Abstract
At the end of Day VI, when the regency of the brigata is handed over to Dioneo, the storyteller whose playful sollazzo (good times) has often challenged the women’s enjoyment, he chooses as his topic the tricks that women have played on their husbands for love or to save themselves (776). The women, who thought that Elissa’s reproach of Dioneo at the end of Day V had quashed, once and for all, the men’s challenges to their honor in the overarching story, rise as one in condemning Dioneo’s choice, begging him to find a more suitable topic for the following day’s narration. Rejecting their entreaties, Dioneo launches in a long defense of his choice of topic, while acknowledging the changed circumstances that should render the topic less threatening to the women:
Donne […] il tempo è tale che, guardandosi e gli uomini e le donne d’operar disonestamente, ogni ragionare è conceduto. […] Per che, se alquanto s’allarga la vostra onestà nel favellare, non per dover con l’opere mai alcuna cosa sconcia seguire ma per dar diletto a voi e a altrui, non veggio con che argomento da concedere vi possa nello avvenire riprendere alcuno. Oltre a questo la nostra brigata, dal primo dí infino a questa ora stata onestissima, per cosa che detta ci si sia non mi pare che in atto alcuno si sia maculata né si maculerà con l’aiuto di Dio.
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© 2015 Valerio Ferme
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Ferme, V. (2015). Conclusion. In: Women, Enjoyment, and the Defense of Virtue in Boccaccio’s Decameron. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137482815_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137482815_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-69643-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-48281-5
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