LISA E L’AEGRITUDO AMORIS. DESIDERIO, VIRTÙ E FORTUNA IN DECAMERON, II 8 E X 7

In the Proem of the Decameron, the theme of consolation draws upon two different cultural traditions: Latin erotic literature that originates in Ovid and medieval treatises on amor hereos of which Boccaccio had familiarity since the years of his glosses to the Teseida. These two traditions intersect in some of the novellas in the Decameron, converging in a reading of the text as a remedium amoris. In my essay I explore this aspect of Boccaccio’s intertextuality in stories II, 8 and X, 7. It is possible to identify a source-text for II, 8 in the Fatti e detti memorabilia of Valerius Maximus. For Maximus, love-sickness is born of a social conditioning and an interior conflict; its thematic development is an opportunity for self-analysis on the natural hierarchies between the faculties of the soul. In regards to this source, Boccaccio leaves out this psychological analysis and presents love-sickness exclusively as the result of social conditioning. Another protagonist from the Decameron who suffers from love appears in X, 7. This novella combines different sources: the medical tradition, the moral reflections of Aristotle, and St. Thomas’s observations on passion. This combination of elements allows us to approach a new conception of the theme of love in respect to the assumptions articulated in the two central Days of the work.