Novellas of Walter and Griselda: The Circle of Obedience and the Aesthetics of Uncertainty

547548 2019 34 ROMANIA REVUE CONSACRÉE À L’ÉTUDE DES LANGUES ET DES LITTÉRATURES ROMANES FONDÉE EN  PAR PAUL MEYER ET GASTON PARIS PUBLIÉE PAR SYLVIE LEFÈVRE ET JEANRENÉ VALETTE SOUS LE PATRONAGE DE L’ACADÉMIE DES INSCRIPTIONS ET BELLES LETTRES Purremembrerdesancessurs Lesdizelesfaizelesmurs WACE Tome PARIS SOCIÉTÉ DES AMIS DE LA ROMANIA TOUS DROITS RÉSERVÉS ISSN:00358029 NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA: THE CIRCLE OF OBEDIENCE AND THE AESTHETICS OF UNCERTAINTY∗ Introduction In 1373, barely a year before his death, Petrarch translated into Latin the novella of Walter and Griselda, the last tale of Boccaccio’s Decameron (10.10). He enclosed it within the third letter of Book 17 of his Rerum Senilium Libri (Letters of Old Age)1. By the end of the 14th century, Petrarch’s version of the tale had been copied into dozens of manuscripts and translated into French, Catalan, English, even retranslated back into Tuscan2. Obedience is one of the central motifs of the novella during its early reception. Indeed, obedience, alongside patience, became the conventional descriptor of Griselda’s exceptional virtue. Despite this apparently easy consensus, obedience is in fact a complex notion with ∗This article has its roots in the research I did as a Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, School of Languages Lingustics and Film, under the supervision of Adrian Armstrong (2013-2015). I want to express my deepest gratitude to Adrian Armstrong, Simon Gaunt, María de las Nieves Muñiz Muñiz, Henry Ravenhall, and Fabio Zinelli for their careful reading of various drafts of this article. 1. See Guido Martellotti, «Momenti narrativi del Petrarca », in Studi petrarcheschi, t. 4 (1951), p. 7-33, now in id., Scritti petrarcheschi, ed. Michele Feo and Silvia Rizzo, Padua, 1983, p. 179-206 (from which I quote). On the date of composition of both Petrarch’s translation of Dec. 10.10 and of Sen. 17, see Kenneth P. Clarke, « On Copying and not Copying Griselda: Petrarch and Boccaccio» in Boccaccio and the European Literary Tradition, ed. Piero Boitani and Emilia di Rocco, Rome, 2014, p. 57-71. Laura Refe, I “fragmenta” dell’Epistola “Ad Posteritatem” di Francesco Petrarca, Messina, 2014, and Monica Bertè and Silvia Rizzo, « Valete amici, valete epistole: l’ultimo libro delle Senili », in Studi medievali e umanistici, t. 12 (2014), p. 71-108, shows how Petrarch projected book 17 as the very last of the Letters of Old Age. 2. Gabriella Albanese, « Un volgarizzamento della Griselda latina in un codice dei Ricci di Firenze », in Codici latini del Petrarca nelle biblioteche fiorentine. Catalogo della mostra (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 19 maggio-30 giugno, 1991), ed. Michele Feo, Firenze, 1991, p. 432-435. The work of Albanese on the novella is crucial to understand the specific weight of Petrarch’s ‘translation’ on Italian and European Humanism. Among her publications, the following has been particularly important for this article: Gabriella Albanese, « Fortuna umanistica della Griselda», in Quaderni petrarcheschi, t. 9-10 (1991-1992), p. 571-627, and De insigni obedientia et fide uxoria. Il codice Riccardiano 991, ed. Gabriella Albanese, Alessandria, 1998. Romania, t. 137, 2019, p. 277 à 318. 278 SIMONE VENTURA relevant political implications3. It involves staking out both claims to authority, and the limits within which such claims must act. In the case of the story of Walter and Griselda, rather than in any vertical or pyramidal pattern, the narrative depicts obedience and the power relations obedience implies as a circular notion: 1) the obedience owed to Walter, the markis of Saluzzo, by his subjects; 2) the obedience to the laws of the land by which Walter must abide; 3) the obedience that Griselda, Walter’s wife, owes to her husband. Far from neutralising the novella’s contradictions, this circularity makes the reader contend with the text’s oscillation of focus between seeming opposites: ruler and ruled, private and public, individual and collective, exemplary and ordinary, exceptional and contingent4. As a translation, Petrarch’s version of the novella of Walter and Griselda is part of the textual tradition of Boccaccio’s original, as much as it is the initiator of a new ‘branch’ in the dissemination of the story. Thus, Petrarch breaks his bond with Boccaccio’s ‘exemplar’ in order to impose a new model to follow: in Latin as opposed to the vernacular, and based on a rearrangement of some of its structural and discursive features5. Alongside Petrarch’s authorial efforts, scribes worked on his story, variously interpreting its form, purpose and morale. Studying scribal rubrics, Charlotte Cook-Morse put them into two categories: those highlighting Griselda’s exemplary obedience and faith; and those stressing her patience and steadfastness. At one level, the novella was read as the story of Griselda, the embodiment of wifely obedience and patience, an example for late-medieval manuals of the perfect spouse, or a topic suitable for the artefacts that painters and decorators prepared for their patrons’ wedding celebrations. At another level, Griselda was a woman endowed with the wisdom of an old man, providing an «androgynous model of sainthood »6. In both cases, the insistence on Griselda’s exceptional virtue somehow pushed Walter to the background, paving the way to figural readings of her persona: the allegory of soul, the figure of the virgin Mary, and so on. As scholarship has recently pointed 3. See Charlotte Cook Morse, «What to Call Petrarch’s Griselda », in The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen, ed. Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob and Marjorie Curry Woods, Studies on Medieval Culture, XXVI, Kalamazoo, 1992, p. 263-303. 4. See Michaela Paasche Grudin, «Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale as Political Paradox », in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, t. 11 (1989), p. 63-92: « The obedience and unity of will which lie philosophically at the very heart of political unity may, if pushed to the extreme in practice, conflict irrevocably with the value of the individual» (p. 65). 5. Amy W. Goodwin, «The Griselda Game », in The Chaucer Review, t. 29 (2004), p. 41-69, explains how Petrarch’s Latin version was in competition with Boccaccio’s vernacular original (p. 45-52). 6. Cook Morse, «What to Call Petrarch’s Griselda », art. cit., p. 280. NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 279 out, Griselda is not just a veneer of corporeality encasing allegorical signification(s). Most importantly, she cannot be separated from Walter7. Griselda is bound to Walter, whose role in the novella both charms and stymies Petrarch8. Faced « with the violence of the… literal level of the story», Petrarch works on the structure of the story and the portrait of its main characters – particularly on Walter, as we shall see9. He exploited the tensions of the narrative to create a form based on uncertainty. Hesitations are carefully displayed in the novella and in the epistolary shrine in which it is preserved. This is apparent when, discussing the nature of the tale itself in both Sen. 17.3 and 17.4, Petrarch incessantly swings from its generic definition as historia to its classification as fabula10. And this becomes even more evident in the presentation of the opposite reactions to the tale of the first two readers of his ‘translation’11. In Sen. 17.4, Petrarch gives an account of his Paduan and Veronese friends’ responses to their reading of the story: moved to compassion, on the one hand, repulsed and incredulous, on the other. This indeterminacy mirrors a complexity which contributed to the interest the tale generated in readers, and was the basis for its success, which, after Petrarch’s reply to Boccaccio’s narrative (i.e. the novella included in Sen. 17.3), was recurrently embodied by translation12. 7. On the fundamental resistance of the tale to allegory, see David Wallace, « Letters of Old Age: Love Between Men, Griselda and Farewell to Letters. Rerum senilium libri », in Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi, Chicago, 2009, p. 321-330 (p. 328). On Walter’s central role in the novella, see Vincenzo Pernicone, «La novella del marchese di Saluzzo », in La Cultura, t. 9 (1930), p. 961-994, Martellotti, « Momenti narrativi », art. cit., p. 199, Teodolinda Barolini, «The Marquis of Saluzzo or the Griselda Story before it was Hijacked: Calculating Matrimonial Odds in Decameron 10.10 », in Mediaevalia, t. 34 (2013), p. 23-55. 8. The ambivalent, paradoxical attitude of Petrarch (and Chaucer) to Walter and of the novella has been highlighted by Grudin, «Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale as Political Paradox », art. cit., and, more recently, by Wallace, « Letters of Old Age », art. cit., p. 326. 9. See Louise O. Vasvári, «The Story of Griselda as Silenced Incest Narrative », in La Corónica, t. 35 (2007), p. 139-156 (p. 140), and Barolini, « The Marquis of Saluzzo », art. cit., p. 24. 10. Martellotti, « Momenti narrativi », art. cit., p. 203-06; Goodwin, « The Griselda Game», art. cit., p. 52; Francesco Petrarca, De viris illustribus.Adam-Hercules, ed. Caterina Malta, Messina, 2008, p. CXVI-CXX; Bertè and Rizzo, « Valete amici », art. cit., p. 102-104; Simone Ventura, « Sulla ‘storia’ di Griselda e Gualtieri in catalano e in francese alla fine del Trecento», in Heliotropia, t. 14 (2017), p. 203-225 (p. 216-218). 11. See Barolini, «The Marquis of Saluzzo », art. cit., p. 24; Martin McLaughlin, «Humanist Rewriting and Translation: The Latin Griselda from Petrarch to Neri de’ Nerli », in Hvmanistica. An International Journal of Renaissance Studies, t. 1, 2 (2006), p. 23-40 (p. 23-25). 12. Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Politics, Madison, 1989, p. 133; William T. Rossiter, « Mutata veste: Griselda between Boccaccio and Petrarch », in id.,Chaucer and Petrarch, Cambridge, 2010, p. 132-160. 280 SIMONE VENTURA In what follows I will investigate the implications of this indetermination for the way in which the letter and the political potential of the novella are passed down in its 14th-c. afterlife13. To do so, I will compare Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s respective versions with a corpus of translations of the novella composed over a short period of time (1373-1400). This corpus includes texts in Italian, Latin, Catalan, English and French. The texts are all in prose, except for Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale (Canterbury Tales IV) (referred to as CT), which is in royal stanzas. Table 1. Corpus14 Author Title Siglum Boccaccio Decameron Dec. 10.10 Petrarch Historia Griseldis Sen. 17.3 Philippe de Mézières Miroir des dames mariees Miroir Anonymous Livre Griseldis Livre Bernat Metge Història de Valter e Griselda VG Chaucer The Clerk’s Tale CT The French, Catalan and English texts of the corpus are based on Petrarch’s Latinised version (Sen. 17.3) and not on the original Italian (Dec. 10.10). 13. For a political approach to the novella, see Grudin, «Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale as Political Paradox », art. cit., Barolini, « The Marquis of Saluzzo », art. cit.; Susanna Bersella, «Tyranny and Obedience: A Political Reading of the Tale of Gualtieri (Dec. X, 10) », in Italianistica, t. 42 (2013), p. 67-77. 14. The editions and translations used in this paper are as follows: 1) Decameron: Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Amedeo Quondam, Maurizio Fiorilla and Giancarlo Alfano, Milan, 2013; English translation: Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, Translated and with an Introduction by Wayne A. Rebhorn, New York-London, 2013; 2) Sen. 17.3: Francesco Petrarca, Res Seniles. Libri XIII-XVII, ed. Silvia Rizzo con la collaborazione di Monica Bertè, Florence, 2017, p. 442-475. English translation in Petrarch’s [Historia Griseldis], Epistolae Seniles XVII.3 (from Cambridge University, Peterhouse Clle MS 81), ed. Thomas J. Farrell, in Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, ed. R. M. Correale e M. Hamel, Cambridge, 2002, vol. I, p. 108-129; 3) Miroir: Philippe de Mézières, Le livre de la vertu du sacrement de mariage, ed. Joan B. Williamson, Washington, 1993, p. 356-377; 4) Livre: Jonathan Burke Severs, The Literary Relationships of Chaucer’s Clerkes Tale, Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1972, p. 254-292 [reprint [New Haven] Yale University Press, 1942]. English translation in Le Livre Griseldis, ed. Amy W. Goodwin, in Sources and Analogues,ed. cit., p. 131-167; 5) VG: Bernat Metge, Valter e Griselda, in Obras de Bernat Metge, ed. Martín de Riquer, Barcelona, 1959, p. 118-153; 6) CT:The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed., Oxford, 1987, p. 137-153. Occasional references will be made to the Mesnagier de Paris (Le mesnagier de Paris, ed. Georgina M. Brereton and Janet M. Ferrier, translation Karin Ueltschi, Paris, 2010). I provide Italian, Latin, Middle English and Catalan texts with a modern English translation. For Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Livre Griseldis, I have relied on Rebhorn’s, Farrell’s and Goodwin’s respective translations. For Chaucer’s CT I have relied on the Harvard’s Interlinear Translations of Some of The Canterbury Tales, accessible online <http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/clktpar.htm>. For the Catalan texts, and for Petrarch’s and Boccaccio’s Latin passages not in works included in the corpus, I have provided my own translations. NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 281 In turn, Metge’s and Chaucer’s renderings of Petrarch’s Latin (VG and CT) were done using one or both of the French prose versions, Miroir and Livre, as auxiliary translations15. While not exhaustive, this corpus is representative of the tale’s late 14th-c. reception16. Each of these texts exploits in different ways the tale’s potential, providing a snapshot of contemporary attitudes to the source text. The structure of this paper is as follows: in §2. Framing the case, I consider how the Italian and Latin ‘originals’ differ from a structural perspective. I will pay particular attention to Petrarch’s insertion of a geographic excursus prologuing the narrative proper. I will summarise the traits of this innovation and explain why it was not fully retained in translation. In §3. Walter and his Men, I analyse the semantic fields of the ruler and of the community of the ruled. If the novella of Walter and Griselda is also about power (how to conserve it and how to exert it both in the public and private spheres), the confrontation staged by the novella takes place at a double level: a) the confrontation between Walter and his subjects triggered by the latter; b) the confrontation between Walter and Griselda triggered by the former. While in §3 I will deal with the subjects/Walter confrontation, in §4, Walter against Griselda, I will concentrate on the relation between Walter and Griselda. To do so, I analyse Walter’s existential need to impose obedience on his men and Griselda. Therafter, I focus on Griselda’s portrait and how her patience 15. Severs, The Literary Relationships,op. cit., p. 190-211; Amy Goodwin, « Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale: Sources, Influences, and Allusions », in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, t. 28 (2006), p. 229-233; Lluís Cabré, «Petrarch’s Griseldis from Philippe de Mézières to Bernat Metge», in Fourteenth-Century Classicism: Petrarch and Bernat Metge, ed. Lluís Cabré, Alejandro Coroleu e Jill Kraye, London-Savigliano, 2012, p. 29-42; Ventura, « Sulla ‘storia’ di Griselda e Gualtieri», art. cit., p. 211-214. 16. In this paper, I will not extend my analysis to some important vernacular versions of Boccaccio’s novella. Namely the versions that Thomas III di Saluzzo included in Le chevalier errant (Tommaso III di Saluzzo, Il Libro del Cavaliere Errante (ms. BnF, fr. 12559), ed. Marco Piccat and Laura Ramello, Italian translation Enrica Martinengo, Boves, 2008); Christine de Pizan’s in La cité des dames (Christine de Pizan, La Città delle Dame, ed. Patrizia Caraffi and Earl Jeffrey Richards, Milano, 1997, p. 346-357). Furthermore, I am leaving aside the French dramatic refashioning of Philippe de Mézières’s translation: L’estoire de Griseldis en rimes et par personnages (1395), ed. Mario Roques, Genève, 1957, [TLF, 74]. For the study of the textual tradition of the French versions, see Elie Golenistcheff-Koutouzoff, Histoire de Griseldis en France au XIVeet au XVesiècle, Paris, 1933 (reprinted Genève, 1975); id., Étude sur le ‘Livre de la vertu du sacrement de mariage et réconfort des dames mariées’ de Philippe de Mézières, d’après un ms. du XIVesiècle de la Bibliothèque nationale à Paris, Belgrade, 1937; and Severs, The Literary Relationships, op. cit., p. 135-189. For the dissemination and Fortleben of the novella, see Albanese, «Fortuna umanistica », art. cit.; Raffaele Morabito, « Per un repertorio della diffusione europea della storia di Griselda », in La circolazione dei temi e degli intrecci narrative: il caso di Griselda, Aquila, 1988, p. 7-20; and L’Histoire de Griselda, une femme exemplaire dans les littératures européennes. Tome 1: prose et poésie, ed. Jean-Luc Nardone and Henri Lamarque, Toulouse, 2000. 282 SIMONE VENTURA becomes a disruptive practice that stops the confrontation offering a counterpoint to Walter’s own agenda (and perversion), while it leaves the door open to new ways of telling the same story and to new translations. 1. Framing the “Case” The novella’s plot has two parts followed by a conclusion. The narrative stems from the confrontation between Walter and his subjects over the markis’s neglect of his duty to marry and ensure security and dynastic continuity17. The outcome of the struggle is Walter’s forced agreement to marry. He accepts his men’s request but imposes his own conditions. Walter will not take a high-born wife. Instead, he chooses Griselda, the humble daughter of Giannucole, one of the poorest among the poor inhabitants of a village near Walter’s palace. The second part of the tale begins the morning after the wedding. While the marriage defuses the immediate crisis between Walter and his subjects, the narrative switches its dual focus: the lord-vassals’ confrontation cedes the floor to Walter’s testing of Griselda. First, he deprives her of her two children. Then he sends Griselda back to her father’s house in order to be free to take another, more suitable, wife. The tale is concluded by the restoration of Walter’s authority: Griselda is given back her children as well as her position at court as marchioness and legitimate wife. Boccaccio and Petrarch exhibit differences in their approaches to the structure of the novella. Boccaccio’s transitions from one narrative unit to the other are often abrupt and leave limited room for introspection. However, he builds his novella following the principles of equilibrium and symmetry18. In adapting the tale to the epistolary medium, Petrarch removes Boccaccio’s narrative framework: namely, Dioneo’s initial and final comments on the tale and on Walter. He replaces these with a series of personal and stylistic remarks, accompanied by the insertion of a geographic excursus, which plays the role of a prologue to the narrative proper: Est ad Italie latus occiduum Vesulus, ex Apennini iugis mons unus altissimus, qui vertice nubila superans liquido sese ingerit etheri; mons suapte nobilis natura, Padi ortu nobilissimus, qui eius latere 17. «Confrontation » is Bersella’s translation (« A Political Reading », art. cit., p. 68-69) of Mario Baratto’s Italian felicitous phrase « prova di forza » (Realtà e stile nel «Decameron», Rome, 1996 [3rd edition]), p. 345). For the theological and legal debate around the prerogatives and duties of the prince, see Kenneth Pennington, The Prince and the Law, 1200-1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition, Berkeley-Los AngelesOxford, 1993, p. 88-99. 18. Giuseppe Zaccaria, Alle origini del romanzo moderno, Milan, 2014: see chapter V, «Una mise en abyme: la Griselda ». NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 283 fonte lapsus exiguo, orientem contra solem fertur mirisque mox tumidus incrementis brevi spatio decurso non tantum maximorum unus amnium sed « fluviorum » a Virgilio «rex » dictus, Liguriam gurgite violentus intersecat, dehinc Emiliam atque Flaminiam Venetiamque disterminans, multis ad ultimum et ingentibus hostiis in adriacum mare descendit. Ceterum pars illa terrarum de qua primum dixi, que et grata planitie et interiectis collibus ac montibus circumflexis, aprica pariter et iocunda est atque ab eorum quibus subiacet pede montium nomen tenet, et civitates aliquot et oppida habet egregia. (Sen. 17.3.16-17) [On the western side of Italy, a lofty mountain named Vesulus reaches its peak out of the Apennines and into the rarified air above the clouds. This mountain, famous in its own right, is most renowned as the source of the Po. The river falls from a small spring on the mountainside and, carried toward the rising sun, is quickly swollen in a short space of time by numerous tributaries. Thus it becomes not only one of the great streams but (as Virgil calls it) the king of rivers. It rushes through the Ligurian rapids; from there it bounds through Emilia, Flaminia, and Venice and finally descends to the Adriatic Sea in a great delta. That part of the country about which I spoke first, surrounded by a graceful plain and scattered hills and mountains, is both pleasant and happy. Taking its name from those mountains at whose foot it lies, it contains many towns and notable cities.] Far from being just a display of geographic erudition, this prologue serves the purpose of introducing the reader to the novella19. Facing the majestic landscape of the Alps, the land of Saluzzo is striking for being both warmed by the sun and pleasant. But Petrarch’s depiction of the Po river struggling to find its way through the plains of northern Italy seems to prepare us for the conflict of the first part of the novella. Based on Virgil, Petrarch identifies the Po as « the king of the rivers », which (literally) «runs eastwards against the course of the sun ». The Latin prepositional phrase (contra solem) suggests both the sense of direction and a bold attitude: flowing toward the Adriatic sea, the Po defies the sun as it «rushes through the Ligurian rapids». In belligerent terms, Petrarch represents the birth and rising of the Po as the victory of the feeble against the powerful: it falls « from a small spring» on the side of one of the highest mountains, the Monvesino; it seems to disappear « swollen in a brief space by numerous tributaries», just to resurface as «not only one of the great streams but (as 19. Gabriella Albanese, «Griselda in Piemonte: Petrarca e la novella dotta », in Levia Gravia, t. 8 (2004), p. 263-295; Marco Piccat, «Griselda di Saluzzo tra Dante e Petrarca: dal ‘silenzio’ alla ‘celebrazione’», in Francesco Petrarca. L’opera Latina: tradizione e fortuna. Atti del xviii Congresso Internazionale (Chianciano-Pienza, 19-22 luglio 2004), ed. Luisa Secchi Tarugi, Florence, 2004, p. 335-360. 290 SIMONE VENTURA mout en parloient tuit sovent li haut baron li un as autres: […] Por ce l’en ont mout arresnié li plus haut prince de son regne. Mes genvrece qui en lui regne ne l’i lessoit pas accorder. Ainz fet les granz trez encorder, ses aucubes, ses pavellons en esté, quant il est sesons de deduire en prez et en bois. Walter shared with Conrad the young age, the passion for outdoors games and the careless attitude towards the duty of marriage. But unlike Conrad, Walter did not incarnate the prototype of the perfect knight and perfect courtly lover. We could not apply to Walter the words the narrator of the Guillaume de Dole: « Et, son voeil, ne pensast il ja | s’a armes non et a amors, | et s’ot tant autres bones mors | c’onqes tex bers ne fu, s’il vit » (ibid., v. 385-388). Walter, we might say, certainly had all his thoughts on arms (which may include Walter’s affection for hunting and hawking). However, neither Boccaccio nor Petrarch show him ‘thinking nothing but love’. Walter is a kind of ‘secularized’ version of Conrad. The markis of Saluzzo incarnates bare power with its contradictions and potential for conflict. In the Latin of Petrarch, the request of the barons to the lord takes the form of an oration, a form with which he was familiar. Petrarch had composed four speeches during the years he lived in Milan, under the protection of the Visconti30. In the novella, he stages a kind of diplomatic envoy in the act of presenting an official petition to their lord. An anonymous spokperson led a group of emissaries, explicitly defined as an elite in Philippe de Mézières’s version of the story: Ils s’assamblerent en grant quantité, et les plus souffisans vindrent a leur seigneur et par la bouche de l’un pour tous furent dittes telles paroles, «O tu marquis, nostre seigneur…» (Miroir 359.23-30) The anonymous representative of the subjects of Walter is chosen for three reasons: he is authoritative; he is a skilled orator; he is closer to the lord than the other men. Petrarch depicts this spokesman using three 30. See Francesco Bruno Baj, Petrarca oratore: edizione critica, commento e traduzione delle quattro orazioni per i Visconti, tesi di laurea Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, 2014-2015. On rhetoric as a public and political act in late medieval Italy, see Enrico Artifoni, « La politique est in fatti et in detti. L’éloquence politique et les intellectuels dans les cités communales au xiiiesiècle », in Le pouvoir des mots au Moyen Âge, éd. Nicole Bériou, Jean-Patrice Boudet, Irène Rosier-Catach, Turnhout, 2014, p. 209-224. NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 291 substantives: auctoritas (authority), facundia (rhetoric skills), familiaritas (familiarity). In this group of words, familiaritas is relevant both for Petrarch as an author – in 1366 he had published his Familiar Letters (Familiares) – and because of the political connotations associated with this term. Familiarity entails a range of relations: from consanguinity to friendship, from affinity to alliance. A notion of familiarity as longstanding loyalty and intimacy is picked up by the anonymous translator of Livre, who uses the French adjective privez, and by Bernat Metge’s VG, where familiaritas is rendered by the substantive privadesa: Et mesmement ne se vouloit point marier, dont sur toutes les autres choses le peuple estoit courroucié, en tant que une fois tous ensemble alerent a lui, desquelz un de plus grant auctorité, beau parlour et bien privez dudit seigneur, lui va dire: « Ton humanité, sire marquis, nous donne hardiesse que […]» (Livre 1.10-16) E specialment no·s curave de pendre muller, de la qual cosa los seus vassalls e sotsmesos eren fort dolents e despagats. Los quals, com molt ho haguessen soferit, anaren ensemps al dit Valter; e la hu de ells, lo qual era de major auctoritat, ho per bell parlar o per major privadesa que havia ab lo dit Valter, dix axí: «Molt noble marquès, la tua humanitat dóna a nós audàcia e gosar que […]» (VG 120.8-14) [And particularly he did not care about taking a wife, whereby his vassals and subjects were truly afflicted and unhappy. Having endured this state of affairs for a long time, they gathered and went to Walter. One of them, with the greatest authority, either because of his gracious eloquence or because of him being the closest to Walter, said to him: “My noble marquis, your humanity gives us courage…”] In these translations, the legate addresses the marquis with the confidence that comes from elective intimacy. In medieval French (and Catalan and middle English as well), privé covers a range of meanings. In the sphere of social, interpersonal relations medieval French privé qualifies friendship, familiarity and also the intimacy of the members of the sequel (maisnie) of the lord31. On the one hand, privé relates to the private sphere (often connected to friendship and love) as opposed to the public. On the other hand, the request of the anonymous spokesperson, the reply of Walter, and his following conditioned consent are matter of state. The other side of the coin, the private sphere, should be at stake in his life as a married man. However, his cruel testing of Griselda is obviously part – at least in his 31. The privé appears as a pivotal figure elsewhere in the history of the novella as a genre. For example in Don Juan Manuel, Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor e de Patronio, ed. Alfonso I. Sotelo, Madrid, 1990, where the privado, the man who has the complete trust and is in the grace of the king or lord, is also the wise (and witty) narrative voice of the recueil. 292 SIMONE VENTURA first intention – of Walter’s political, hence public, strategy to keep power and freedom. Compared to Boccaccio, who uses uomini (men, vassals) to refer to the community of the ruled, Petrarch deploys a richer vocabulary to designate the public sphere using three terms: populus (Sen. 17.3.19, see quote above at the beginning of this section), subiecti (subjects) (Sen. 17.3.29) and nobiles (Sen. 17.3.71). Latin populus, which we find in the passage introducing Walter, can refer to both a mass of people with no precise juridical or political unity, or to an organised body. It is a word that may have had a classical flavour in Petrarch, who could have thought, for example, of Cicero’s definition of the republic as res populi. It is likely that for Petrarch populus had also a ‘vernacular’ acception, referring to the broad class of artisans and bourgeois, as it was the case in Florence and Siena. At the same time, populus had a special place in the institutional and political ferment of the Northern Italian Trecento. Like in Latin, Italian popolo meant a variety of things, but it could very much designate the assemblies of the citizens of a city-state (Italian comune)32. Now in the context of the passage from Petrarch’s version of the novella, populus is linked with familiaritas. His lexical choices denote a conception of the community consistent with the medieval notion of « friendship », which, as Alan Bray remarks, «was significant in the public sphere»33. In Sen. 14.1, a mirror of the prince in epistolary form written over the same months of Sen. 17.3 (the Latin version of Boccaccio’s novella), Petrarch reminds Francesco da Carrara, the lord of Padua, that the prince should be surrounded by an elite of amici (friends): good and loyal counsellors34. In the Italian and Latin ‘originals,’ Walter addressing his subjects as amici in 32. On the notion of populus in 14th-c. Italy (particularly in connection with Marsilius of Padua), see Serena Ferente, « Popolo and Law: Late Medieval Sovereignty in Marsilius and the Jurists », in Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective, ed. by Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner, Cambridge University Press, 2016, p. 96-114: «A definition of populs in Marsilius’s Italy [i.e. first half of the 14th century] would immediately incur a crucial ambiguity, which to an extent persists in Western political languages of later eras: populus is the whole, but populus is also, de facto, a part, which has a tendency to think of itself as a whole. Starting with the 1230s, but most visibly in the 1280s and 1290s, a number of self-governing urban communities in Italy were ruled by so-called regimi di popolo and had, as it was said, stato popolare » (p. 99). 33. See Alan Bray, The Friend, Chicago, 2003, p. 2. 34. Quoting verbatim from the Historia Augusta (ed. Jeffrey Henderson, transl. David Magie (Cambridge, 1924), II, Severus Alexander, 308) to stress the dangers of « mali principis amici » (the ‘bad friends’ are more dangerous for the state than a ‘bad prince’: Sen. 14.1.155), Petrarch (see esp. Sen. 14.1.182-189) referred to amicitia and veri amici (as opposed to ficti, in Sen. 14.1.189) as the ‘sweetiest’ and the ‘holiest’ (after virtue) among ‘human things’ (Sen. 14.1.183). On the importance and role played by the (good) counsellors in ruling the state in close relationship with the ruler, see Claudia Storti Storchi, «Francesco Petrarca: politica e diritto in età viscontea», in Petrarca e la Lombardia,op. cit., p. 77-121 (p. 84-85), and McLaughlin, «Humanist Rewriting », art. cit., p. 25-26. NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 293 response to their request is not just captatio benevolentiae: it is part of his first move, a tactical retreat, to respond to their challenge: A’ quali Gualtieri rispose: « Amici miei, voi mi strignete a quello che io del tutto aveva disposto di non far mai» (Dec. 10.10.6, my emphasis) Moverunt pie preces animum viri, et: «Cogitis » inquit « me, amici, ad id quod michi in animum nunquam venit » (Sen 17.3.27) [In response Gualtieri said: «My friends, you are forcing me to do something I had absolutely resolved never to do»] [These pious prayers moved the heart of the man, and he said, «You urge me, friends, toward something which never entered my mind»] The versions of my corpus emphasise the affectionate tones present in Petrarch’s lexical choice: Finees les paroles, le marquis, meu de pitié et d’amour de [ses] subgiés, respondi doulcement et dit [ainsi]: «Mes amis, vous me contraigniés a ce que en mon corage jamais ne pot entrer». (Miroir 360.16-19, my emphasis) Lors esmeurent les doulces paroles de ses subgetz ledit seigneur, et respondi: « Vous me contraignez, mes amis », dist il, «a ce que je n’euz oncques en pensee». (Livre 259.37-39) Ladonchs lo dit Valter, mogut per les piadosas pregàrias dels seus, dix: « Vosaltres, amichs, me forsats de fer cosa que jamés no fo al meu cor ». (VG 122.15-18) Hir meeke preyere and hir pitous cheere | Made the markys herte han pitee. | «Ye wol», quod he, «myn owene peple deere, | To that I nevere erst thoughte streyne me». (CT IV.141-144) [Then Walter, moved by the pitiful prayers of his men, said: «My friends, you are forcing me to do something that was never in my heart…»] Their meek prayer and their pitiful manner | Made the marquis’s heart have pity. | «You want», said he, «my own people dear, | That which I never before thought to compel myself.» The stress on the semantics of affection, present also in French privez and Catalan privats, and in Chaucer’s paternalistic phrase, myn owene peple deere, collides with Walter’s strong vocabulary of confrontation (contraignier,forsar,to streyne). The man forcing Walter to decide against his will is one of his own: the enemy has a friendly face35. In dealing with Latin populus (Sen. 17.3.19), the translations of my corpus show a twofold approach. First, in French, Philippe de Mézières 35. See Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political. Expanded Edition, ed. George Schwab, Chicago and London, 2007, p. 27-37; Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, London-New York, 2005, p. 170-193 (= Chapter 7, «He who accompanies me »); Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy, Chicago and London, 2011, p. 26-57. 294 SIMONE VENTURA renders populus with the doubling barons et son peuple36.In an analogous move, Bernat Metge adopts vassals e sotsmesos, a doubling evocative of feudal hierarchy (VG 120.8-14). Recent scholarship showed that Metge translated Petrarch’s text using Mézières’s version as an auxiliary translation37. If so, the doubling barons/peuple might be read in relation to Metge’s gloss of Petrarch’s populus in Catalan: vassals/sotsmesos. The two terms of the doublings are not perfectly synonymous. In this case, barons and vassals are an elite, a subset of the larger set expressed by the second term, Fr. peuple and Cat. sotsmesos. In its relation with nobiles and subiecti, to which the feudal terminology of the French and Catalan versions (barons,vassals) should be connected, populus (peuple) implies a notion of the ‘people’ not as an indistinct crowd, but as a body with the capacity to have a voice at least in the single but crucial matter of marriage and dynastic continuity. The second approach to populus is literal. This is apparent in the anonymous Livre (257.11-16) and in Chaucer’s CT, where the Latin is rendered simply by French « people » and Middle English « peple », respectively38: Oonly that point his peple bar so soore That flokmele on a day they to him wente, And oon of hem, that wisest was of lore — Or elles that the lord best wolde assente That he sholde telle hym what his peple mente, Or elles koude he shewe wel swich mateere — He to the markys syede as ye shul heere: “O noble markys, youre humanitee Asseureth us and yeveth us hardinesse, As ofte as tyme of necessitee, | That […]” (CT IV.85-95, my emphasis) [Only that point his people took so badly | That in groups on one day they went to him, | And one of them, that wisest was in learning – | Or else the one that the lord most readily would consent | That he should tell him what his people meant, | Or else he knew well how to present such a matter – | He to the marquis said as you shall hear: | «O noble marquis, your graciousness | Makes us confident and gives us boldness, | As often as it is time (to do so) by necessity, | That we to you may tell our sorrow.»] 36. Miroir 359,23-28. 37. Lluís Cabré, «Petrarch’s Griseldis », art. cit., p. 32-34. 38. Chaucer uses also « commune » as a noun to designate the « people »: see CT IV.70, and see Chris Cannon, The Making of Chaucer’s English: A Study of Words, Cambridge, 1998, p. 86 [Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature]. NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 295 If we look at this ‘literalist’ approach to populus in its broader context, we will realize it is not without interpretative implications. In the Latin text, the emissaries are presented dynamically, moving in group towards their lord. This is apparent in the adverbial periphrasis: cathervatim illum adeunt (they approached him as a group, Sen. 17.3.19), which is an innovation of the Latin text, as Boccaccio did not mention it: La qual cosa a’ suoi uomini non piaccendo, piú volte il pregaron che moglie prendesse (Dec. 10.10.5, my emphasis) [[B]ut his vassals were not content with this and repeatedly begged him to get married] The adverbial phrase cathervatim illum adeunt denotes an action more similar to rioting hordes than to the clash between organised troops. Indeed, caterva indicated the loose order of barbarian militias as opposed to the disciplined order of the Roman legions. It is interesting to compare Petrarch’s locution with the ways it is translated. While Bernat Metge does not gloss the locution, the three other versions deal with cathervatim. Livre gives up any military overtone and renders the adverbial clause with an explanatory periphrasis: tous ensemble alerent. Philippe de Mézières’ modal expression, en grande quantité, depicts a large crowd moving, both imposing and scary. Chaucer has an adverbial compound, «flokmele». Formally, this is the closer solution to the Latin source. Similarly to Latin caterva, Middle English flok’s nuances range from a group of animals or persons, to a gang of evil spirits or a troop of warriors, an army, a host, a squadron39. Chaucer’s English may be exploiting here the potential of the intersection between the semantics of the military and the sense of flock as a group of animals (e.g. of sheep). Of course, the image of the flock has an evangelical echo (Cristes flok), which is consistent with the representation of Walter as a rector (‘leader, governor’)40. In Latin, the verb regere designates both the act of shepherding a flock and that of ruling: the good 39. See electronic MED,s.v. flok <https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/medidx?type=id&id=MED16376> (28/02/2018). For the print edition, The Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath et al., Ann Arbor, 1954-2001. 40. In his letter to Francesco da Carrara (Sen. 14.1), Petrarch refers to the ruler using the following designations: princeps (e.g. Sen. 14.1.3, 38, 67, 116, 136, 155, 163, 170, 174, 175, 192, 194, 205, 206, 213, 215, 217, 221, 231, 236), dominus (e.g. Sen. 14.96, 111, 136, 138, 154, 168, 181, 205, 220), imperator (e.g. Sen. 14.1.158, 166, 200). It is interesting to notice how these terms occur consistently throughout the letter, but their relative frequency increases in the second half of the epistle (this is particularly true for princeps). Less frequent but significant is the adoption of rector or rector populum (e.g. 14.1.28, 37, 96, 129…). Latin princeps is practically always in connection to a Roman emperor or Alexander the Great, the latter also disparagingly referred to as rex Macedum,Sen. 14.1.206 (the sole occurrence of this term [rex] in the letter). The metaphor of the gubernator (steersman, pilot) appears only once in the letter (Sen. 14.1.31). 296 SIMONE VENTURA ruler (or prince) is often compared to the good shepherd – like Christ. It is interesting that Petrarch uses caterva to designate a group of people complaining precisely because they were lacking a strong leader. The use of caterva implies an inference pushing in a direction contrary to the semantic nuance derived from the nexus populus-subiecti-nobiles, and, in the vernacular, peuple-barons or vassals. Finally, Chaucers’ Clerk might be playing with flock’s ambiguities. The shift from the people gathering before the prince to the « peple » going « flokmele » to see their lord does not seem to convey an organised group of leading men whose dignity justifies their challenge of authority, rather, without a shepherd, they appear little more than an amorphous flock41. Responding to the request of the spokesman, Walter refers to his men as subiecti, while applying to himself the etimologically related verb subicio: Ceterum subiectorum michi voluntatibus me sponte subicio, et prudentie vestre fisus et fidei. (Sen. 17.3.29) [Even so, I submit myself freely to the will of my subjects, confident in your prudence and faith.] The translators (with the exception of Livre) do not offer a specific parallel rendering of the term. However, the vernacular for Latin subiecti surfaces at various points in the versions of my corpus. In Miroir (de [ses] subgiés) and Livre (de ses subgetz) the term appears before the actual start of Walter’s speech. As seen above, in the Catalan VG,sotmesos, in connection with vassals, occurs even earlier. Chaucer, who does not translate subiecti as such, bases his lines on a set of oppositions inspired by Petrarch’s polarised rhetoric: «Ye wol», quod he, «myn owene peple deere, To that I nevere erst thoughte streyne me. I me rejoysed of my liberte, That seelde tyme is founde in mariage; Ther I was free, I moot been in servage. But nathelees I se youre trewe entente, And truste upon youre wit, and have doon ay; Wherfore of my free wyl I wole assente To wedde me, as soone as evere I may». (CT IV.143-151) 41. Petrarch applies the metaphor of the herd to Boccaccio’s readers in his cursory commentary at the beginning of Sen. 17.3. And concluding the tale (Dec. 10.10.68), Dioneo deprecates those at royal palaces who, in his words, «would be better suited to tending pigs than ruling men ». See Mary J. Carruthers, « The Lady, the Swineherd, and Chaucer’s Clerk », in The Chaucer Review, t. 17 (1983), p. 221-234; Goodwin, «The Griselda Game », art. cit., p. 45-48. NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 297 [«You want», said he, «my own people dear, | That which I never before thought to compel myself. | I rejoiced in my liberty, | That seldom is found in marriage; | Where I was free, I must be in servitude. | But nevertheless I see your true intent, | And trust upon your intelligence, and always have done so; | Therefore of my free will I will assent | To wed, as soon as ever I can.»] Chaucer’s strategy is marked by lexical, syntactic and prosodic figures of contrast, parallelism and symmetry. The semantically-opposed verbal and noun phrases «streyne me » (v. 144) and « free wyl » (v. 150) frame the entire passage. A parallelism expresses the opposite conditions of liberty and servitude in line 146: « Ther I was free, I moot been in servage ». Finally, three terms placed at the end of three consecutive lines draw a symmetrical figure: first, at the two extremes of this triad, «liberte» (v. 145) is negated by « servage » (v. 147); secondly, the medium term, «mariage » (146), in rhyme with « servage », emphasises the connection through cause and effect between the condition of being married and the loss of individual freedom through identity of sound (homeoteleuton). One of the attributes of Walter’s power is the nobility of his lineage42. Being the essential policy for the conservation of power during the Middle Ages (and beyond), marriage and dynastic continuity are projections in time. And time, namely the future, is an unavoidable constraint on the ruler (and a condition of politics), as Walter’s subjects remind him. Famously, Chaucer’s Clerk blames Walter for not taking into account what the future may bring: I blame him thus, that he considered noght In tyme cominge what mighte him bityde, But on his lust present was al his thought, As for to hauke and hunte on every syde. Wel ny alle othere cures leet he slyde; And eek he nolde – and that was worst of alle – Wedde no wyf, for noght that may bifalle. (CT IV.78-84, my emphasis) [I blame him thus: that he considered not | In time coming what might happen to him, | But on his immediate pleasure was all his thought, | Such as to hawk and hunt on every side. | Well nigh all other cares he let slip away, | And also he would not – and that was worst of all – | Wed any woman, for anything that may befall.] 42. Walter was « sanguine nobilis » (Sen. 17.3.18). The link between Walter and his descendants is already qualified as ancient in Boccaccio (« già è gran tempo » Dec. 10.10 4). 298 SIMONE VENTURA Walter’s decision not to marry and to spend all his time in hunting and hawking43, makes him a ruler alienated from political action, which was considered not just inappropriate, but also immoral. Walter’s inoperant attitude to his duty is qualified as a vice by the Mesnagier de Paris, who accomodates Philippe de Mézières’ version in his treatise for his young wife: Un vice estoit en lui [Walter], car il amoit fort solitude et n’acontoit riens au temps à venir, ne en nulle manière ne vouloit pour lui mariage. (Mesnagier de Paris 192.107-109, my emphasis) The French versions of the passage render the time-lineage-power conjunction explicit, particularly in that of Philippe de Mézières44: Es confines de Pieumont en Lombardie […] a une contree longue et lee et tres bien habitee d’aucunes cités… laquelle contree et anciennementseignourie naturelees tamps passés et aujourd’hui fu toujours gouvernee par les marquis de Saluce. Or est ainsi, selonc l’istoire, que jadis entre les marquis en ot un appellé Guatier, seigneur sans per de celle noble contree, auquel tous les autres marquis de la dicte region, barons et chevaliers, bourgois et escuiers, marchans et laboureus naturelement obeissoient (Miroir 359.11-17, my emphasis) In this passage, Mézières highlights the status (seigneur sans per), antiquity (anciennement) of Walter’s seignourie, and the obedience due to the markis by all the orders of society: the reign, the authority of the ruler and the obedience of the ruled are all defined as «natural ». The phrases 43. Dec. 10.10.4: «[Gualtieri] in niuna altra cosa il suo tempo spendeva che in uccellare e cacciare» [Gualtieri who spent all of his time out hawking and hunting]. 44. The time-lineage conjunction is implied rather than stated in Petrarch’s lexical choices. The land of Saluzzo was an apanage of Walter’s family: Walterius quidam, ad quem familie ac terrarum omnium regimen pertineret [a certain Walter, to whom the rule of his estate and the whole land belonged] (Sen. 17.3.18). Semantically, the Latin verb pertineo (‘to belong, to be the property of’) indicates a possession protracted in time. In this sense, it is not frequently attested in Classical Latin. This verb seems to have started to define property of things only in Late Antiquity. But it was used as a juridical term in connection with property of territory and estate much later. See Jan Frederik Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden, s.v. pertinere. Juridical property and definition of the legal status are connected in the phrase pertinentes homines, glossed by Du Cange, Glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis, as servi (<http://ducange.enc.sorbonne.fr/> 28/02/2018). A search in the Corpus corporum data base online (<http://www.mlat.uzh.ch/MLS/index.php?lang=0> 28/02/2018) reveals that the 500 occurrences of the third person singular of the present indicative of the verb (pertinet) have a twofold meaning: 1) to be appropriate to something or someone; 2) to be the legitimate property of/to pertain to someone or some body (e.g. a monastic community). But the second sense of the verb seems to become more widespread from the 11th century onwards. NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 299 seigneur naturel,seigneurie naturele illustrate the legitimacy of the power and supremacy of the lord over his territory45. In the modern reception of the novella, Walter has often been called a tyrant. But the first part of the novella revolves around the conditions under which the ruled of Saluzzo can escape from the limitations imposed by the power of the seigneur, whose prerogatives can be inferred by the Latin text. The following table, which presents the beginning and end of the passage quoted above (Sen. 17.3.17-18 and 26), intends to highlight the use of a technically precise lexis to emphasise the features of a prince’s authority (my emphasis in italics)46: Inter cetera ad radicem Vesulli terra Salutiarum, vicis et castella satis frequens, marchionum arbitrio nobilium quorundam regitur virorum. Quorum unus primusque omnium et maximus fuisse traditur Valterus quidam, ad quem familie ac terrarium omnium regimen pertineret (Sen. 17.3.17-18, my emphasis) Libera tuos omnes molesta solecitudine, quesumus, ne siquid humanitus tibi forsan accideret, tu sine tuo successore abeas, ipsi sine votivo rectore remaneant. (Sen. 17.3.26) [The land of Saluzzo lies among others at the base of Vesulus, with plenty of villages and castles ruled by the will of certain noble marquises. The first and greatest, it is said, was a certain Walter, to whom the rule of his estate and the whole land belonged.] [Free us all from this nagging worry, lest, if anything mortal should befall you, you might leave no heir, and your people be left without an avowed ruler.] By contrast with Boccaccio (Dec. 10.10.4), Petrarch amplifies the vocabulary linked with the semantic field of the act of ruling. Walter is the primus and maximus among the principal feudal houses in Saluzzo and other regions in Lombardy. He is the « rector votivus » (the avowed governor), which entails a bond between the prince and the elites of his contree. Finally, notice the series rector,regitur and regimen familie ac 45. See DMF,s.v. naturel 2.c <http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/> (28/02/2018), and Michel Senellart, Les arts de gouverner: Du regimen médiéval au concept de gouvernement, Paris, 1995, p. 155-205 (= chapter 4 « Rector naturalis »). 46. In introducing his main character, Petrarch plays with a series of indefinite expressions to introduce Valterius: « Inter cetera », « satis », « traditur», « Valterius quidam ». In the choice of his words, Petrarch is consistent with medieval civil jurisprudence: see Serena Ferente, « Popolo and law», art. cit., p. 101: «Historians of medieval civil jurisprudence have traditionally traced a theory of sovereignty in legal thought via the fortune of two formulae: ‘rex imperator in regno suo’ (the king is emperor in his own kingdom) and ‘civitas sibi princeps’ (a city is itwo own prince) […] any assertion of sovereignty on the part of [any political actor] (kings and cities, respectively […]) must consist in appropriating the powers of the Roman law prince and exercising them within the limits of a given jurisdiction. The powers of the princeps implied absolute superiority/sovereignty (superioritas,superanitas), which translated into a rejection of any other overlordship (those kings and cities, indeed, superiorem non recognoscent). » 306 SIMONE VENTURA away from Boccaccio, Petrarch’s work on Walter’s persona creates an egocentric prince, whose self-defence mirrors the battle of consciousness «for a rational perspective in a world whose moral contours become blurred by passional responses »69. Menaced by his men, forced to marry, Walter engages in a ruthless effort to reach perpetua quiete (Dec. 10.10.61). Griselda’s unconditional obedience and extraordinary resilience (patientia) troubles his plan. By testing her to prove whether she is friend or foe, Walter becomes cupidus and curiosus. In doing so, he falls from «the peace and stability of divine contemplation into the turbulence and restlessness of temporal existence»70. In Dioneo’s words, Walter’s is a case of « matta bestialità ». As is well known, this is a reference to Dante’s Inferno (11.79-84), where Virgil explains the moral architecture of Hell to his pupil. According to Dante’s reading of Aristotle, bestiality is one of the three dispositions (« disposizioni ») of vice, alongside incontinence, malice, and mindless/reckless bestiality71. Neither Petrarch nor his translators explicitly engage with Boccaccio’s allusion to Dante (and Aristotle)72. In response to Boccaccio (voiced by Dioneo), Petrarch builds his narrative around a cluster of terms: humanitas,cupiditas,curiositas, and the connected verbs tentare,probare, and experiri (respectively: ‘to try, to prove, to test’). We have already seen how, in pleading for Walter to take a wife, the anonymous vassal places his trust in his lord’s « humanitas ». In Aristotle, humanity stands in the middle ground between bestiality and divine virtue. In the scholastic interpretation of Aristotelian ethics, human beings may 69. Peter Stacey, « Senecan Political Thought from the Middle Ages to Early Modernity », in The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, ed. Shadi Bartsch and Alessandro Schiesaro, Cambridge, 2015, p. 289-302 (p. 297-298). 70. Torchia, «Curiosity », art. cit., argues that for Augustine « curiosity precipitates the soul’s movement from a higher contemplative mode of being to an active temporal one. In this connection, Augustine depicts it as a ‘natural enemy of peace:’ by diverting the soul from the contemplation of eternal reality, curiosity prompts it toward a life characterized by movement and change… As its etymological root cura suggests, curiosity entangles the soul in the many cares or concerns which surround bodily life» (p. 259-261). 71. Dante, Inf. 82-83 («incontinenza, malizia, e la matta | bestialitade ») and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 7.1 = Book Z 1145a (English version in Aristotle’s Ethics. Writings from the Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Barnes and Anthony Kenny, Princeton, 2014, p. 133). See Barolini, « The Marquis of Saluzzo », p. 26; Anna Hatcher and Mark Musa, «Aristotle’s Matta Bestialitade in Dante’s Inferno », in Italica, t. 47 (1970), p. 366-372; Susanna Bersella, « I marginalia di Boccaccio all’Etica Nicomachea di Aristotele (Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana A 204 Inf.)», in Boccaccio in America. 2010 International Boccaccio Conference, UMAss April 30-May 1, ed. Micheal Papio and Elsa Filosa, Ravenna, 2012, p. 143-155; ead., «Tyranny and Obedience », art. cit. 72. Goodwin, « The Griselda Game », art. cit., p. 47-50, shows how Petrarch’s does not get rid of Dioneo’s concerns, and his decision «to drop Boccaccio’s … allusions to Aristotle» responds to a textual ploy which is at once «strategic and ambitious» (p. 50). NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 307 prove to exceed either by sin, in which case they are likened to beasts, or by virtue, in which case they are divine or heroic73. At the end of the Italian version of the tale, Walter protests in what seems to be a direct reply to Dioneo claiming, before his wife, the narrator, and all of us, that his was neither cruelty, nor iniquity, nor bestiality: Griselda, tempo è omai che tu senta frutto della tua lunga pazienzia, e che coloro li quali me hanno reputato crudele e iniquo e bestiale conoscano che ciò che io faceva a antiveduto fine operava, volendoti insegnar d’esser moglie e a loro di saperla tenere, e a me partorire perpetua quiete mentre teco a vivere avessi: il che, quando venni a prender moglie, gran paura ebbi che non m’intervenisse, e per ciò, per prova pigliarne, in quanti modi tu sai ti punsi e trafissi. (Dec. 10.10.61, my emphasis) [«Griselda », he said, « the time has finally come both for you to taste the fruit of your long patience, and for those who have thought me cruel, unjust, and brutish to realize that what I’ve done I’ve done with a deliberate end in view. For I wanted to teach you how to be a wife, to teach them how to manage one, and at the same time to beget for myself perpetual peace and quiet for the rest of my life with you. When I was at the point of taking a wife, I really feared I’d have no peace, and that’s why I decided to choose one by means of a test and have, as you know, inflicted so much pain and suffering on you».] Walter sets out to attain his goals while teaching his men and Griselda a lesson. The pair of Italian verbs « insegnar » and « (per prova) pigliare », is reflected in Petrarchan Latin verbs temptare and probare (Sen. 17.3.143). This vocabulary echoes the theological figure of the ‘divine temptation’ as is expressed in Augustine, who makes distinction based on the agent: if it is God who tempts, the temptation is to teach and to save; if it is the devil, it is to deceive and condemn74. It is striking that the passage of the Latin letter where the relation between tempting and teaching is made explicit was not retained by 73. See Tommaso d’Aquino, Commento all’Etica Nicomachea di Aristotele, Vol.2 Books 6-10, ed. Lorenzo Perotto, Bologna, 1998, p. 105-110 = [Liber 7Lectio 1 n. 1-12 <http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/ctc07.html> (21/01/2018)]. This is also apparent in a passage of Boccaccio’s commentary on Inferno 11.82-4, where bestiality is opposed to divine wisdom (« la divina sapienza »): Giovanni Boccaccio, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, ed. Giorgio Padoan, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, Milan, 1965. See also Susanna Bersella, « Boccaccio, i tiranni e la ragione natural », in Heliotropia, t. 12-13 (2015-16), p. 131-63 (p. 148), who comments precisely in Esposizioni on Inf. 12, where Boccaccio speaks about tyranny. 74. Bessi, «La Griselda del Petrarca », art. cit., p. 282 who among other important passages, quotes Augustine, Sermo II. De tentatione Abrahae, 3, whereby the point about the salvific value of divine pedagogy is made through the figure of parallelism. 308 SIMONE VENTURA the translations of my corpus. For example, in the anonymous Livre, while praising Griselda’s patience and commenting on the motif of divine temptation, this version reads: Lequel [Dieu], comme dist Saint Jaque l’Apostre, ne tempte nul, mais bien appreuve et nous sueffre maintes foiz tres griefment pugnir. Non pas qu’il ne congnoisse nostre couraige et entencion devant que soyons nez, mais pour que par jugemens clers et evidens recongnoissions et veons nostre fragile humanité. (Livre 289.37-41, my emphasis) Glossing et sepe nos multis et gravibus flagellis exerceri sinit (Sen. 17.3.38, Often [God] allows us to be tormented by many, heavy whips) this translator chooses pugnir (to punish), a form that departs from both Italian pungere and puncture, the terms that Boccaccio uses to designate Walter’s testing of Griselda, which is likened to physical torture: as it is apparent in the closure of the passage quoted above: « ti punsi e trafissi » (Dec. 10.10.61, I stung and transfixed you). In dealing with Walter’s immoderate will to know and to his rigour towards Griselda, Metge and Chaucer offer different approaches: E aprés un temps que la filla fo deslatada, jatssia que Valter hagués assats provada la fe de sa muller, emperò volchla provar e assayar més avant. (VG 132,6-9) [A while after the child stopped nursing, although he had tested his wife’s faith enough, he wanted to test and try her once more.] Ther fil, as it bifalleth tymes mo, Whan that this child had souked but a throwe, This markys in his herte longeth so To tempte his wyf, hir sadnesse for to knowe, That he ne myghte out of his herte throwe This merveillous desir his wyf t’assaye; Nedelees, God woot, he thoghte hire for t’affraye. He hadde assayed hire ynogh bifore, And foond hire evere good; what neded it Hire for to tempte, and alwey moore and moore, Though som men preise it for a subtil wit? But as for me, I seye that yvele it sit To assaye a wyf whan that it is no nede, And putten hire in angwyssh and in drede. (CT 449-62) [There happened, as it befalls many times, | When this child had suckled but a short time, | This marquis in his heart longs so | To test his wife, her constancy to know, | That he could not out of his heart throw | This strange desire to test his wife; | Needless, God knows, he intended to frighten her. | He had tested her enough before, | And found her always good; why was it needed | To test her, and always more and more, | Though some men praise its ingenuity? | But as for me, I say that it ill befits one | To test a wife when there is no need, | And put her in anguish and in dread.] NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 309 The Catalan version is succinct, this being one of the few cases where Metge skips some of Petrarch’s text. This might have arisen due to a defective interpretation of the Latin source, or it could derive from Metge’s French auxiliary source75. Whatever the case may be, Metge’s rendering is not laconic, but pithy. There is no need to expand on Walter. What is said is enough: the story can move on. Chaucer expands the narrator’s reflection, following Petrarch and with the support of Livre, with which the English text shares some substantial analogies. Chaucer, Petrarch and Livre condemn Walter’s behaviour; both play with figures of iteration to characterize his tormented soul. The Clerk condemns Walter for doing something nedlees. « Need », a word of the semantic field of necessity, occurs twice, as an adjective and a verb, at the end and at the beginning of the quoted stanzas, whereby creating a tail/head bond between the two strophes. Both stanzas end with words denoting fear: t’affray (to frighten, v. 455) and anguish and dread (v. 462). Petrarch exploits the possibilities of cursus and prose rhythm to express Walter’s obsession with experimenting on Griselda: sed sunt qui, ubi semel inceperint, non desinant, imo incumbant hereantque proposito (Sen. 17.3.98) [but some people, having begun a course of action, will not desist] The series of three verbs, all with the same desinence (homeotheleuton), culminates in the clausula, structured around the repetition of two units with the same rhythmic pattern (i.e. cursus tardus, which presents the scheme xXx xXxx: cretic + cretic). By contrast, the anonymous Livre defines Walter’s persistence in his proposition (dure ymaginacion) as « merancolie », the medieval term to indicate a mental disorder engendered by an excess of dark bile76. In Chaucer’s rendering Walter’s pathological excess is rendered as merveillous desir. The obsession in Walter’s mind was already in Boccaccio’s text, where provare and esperienzia are the lexical seeds of Petrarch’s series: probare,tentare, and experiri: Ella non fu guari con Gualtieri dimorata che ella ingravidò, e al tempo partorí una fanciulla, di che Gualtieri fece gran festa. Ma poco appresso, entratogli un nuovo pensier nell’animo, cioè di 75. Philippe de Mézières tries to temper Walter’s cruelty (with little success): « Passa le tamps, passerent les jours que la fille du marquise fu sevree. Lors le marquis, qui tant amoit s’espouse pour la tres grant vertu qu’il veoit tous les jours croistre en lui, pensa de l’esprouver et de le fort tempter» (Miroir 365.4-7). 76. See Livre 279.37-44. Earlier in the text, the anonymous translator uses the phrase ymaginacion merveilleuse (Livre 269.3-7) to denote a form of exceptional desire (cf. Machaut quoted in DMF,s.v. imagination). 310 SIMONE VENTURA volere con lunga esperienzia e con cose intollerabili provare la pazienzia di lei, e’ primieramente la punsecon parole, mostrandosi turbato e dicendo che i suoi uomini pessimamente si contentavano di lei per la sua bassa condizione e spezialmente poi che vedevano che ella portava figliuoli, e della figliuola che nata era tristissimi altro che mormorar non facevano. (Dec. 10.10.27, my emphasis) [She had not lived with Gualtieri very long before she became pregnant and in time, to his great happiness, gave birth to a little girl. But a little while later the strange idea popped into his head to test her patience by subjecting her to constant tribulations and generally making her life intolerable for her. Consequently, he started goading her with words, pretending to be angry and telling her that his vassals were thoroughly disgruntled with her because of her base origin, especially now that they saw her bearing children, and that, furthermore, they were upset about the little girl who had just been born and were doing nothing but grumbling about it.] In this passage, Walter’s decision to test Griselda’s capacity to suffer («la pazienza di lei») is linked with the vocabulary of corporal torture – i.e. « pungere », « lunga esperienza », « cose intollerabili »77. Petrarch uses this metaphor only once, at the very end of the tale, when Griselda is repudiated but to be restored as a wife, and the legitimate lady of the house. Asked to come to Walter’s new wedding as a servant, Griselda is introduced to the bride (in fact her own daughter). Whilst Griselda praises the bride, she addresses the following request to Walter (I put the Italian and Latin texts side by side): ma quanto più posso vi priego che quelle punture, le quali all’altra, che vostra fu, già deste (Dec. 10.10.59, my emphasis) Unum bona fide te precor ac moneo, ne hanc illis aculeis agites quibus alteram agitasti (Sen. 17.3.133) [I beg you with all my heart not to inflict on her the same wounds you once gave the other spouse you used to have] [Yet in good faith I ask and urge one thing. Do not sting her with the goads you used on another woman] As already mentioned, this is the sole instance in which Petrarch deploys Boccaccio’s metaphor of the stings. He does so choosing the moment in which it is Griselda that uses the metaphor to allude to the pain Walter had inflicted upon her the one and only time, and accompanied with an overtone of blame. In Italian, puntura is typically an insect bite. In 77. This vocabulary, particularly the trio punture,pungere and trafiggere, constitutes one of the key sets of words in the epilogue to the tale (see Dec. 10.10.59). NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 311 comparison, Latin aculeus can refer both to the sting of an insect and the sting (of the whip) used to encourage beasts of burden78. In the other translations of my corpus, the passage is rendered to cover a range of possibilities. Philippe de Mézières evokes aculeis through a play on words (a polyptoton) on the connection between the noun, aguillon (sting of an insect), and the verb, aguilloner: D’une chose en bonne foy je te veulz deprier et amonester, que tu ne veuillez pas molester la nouvelle espouse des aguillons dont l’autre tu as si fort aguillonné (Miroir 375.15-16, my emphasis). Bernat Metge omits both punture and aculeis. Instead, he makes Griselda speak out against her mistreatment, referencing Walter’s behaviour: Mas de una cosa·t prech e·t amonest: que aquesta no vullas tractar axí com has tractade la altra (VG 150.1-2). [Yet I ask for and urge one thing. Do not treat this one as you used to treat the other one] Chaucer rewrites the passage to furnish only the roughest gloss on the two terms: O thing biseke I yow, and warne also, That ye ne prikke with no tormentinge This tendre mayden, as ye don mo (CT 1037-1039, my emphasis) [One thing I beseech you, and warn also, | That you not distress with any tormenting | This tender maiden, as you have done to others] Petrarch may not consistently reproduce Boccaccio’s lexis of corporal torture. But his persistent use of the vocabulary of cupidity, care, and temptation, is consistent with the cruel perseverance implied in Boccaccio’s corporal language. A good example of this can be found by comparison of the precise classification of Griselda’s second test in the Decameron and in Sen. 17.3, and the other versions. Boccaccio maintains that Walter 78. Such as donkeys or cows, in their tasks: like them Griselda « knows that [her] life consists of either bearing or not bearing »: see Roger Ebert’s 2004 review of Robert Bresson’s movie Au hasard Balthasar (1966): <https://www.rogerebert.com/contributors/roger-ebert> (last access 21.01.2018). Interestingly, the feminin object to which, in the 15th century, Olivier de La Marche symbolically likens the story of Griselda is the ‘épinglier’ (literally ‘pelote d’épingles’): see Golenistcheff, Histoire de Griseldis en France,op. cit., p. 145. 312 SIMONE VENTURA pierced Griselda with «maggior puntura» (Dec. 10.10.34), whereas for Petrach and Metge, Walter returns instead to the «usual curiosity »: Transiverant hoc in statu anni quatuor, dum ecce gravida iterum filium elegantissimum peperit, letitiam patris ingentem atque omnium amicorum. Quo nutricis ab ubere post biennium subducto, ad curiositatem solitam reversus pater uxorem rursus affatur et « Olim » ait « audisti […] » (Sen. 17.3.83-84) Aprés de aquestas cosas que foren passats ·iiii· anys, Griselda se emprenyà e parí un fort bell fill, del qual hagueren gran goig e alagria son pare et tots son amichs. E a cap de dos anys que fo deslatat, Valter, tornant en la acustumada curiositat, dix a·ssa muller aytals paraulas… (VG 136,14-18) [Four years passed in this way, until Griselda conceived and bore a most fine son, to the great joy of the father and all his friends. When the child stopped nursing after two years, however, the father returned to his former inquisitiveness, and spoke to his wife again: “For some time you have heard…”] [Four years after these acts, Griselda was pregnant again and bore a most fine son, for whom his father and all his friends had great joy. After two years the child had stopped nursing, Walter returned to his former inquisitiveness, and said to his wife the following words…] For Philippe de Mézières, Walter’s curiosity is not just extraordinary («merveilleuse »), it is also dangerous («perilleuse») and «estrange», an adjective suggesting an alienated mind79: Quant l’enfant fu sevré de la nourrice et ot .ii. ans, croissant en grant biauté, le marquis, lors resmeu et esmeu de nouvel de sa merveilleuse, perilleuse et estrange curiosité, vint a la marquise et li dit… (Miroir 367.23-26, my emphasis) Chaucer, who does not translate solita curiositas, takes Walter’s perverse request for obedience and Griselda’s patience a step further. First, as noted above, he depicts Walter’s troubled state. Secondly, he contextualizes the situation differently. In a bleak reflection on husband-wife relationships, male power (like any power) is ‘naturally’ inclined to exploit the female’s forced position of submission: Whan it [the child] was two yeer old, and fro the brest Departed of his norice, on a day This markys caughte yet another lest To tempte his wyf yet ofter, if he may. O nedelees was she tempted in assay! But wedded men ne knowe no mesure, Whan that they fynde a pacient creature. «Wyf», quod this markys… (CT IV.617-24) 79. The only exception is the Livre (273.68-69), where curiosity is not mentioned at all: «Lequel enfant puis qu’il ot deux ans et qu’il fut sevré de la nourrice, le marquis de rechief vint a sa femme et lui dist […] ». NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 313 [When it was two years old, and from the breast | Of his nurse weaned, on one day | This marquis caught yet another desire | To test his wife yet again, if he can. | O needless was she put to the test! | But wedded men know no moderation, | When they find a patient creature. | «Wife», said this marquis…] Walter asks for (blanket) unconditional obedience: from his men, from Giannucole and from Griselda. While trying Griselda’s patience and steadfastness, Walter also tests his seigneurial subjects’ obedience. In so doing, he intends to neutralise his adversaries and strengthen his authority. Yet, Griselda’s patience goes beyond the devotion of a good wife. In his conclusion (Sen. 17.3.143-144) Petrarch praises Griselda’s apparently infinite capacity to suffer as a divine or heroic virtue. As mentioned above, in Petrarch’s Latin, Griselda’s virtue is founded upon a web of scriptural and patristic (chiefly Augustine) references to Abraham and Job, figures of the obedient and the patient respectively80. Abraham and Job share unconditional faith, unbreakable courage and inexhaustible humility. The Pauline phrase ‘obedience of faith’ sums up patience and obedience as the prerogatives of the believer justified by faith not works81. The translators of Walter and Griselda’s tale got the relevance of the bond between obedience and faith, as is apparent in one of the addresses to the audience made by the anonymous translator of Livre: Povoient, je vous prie, a ce seigneur ces experimens d’obeïssance etde foy de mariage bien souffire? (Livre 279.25-26, my emphasis) Obedience, the mother of all virtues, lies at the centre of a constellation of connected virtues: patience, faith, courage and humility82. On the one hand, Griselda’s exceptional courage, faith and humility allowed for 80. Cf. Bessi, « La Griselda del Petrarca», art. cit., p. 281. Like Bessi, Nigel S. Thompson, Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of the Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, Oxford, 1996, p. 287-293, identifies several religious references which «link Griselda’s patience to that of Job » (p. 287). 81. The expression is St. Paul’s, who uses it twice, at the beginning (Ad Rom. 1.5) and the second at the very end (Ad Rom. 16.26-27) of his letter to the Romans. 82. The Middle Ages made a distinction between « the clusters obedientia/fides and patientia/Constantia ». These virtues « were interpreted more actively than they generally are now. The greatest difference between obedientia and patientia arises from the implied relationship of the virtuous person to the world beyond that person. For the religious, obedientia and fides involved conscious and active willed commitment… When the ‘other’ is a husband, the charge of gender grows heavy on the obedient and devoted wife, whose dependence was so strongly reinforced by social and legal practice… The other set of virtues, patience and steadfastness, is associated with spiritual martyrdom… patience is the most characteristic virtue of fourteenth-century saints… Suffering makes the sufferer not directly subordinate to but, rather, analogous to Christ. It is … an androgynous model of sainthood» (Cook Morse, «What to Call », art. cit., p. 279-280). 314 SIMONE VENTURA a reading of her persona as a model of sainthood, or even the figure of the relationship of the human soul with God83. On the other hand, in her textual re-staging, Griselda was not wrapped in the garments of conventional hagiography. Translations cannot be reduced to inert compliance with popular pity and devotion. As examples comparing different versions of the translated tale demonstrate, textual innovations can take various forms (e.g. lexical, rhetorical) and serve different purposes. In one case, namely in Bernat Metge’s Catalan VG, the motive of devotion for the ever-patient Griselda was the basis for a remarkable, albeit singular, variation in the narrative dual schema, whereby Griselda gained existential depth only in opposition to Walter’s torments. To understand the importance of this element, I will conclude this paragraph comparing the portrait of Griselda in the Latin and Catalan texts, and in Philippe de Mézières’s French translation. Introducing Griselda to the reader in a passage with no parallel in Boccaccio, Petrarch describes the poor little village in which she lived with her father, Giannucole (Sen. 17.3.40-41). Metge (VG 124.13-21) and Mézières follow Petrarch’s text, emphasising the poverty and humility of Griselda’s family situation. In Philippe de Mézières’ version (Miroir 361.9-17), we have no less than six occurrences of povre and povreté in a few lines. Each occurrence amplifies an original formulation that is already affectively charged. For example, the Latin diminutive villula becomes a povre villete; similarly, the Latin tuguria (cottages of shepherds) becomes povres maisoncelles, whilst the Latin superlative pauperrimo is transformed into povre et plain de toute misere. Apart from Philippe de Mézières’ taste for amplifications, his version and Metge’s are quite similar between them and both follow Petrarch’s text closely; but when it comes to the second part of Griselda’s portrait, we observe some substantial differences between the French and the Catalan texts: Patris senium inextimabili refovens caritate et pauculas eius oves pascebat et colo interim digitos atterebat vicissimque domum rediens oluscula et dapes fortune congruas preparabat durumque cubiculum sternebat et ad summam Et quant Griseldis au vespre ramenoit les bestes a l’ostel, elle appareilloit a son pere et a lui les povres viandes de fortune, paissoit et nourissoit son pere, en lui levant et couchant sur son povre lit, et, briefment toute l’umanité E ab inextimabla karitat servia diligentment son pare, e, pasturant algunas poques de ovellas que havia, filave cascun jorn, e puys, tornant-se’n en casa, aparellave cols o spinachs o altres viandes covinents a la sua condició, e feÿa 83. Bessi, « La Griselda del Petrarca », art. cit., p. 292; Bertè and Rizzo, « Valete amici », art. cit., p. 96; McLaughlin, «Humanist Rewriting », art. cit., p. 24-25. NOVELLAS OF WALTER AND GRISELDA 315 angusto in spatio totum filialis obedientie ac pietatis officium explicabat. (Sen. 17.3.43) et service que fille doit faire a pere doulcement elle faisoit. (Miroir 361.23-27) lo llit a·sson pare. E ffinalment tot son temps despenia en pietat e obediència filial. (VG 124.21-26) [Cherishing her father’s age with ineffable love, she tended his few sheep, and as she did it, wore her fingers away on the distaff. Then, returning home, she would prepare the little herbs and victuals suited to their fortune and make ready the rude bedchamber. In her narrow station, in short, she discharged all the offices of filial obedience and affection.] [And with boundless charity she diligently served her father, and, tending his few sheep, she used to spin every day, and then, returning home, she prepared cabbages or spinach, or other foods suited to their condition, and made the bed for her father. And in the end she spent all her time behaving as a pitiful and obedient daughter.] After coming home from the pasture, Griselda is shown preparing a frugal supper for her poor father. It is worth observing the metamorphosis of the Latin word oluscula from Petrarch’s text (oluscula et dapes fortune) into the French povres viandes de fortune and the Catalan « cols o spinachs ». Oluscula, mostly used in the plural, is a diminutive for (h)olus (vegetables). Petrarch may have found this diminutive in Cicero’s letters to Atticus84. However, the word is well attested in the works of Christian authors, including Jerome, Tertullian and Prudentius. Since olus was the basic nourishment of peasants, both olus and olusculum are consistent with the lexical field of poverty threading through the whole passage85. In a narrower sense, though, olus might also indicate a variety of vegetables characterized by large and wide leaves, e.g. lactuca (lettuce) and rapum (turnip). Amongst other options, olus might be a synonym for brassica or cabbage. For example, we find oluscula translated as chouz ou autre maniere d’erbettes (cabbage or other kind of greens) within the anonymous Livre Griseldis (216.15-16). This does not necessarily mean that Metge had access to the anonymous Livre. Both Metge and the anonymous French translator may have separately translated oluscula recalling one of its possible meanings86. Metge throws into relief a detail 84. See Totius Latinitatis Lexicon, ed. Giacomo Facciolati, Egidio Forcellini, and Jacob Bailey, London, 1828, Vol. 2, col. 38b. 85. See Thesaurus linguae latinae,s.v. (VI, iii, 2861-2): « holus…est cibus vilis, rusticus, aegrotorum, carne vescenda abstinentium» [holus…is poor food, rustic, for poor people, for those who lack meat to eat]. 86. David Barnett – Lluís Cabré, « Creative Translation in Medieval Catalan: Bernat Metge», in Translation Review, t. 87 (2013), p. 6-17: « Metge has here picked up on the tonal implications of the diminutive [i.e. oluscula], which are often employed in Latin and