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The Gardens in the Decameron Cornice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Extract

The fifth edition of Attilio Momigliano's Storia della Letteratura Iialiana (Milan, 1946) still insists on the mainly ornamental function of the Decameron frame story: “II motivo del verde e dei fiori che inghirlandano la lieta compagnia, ha per lo più la superficialità e la povertà di un ornamento: è più decorazione che pittura. Ed è questo il carattere di tutta l'intelaiatura del libro : un largo affresco aristocratico da guardare nel decoro del complesso senza meditazione e senza analisi” (pp. 79 ff.). Yet a number of modern critics have seen in the cornice more than an ornament and have considered it rather an organic part of the entire work. Some of these writers see symbolic significance in the brigata's departure (or escape) from the stricken city to more ideal places, and their assumptions seem to be borne out by the statements of Boccaccio, who actually leaves no doubt about his artistic intention and consciousness in writing the frame story. However, it seems strange that even those critics who see symbolic significance in the brigata's departure from the city should look at the remainder of the cornice as a single setting and should overlook entirely the group's wanderings from garden to garden. Although a detailed study of these gardens has not hitherto been made, they and the group's peregrinations suggest symbolically the philosophy of the whole work and are thus essential to its interpretation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

Note 1 in page 505 See, e.g., Vittore Branca, Linea di una storia della crilica al Decameron, Biblioteca della Rassegna, xxiii (Milan, 1939); Benedetto Croce, ibid., p. 65; M. Bonfantini, “Boccaccio e il Decameron,” Pegaso, n (1930), 7; Angelo Lipari, “Meaning and Real Significance of the Decameron,” Yale Romanic Studies, xxii (1943), 43–83; C. S. Singleton, “On Meaning in the Decameron,” Italica, xxi (1944), 117–124; Salvatore Battaglia, “Schemi Unci nell arte del Boccaccio,” Archivum Romanicum, xix (1935), 61–78.

Note 2 in page 505 Il Decameron, ed. Pietro Fanfani (Firenze, 1924), I, 208. All references are to this edition.

Note 3 in page 506 See W. A. Neilson, The Origin and Sources of the Court of Love, [Harvard] Stud. & Notes in Philol. & Lit., vi (1899), 117.

Note 4 in page 506 Ibid., pp. 30, 35 ff., and 112.

Note 6 in page 506 Otto Löhmann, Die Rahmenerzählung des Decameron, Romanistische Arbeiten (Halle, 1935), p. 107.

Note 6 in page 506 A. C. L. Brown, Iwain, [Harvard] Stud. & Notes in Philol. & Lit., VIII (1903), 80, note 1; also p. 13.

Note 7 in page 506 Cf. Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. Macaulay (London, 1900–01), vss. 2490 ff.:

There was ynough of joie and feste,

For evere among thei laghe and pleie,

And putten care out of the weie, That he with hem ne sat ne stod.

Cf. this also with Claudian's description of the garden of Venus, Epithalamium de Nuptiis Honorii Augusti, Loeb ed. (London-New York, 1922), I, 247–248.

Note 8 in page 507 E. Langlois ed. (Paris, 1914–24), vs. 21. All references are to this edition.

Note 9 in page 507 Roman de la Rose, ii, 295; C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1948), p. 119; Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Ass, Loeb ed. (London-New York, 1915), p. 545; Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, transi. John Jay Parry (Columbia Univ. Press, 1941), p. 71. References to Apuleius and Capellanus are to these editions.

Note 10 in page 507 Brown, passim.

Note 11 in page 507 Neilson, pp. 25 ff.; also 0. M. Johnston, “The Description of the Emir's Garden in Floire et Blanchefior,” Zeitschrift fiir romanische Philologie, xxxii (1908), 705–710.

Note 12 in page 507 Tibullus, The Elegies, ed. K. F. Smith (New York, 1913), vss. 57–64; Capellanus, pp. 71 ff.

Note 13 in page 507 Claudian, ed. cit., i, vss. 49–85.

Note 14 in page 507 H. Zimmer, “Keltische Beitràge,” Zeitschrift fiir deutsches Altertum, xxi (1889), 206–207.

Note 15 in page 508 Erec etEnide, ed. Foerster (Halle, 1890), vs. 5765.

Note 16 in page 508 Dante, Divina Corn-media, “Purgatorio,” Canto 28.

Note 17 in page 508 Roman de la Rose, passim.

Note 18 in page 508 Cf. E. R. Curtius, Europdische Literatur und laieinisches Mittelalter (Bern, 1948), pp. 191–192.

Note 19 in page 508 The Odyssey of Homer, transi. A. Pope (London, 1725–26), note by W. Broome to v, vs. 123. Curtius, p. 191, calls the place “ein Märchenland.”

Note 20 in page 508 Curtius, pp. 195–197.

Note 21 in page 508 Ibid., p. 205; see also Arturo Graf, Miti, Leggende e Superstizioni del Medio Evo, i,1 II mito del Paradiso Terrestre (Torino, 1892), p. 40.

Note 22 in page 508 A. C. L. Brown seems to think that the identification came about through the similarity between the Celtic' Other-World landscapes and monkish descriptions of Paradise. He refers to the monkish Visio Tungdali, composed 1150–60, where Tundalus, upon reaching Paradise, found a scene unmistakably identical to that in the Celtic imrama. “Thus one may feel certain that in Chretien's time the scene must have been well understood as the conventional scene of the Other World or the Earthly Paradise,” and Brown (p. 90) praises the poetic insight of Hartmann von der Aue (late 12th century) which seems to have enabled the poet to recognize the true Other-World character both in Iwain's scene of the Joy of the Court and of the corresponding scene of the Fountain Perilous. For in both cases Hartmann von der Aue compares the place to Paradise. This comparison is also to be found in vs. 202 of Le Tournoiement d'Antéchrist (ca. 1235) by Huon de Méry, who used Chretien's Iwain as a sort of model (Brown, p. 138). See also Zimmer, pp. 286–287. Cf. also Floire et Blancheflor, ed. M. E. Du Méril (Paris, 1856), apparently dating from the latter half of the 12th century, where we find the following verses describing the Emir's Orchard:

Note 1747 in page 508 De l'autre part, cou m'est a vis,

Court uns flueves de paradis,

Qui Eufrates est apelés.

Note 1779 in page 508 Por la doucor U est a vis

Des sons qu'il est en paradis.

Note 23 in page 509 Curtius, pp. 197, 200, and 204.

Note 24 in page 509 Cf. also tie comments of Curtius (pp. 127–128) on the garden of Nature in the Anti-claudianus of Alain de Lille.

Note 25 in page 509 Curtius, pp. 198 and 202.

Note 26 in page 509 Opere volgari, ed. Ignazio Montier (Firenze, 1831), v, 233. Cf. F. De Sanctis, History of Italian Literature (London, 1930), I, 324.

Note 27 in page 509 Cf. LShmann, pp. 99 and 104; also L. F. Benedetto, “II Roman de la Rose e la lettera-tura italiana,” Beihefte sur Zeitschrift für romanische Philol., xxi (1910), 124.

Note 28 in page 509 Lohmann, p. 99; also Neilson, p. 117.

Note 29 in page 509 Elizabeth H. Haight, More Essays on Greek Romances (New York, 1945), p. 113. See also Oskar Hecker, Boccacciofunde (Braunschweig, 1902); Lohmann, p. 67; Charles G. Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry (Princeton Univ. Press, 1930), p. 166.

Note 30 in page 509 Benedetto, p. 176. This garden, later, also influenced Chaucer's garden in the Parièment of Foules. Cf. Chaucer, Complete Works, ed. Skeat (Oxford Univ. Press, 1905), vss. 171 ff.

Note 31 in page 510 “The Roman de la Rose and Chaucer,” PMLA, xxii (1907), 571 ft.

Note 32 in page 510 Neilson, pp. 91–92.

Note 33 in page 510 Battaglia, passim.

Note 34 in page 510 Ibid., p. 65.

Note 35 in page 510 Graf (p. 31) assures us that nearly all descriptions of Paradise contain a tree which has “sullo stesso ramo il flore appena sbocciato e il frutto già maturo.” Boccaccio may have found its direct model, however, in the French romance of Floire el Blancheflor, which contains the following lines:

Note 1785 in page 510 Un arbre i a desus planté:

Plus bel ne virent home né;

Por cou que tous tans i a Sors,

On l'apele l'arbre d'amors:

L'une renaist quant l'autre chiet.

Note 36 in page 510 De Sanctis, i, 326.

Note 37 in page 511 See Battaglia, p. 69.

Note 38 in page 511 De Sanctis, I, 313.

Note 39 in page 511 Ibid., pp. 322–324.

Note 40 in page 511 Opere volgari, ix, iv, vss. 63 ft. :

Nel tempo caldo, ch' era fresco il loco,

Ed era si rimoto dell' andare

Di ciaschedun, che ben poteva il foco

L'amor con voci fuor lasciare andare,

Ed a sua posta Iungamente e poco:

E non era lontan dalla cittate

Più di tre miglia giuste e misurate.

Egli era bello e d'alberi novelli

Tutto fronzuto e di nuova verdura,

Ed era lieto di canti d'uccelli,

Di chiare fonti fresche a dimisura,

Che sopra l'erbe facevan ruscelli

Freddi e nemici d'ogni gran calura:

Conigli, cervi, lepri e cavriuoli

Vi si prendean co'cani e co' lacciuoli.

Note 41 in page 511 See above, n. 30.

Note 42 in page 514 Compare this also with the Paradise of Love of Andreas Capellanus, pp. 71 ff., and the garden of love in the Lai de l'oiselet, ed. Gaston Paris (Paris, 1884), vss. 53–54, which “fu et beaus et Ions / Tos fu fais a compas reons.”

Note 43 in page 514 Cf. Plato, Timœus 30–32,33; Curtius, p. 116; G. D. Birkhoff, Aesthetic Measure (Harvard Univ. Press, 1933), p. 16; J. 0. Thomson, History of Ancient Geography (Cambridge, 1948), p. 111.

Note 44 in page 514 Neilson, pp. 91–92.

Note 45 in page 515 Pauly, Real-Encyclopœdie der classischen AUertumswissenschafl, s. v. “Venus,” p. 2458.

Note 46 in page 515 Félix Lajard, Rechercltes stir le culte, les symboles, les attributs, et les monuments figurés de Vénus (Paris, 1837), p. 122; Roscher, Ausfiihrliches Lexikon der griechischen und romischen Mythologie (Leipzig, 1884), i, 398: “Man vereehrte Aphrodite häufig in Gärten und feuchten, üppige Vegetation erzeugenden Niederungen gleich Artemis und den Nymphen.” See also Pauly, p. 2455: “Varro sagt : 'Veneris est procuratio hortorum (vgl. Plin. xix, 4, 19). Veneris œdes dedicata et horti Veneris tutelas assignabantur; und Nâvius setzt Venus statt Gartengewächse. Hienach wäre sie also altitalienisch eine Göttin der Gewächse, die zeugende Bodenkraft. .. .”

Note 47 in page 515 Roscher, i, 392,393, and 397; and Pauly, p. 2449: “So wurde sie, weil das Wasser, welches als befruchtendes Prinzip unter die ersten Sätze ältester Physik gehört, zur Förderung ailes Wachstums nötig ist, die personifizierte Zeugungskraft der Natur, eine Mutter aus dem Feuchten. ” See also Lajard, p. 37.

Note 48 in page 515 Pauly, p. 2449.

Note 49 in page 515 A. Baumeister, Denkmaler des klassischen Altertums (Munchen und Leipzig, 1885), p. 94; Pauly, p. 2450; Neilson, pp. 217–218.

Note 50 in page 515 Pauly, p. 2452.

Note 51 in page 516 M. C. Daremberg et E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines (Paris, 1908), s.v. “Venus,” p. 732, fig. 7395. See also Pauly, p. 2458; Baumeister, s.v. “Aphrodite,” p. 94; Gisela Marie Augusta Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks (Yale Univ. Press, 1930), p. 272; Lajard, p. 207: “Les témoignages écrits ou figurés ne manquent pas pour établir d'une manière plus directe que le bouc était réellement au n'ombre des attributs de la déesse.”

Note 52 in page 516 Pauly, s.v. “Venus,” p. 2451; Roscher, i, 395, 398.

Note 53 in page 516 Pauly, s.v. “Venus,” p. 2451; Roscher, i, 395, 419; Baumeister, p. 94. Roscher, i, 399; also i, 398: “Aber nicht bloss die vegetative sondern auch die animalische Fruchtbarkeit und der mit dieser zusammenhängende Geschlechtstrieb wurde auf die Aphrodite zu-ruckgeführt (Hesiod. Th. 200). Darum waren der Aphrodite besonders die durch starken Geschlechtstrieb und Fortpflanzungsfähigkeit ausgezeichneten Tiers, wie die Taube, die Gans, das Rebhuhn, der Sperling, der Ziegenbock, der Widder, das Kaninchen und der Hase (s. Bild S. 399) geheiligt .:”

Note 54 in page 516 Pauly, s.v. “Venus,” pp. 2458, 2451.

Note 55 in page 516 Lajard, pp. 219–221; also A. Furtwângler, Eros in der Vasenmalerei (Miinchen, 1874), p. 9, and Roscher, i, 1366: “ als Eros z. B. mit speziell aphrodisischen oder bak-chischen Tieren zusammengestellt wird (Hase, Schwan, Bock, Panther, u. a., sie jagend, auf ihnen reitend). ”

Note 56 in page 516 Roscher, i, 1366, 1367: “Pferd, Reh, Hirsch, Delphin, Schwan, Ziege, Hase, vgl. Eros in der Vasenmalerei, p. 65.”

Note 57 in page 516 Philostratus, Imagines, Loeb ed. (London-New York, 1931), i, 6, p. 27, describes, for instance, a picture of Cupid hunting a hare under an apple tree, and makes the following remark: “But there is no shooting of arrows at the hare, since they are trying to catch it alive as an offering most pleasing to Aphrodite. For you know, I imagine, what is said

of the hare, that it possesses the gift of Aphrodite to an unusual degree.“ Also Roscher, s.v. ”Eros,“ i, 1366.

Note 58 in page 517 Cf. Roscher, s.v. “Eros,” I, 1367.

Note 59 in page 517 Curtius, p. 190.

Note 60 in page 517 Brown, passim; esp. pp. 68–69.

Note 61 in page 517 Pauly, s.v. “Venus,” 2458; Roscher, I, 402.

Note 62 in page 517 Johann Alton ed. (Tübingen, 1884), vss. 3306–3311. Curtius, p. 190, sees in the enumeration of such exotic animals in ideal landscapes (without concern for their geographic situation) evidence that such lists originated in late-Latin rhetorics.

Note 63 in page 518 Brown, p. 65.

Note 64 in page 518 Roscher, i, 392–393, 402.

Note 65 in page 519 Alain de Lille, The Complaint of Nature, transi. Douglas M. Moffat, Yale Studies in English, xxxvi (New York, 1908).

Note 66 in page 519 See also Curtius, p. 126, n. 2.

Note 67 in page 519 Ibid., pp. 102, 109, and 119.

Note 68 in page 519 Lewis, p. 110.

Note 69 in page 519 Curtius, p. 119, n. 1.

Note 70 in page 521 Battista Zannoni ed. (Firenze, 1824), Chap. xix.

Note 71 in page 522 Graf, p. 22.

Note 72 in page 522 Cf. Andreas Capellanus, pp. 71 ff.

Note 73 in page 522 H. Hauvette, Boccace (Paris, 1914), p. 248.

Note 74 in page 522 De Sanctis, I, 332, 336, 340.