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[1]M. Picone, L’arte della beffa: l’ottava giornata, in Introduzione al Decameron, ed. M. Picone-M. Mesirca, Florence 2004, pp. 203-225

Decameron, VIII, 9. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. Fr. 239, c. 234v. Boccaccio visualizzato: narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, a c. di V. Branca, Turin 1999, vol. III, p. 216.