Decameron 5.8: "Di compassion piena"

• In Event: Boccaccio and Compassion

Abstract

In Decameron 5.8, Nastagio degli Onesti sees a naked woman hunted down and killed by a knight on horseback and devoured by dogs. The story’s narrator Filomena tells her female listeners that she offers the tale to demonstrate that women’s cruelty to men is punished by divine justice and to give them a reason for ridding themselves of it. Within the novella itself, Nastagio similarly transforms the recurrent scene of slaughter into a sort of instructional performance, with the objective of kindling passion in his beloved’s heart. Novella 5.8 reflects the value system of the courtly tradition, but the extreme violence of the exemplary narrative used here to persuade to love renders the notion of compassion problematic. If this story moves its audience to pity, which the Decameron’s opening aphorism suggests is the objective of fiction, the compassion aroused in it is basically reduced to a willingness to have sex.

Author

• Olivia Holmes, Binghamton University