PSYCHE’S TEXTUAL JOURNEY FROM APULEIUS TO BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCH

IGOR CANDIDO

In the envoy of the Filocolo, Giovanni Boccaccio draws a key distinction between the epic tradition of the magni auctores— Virgil, Lucan, Statius, and Ovid, all models of high rhetorical style—and his new prose writing, labelled as the ‘middle way’ (‘mezzana via’), with no authoritative father. Some years later, the literary canon of the Amorosa visione would finally include, among other authors, Apuleius of Madauros (canto 5, ll. 37–38). Platonic philosopher, rhetorician, and narrator, Apuleius was one of Boccaccio’s dearest authors and the most congenial narrative model he had encountered since his early education.¹ In the history of the transmission of classical literature, the significance of Boccaccio’s encounter with Apuleius cannot be underestimated: Boccaccio had in his library the most important extant manuscripts of the Metamorphoses and, like Petrarch, he was able to rejoin the two Apuleian traditions, the philosophical and the rhetorical, in the autograph manuscript Laurentianus 54.32. His interest in and imitation of Apuleius laid the foundation for the linguistic tradition of Renaissance Apuleianism as well as for the modern fortune of the Madaurensis at large.²

During the last years of his stay in Naples, if not earlier, Boccaccio read Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass) and his rhetorical works in the manuscript Laurentianus 29.20, which Zanobi da Strada had most likely sneaked out of the Monte Cassino library.³ A palaeographic examination of Laurentius 29.2 shows that books 4–6 of the Metamorphoses, in which the fable of Cupid and Psyche is contained, are the most glossed section of the entire manuscript, heavily by the hand of Zanobi and sporadically by that of Boccaccio.⁴ This, along with other evidence, complements and confirms the results of intertextual analysis, which indicate that the fable of Cupid and Psyche was a myth that was unique in the way it stimulated Boccaccio’s narrative imagination. Yet the Apuleian fabula, notwithstanding its immense influence on late ancient, medieval, and Renaissance literature and art, has so far received only scant attention from Boccaccio scholars, with the sole exception of the exposition of the Platonic myth in the Genealogia. Here the narration is a synthesis of Apuleius’ text and Fulgentius’ own exposition of the myth, followed by an allegorical reading that depends on ancient and medieval sources (mainly Aristotle, Calcidius, Martianus Capella, and Dante) and aims to shed light on the agreement between Aristotelian psychology and the Christian view of the soul.⁵

In Boccaccio’s Decameron, three tales owe their inventio to Apuleius’ fabula (Dec. 2.7 and 9; 10.10). These are audacious narrative experiments aimed at translating and rethinking the ancient model for the new bourgeois readership, mature examples of a totally new and surprisingly modern mythopoesis. Within their narratives, they show common elements drawn from Apuleius, allowing us to presume that Boccaccio composed the three tales at the same time. The most important themes are those of marriage between unequals, the power of fortune influencing human life, male ‘mad bestiality’ as opposed to the Aristotelian virtue of ‘mesòtes’, and the unfortunate consequences of female beauty. In Dec. 2.7, Alatiel, like Psyche, becomes a slave of Venus. Boccaccio’s invention of her countless sexual adventures must depend, in fact, not only on the parody of the trials of faith that the main characters must undergo in the ancient novel, but, more properly, on the metaphorization of Psyche’s enslavement. In the ancient novel, moreover, the trials of faith are essentially tests of virginity. Likewise, at the end of both the tale of Psyche and that of Alatiel, as well as in the Griselda story, the happy ending is made possible only through the offer of a symbolic compensation for the stolen virginity and is sanctioned by an actual marriage. If Alatiel is the antitype of Psyche, Zinevra, the wise wife of Bernabò in Dec. 2.9, owes most of her virtues and dispositions to Psyche, and her character helps the reader cover the Apuleian inventive space between Alatiel and Griselda.

Far from being isolated within Boccaccio’s œuvre, the case of Apuleianism in Dec. 10.10 is unique and striking, as the Griselda tale can be considered a careful rewriting of the fable of Cupid and Psyche.⁶ In my comparative reading of the two texts, I would like to focus on the narrative nucleus of the marriage between unequals (Apuleius’ ‘impares nuptiae’), around which the novella’s plot entirely revolves. The difference in the social conditions of Gualtieri and Griselda is, indeed, the only reason Boccaccio introduces to justify the intolerable trials Griselda must undergo to show her unconditional faith in her husband’s will (the fictitious killing of the children, her husband’s choice of a new spouse). According to Boccaccio, Gualtieri’s ‘vassals were most sorely dissatisfied with her by reason of her base condition, and all the more so since they saw that she was a mother’.⁷ This motive strictly depends on Apuleius: in the fable, Venus likewise does not accept her son’s union with a mortal woman and devises all sorts of trials for Psyche in order to impede it:

In both the novella and the fable, therefore, the problem of marriage between unequals only reveals itself before the fruit of the marriage itself, the birth of a child.

The discourse of Venus has more to tell us. Her use of the formula ‘in villa sine testibus et patre non consentiente’ to designate the illegal conditions under which the marriage was celebrated is singled out in the manuscript Laur. 29.2 by a manicula drawn by Boccaccio (see figs 1 and 2 on the next pages).

The legal question of a marriage celebrated in a country house is also one of the problems at stake in the Apologia. In chapter 67 Apuleius refers to the fourth accusation levelled against him, that his marriage with the widow Pudentilla would be invalid ‘because the marriage contract was sealed not in the town but at a country house’.⁹ But the law, as he later objects in chapter 88, does not prohibit the celebration of a marriage in a country house: ‘The Julian marriage-law nowhere contains a clause to the effect that no man shall wed in a country house’.¹⁰ In this case, anyhow, there existed the legal evidence of the marriage contract (‘tabulae nuptiales’) as guarantee of the mutual agreement between the partners (‘consensus’), while the union of Cupid and Psyche must certainly be defined as a ‘coniunctio occulta’ and therefore be invalid. Psyche, in fact, is overtly aware that her marriage is invalid, as she lets both of her sisters believe that Cupid, having divorced her, will this time marry each of them according to the sacred rites the law strictly requires:

The marriage between Cupid and Psyche is thus invalid because it is not configured as ‘nuptiae confarreatae’, the most ancient and solemn form of marriage among the Roman patricians.¹²

Figure 1. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Laur. 29.2, f. 45v.

Now, it is certainly no coincidence that the Apuleian formula uttered by Venus, ‘in villa sine testibus et patre non consentiente’, lists the same three negative conditions under which the marriage between Gualtieri and Griselda was also celebrated. In Boccaccio’s text, in fact, at her first appearance on the narrative scene, Griselda is described as ‘a poor girl that dwelt on a farm hard by his [Gualtieri’s] house’.¹³ Likewise, on the wedding day Gualtieri is said to have arrived with his company at a village. Moreover, while the reader is generally told that he ‘married her before them all’,¹⁴ no mention is made of any specific witnesses. Last but not least, textual evidence allows us to infer that the marriage was celebrated without the consent of Griselda’s father, Giannucole. During the first dialogue between Gualtieri and Giannucole, the latter, being a very poor man, has no voice in the question and can only accept the former’s request to marry his daughter. So, on the wedding day Gualtieri simply informs Giannucole of his resolution: ‘I am come to wed Griselda’.¹⁵ Finally, only when Griselda is sent back home to her father do we learn that ‘Giannucolo, who had ever deemed it a thing incredible that Gualtieri should keep his daughter to wife, […] had looked for this to happen every day, and had kept the clothes that she had put off on the morning that Gualtieri had wedded her’.¹⁶

We should note at this point that in both Apuleius and Boccaccio two weddings are celebrated and these events perform the same narrative function in each of the texts. The first union, between Cupid and Psyche, is, as we have seen, illegal, and the second therefore requires its final legitimate consecration by Jove himself before the council of the gods. In particular, Jove’s intervention aims to remove the last two obstacles to a legitimate union: the condition of a marriage between unequals and the fact that Cupid has stolen Psyche’s virginity.

Figure 2. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Laur. 29.2, f. 45v.

The conditions under which this second marriage is celebrated are completely different: the council of gods in heaven is the noblest place; the gods are the witnesses; Jove himself is the father of the newly deified Psyche. This narrative plot is closely imitated by Boccaccio. The fictitious wedding between Gualtieri and the twelve-year-old girl, who is actually his own daughter, finally turns into the second wedding between Griselda and himself, which, just as in the Apuleian model, serves the purpose of reaffirming the first unfortunate union on new and more stable foundations. This is, in the end, the true meaning of Gualtieri’s final words:

The conditions of this second marriage also positively overturn those implied in the Apuleian formula ‘in villa sine testibus et patre non consentiente’. Gualtieri’s noble house is the new location, his newly recovered sons and the count of Panago are the witnesses, and Giannucole is the finally recognized and consenting father: ‘Gualtieri took Giannucolo from his husbandry, and established him in honour as his father-in-law, wherein to his great solace he lived for the rest of his days’.¹⁹

Last but not least, as in the fable, the second marriage finally removes the same two obstacles to the legitimate union of Gualtieri and Griselda: the condition of a marriage between unequals and the fact that Gualtieri has stolen Griselda’s virginity. In fact, the sole reason for Gualtieri’s rejection of Griselda is, as she herself admits, her poor social status, which is unworthy of her husband’s noble status. In addition, the last part of Griselda’s speech brings up the problem of stolen virginity as a good that is impossible to give back.

Here Boccaccio is most likely relying on Apol. 92, where Apuleius makes a legal distinction between the dowry brought by the maiden and that brought by the widow:

One last consideration concerns Boccaccio’s decision to imitate Apuleius’ fable of Cupid and Psyche in the three novellas we have examined, and particularly in the Griselda tale that seals his narrative masterpiece. This choice is fully explained by Boccaccio himself in his Genealogia deorum, book 14, chapter 9:

The fable can give relief to those who are troubled by misfortune, as teaches Apuleius, who offers the story to Charis, a maiden taken prisoner by bandits. Throughout the fable, Boccaccio therefore aims to console all women ‘restrained by the will, the caprice, the commandment of fathers, mothers, brothers, and husbands’.²³ So Charis’ request to her warder to show some ‘human kindness’ (‘pietas humana’) and help her a little in her harsh misfortune (Met. 4.26) might have contributed to inspire Boccaccio’s memorable beginning: ‘’Tis humane to have compassion on the afflicted’.²⁴

In early 1373, Petrarch received in Padua a copy of Boccaccio’s Decameron and would later admit to having devoted only cursory attention to his younger friend’s work. Petrarch nonetheless did dwell at length on the Decameron’s last tale, the story of Griselda, which he first learned by heart and then translated into Latin. The poetic and intellectual reasons underlying this unprecedented work of his are committed to two of his Seniles, book 17, epistles 3 and 4, both sent to Boccaccio. Together with the attached Latin translation of the Griselda tale, these form a pre-humanist treatise entitled De insigni obedientia et fide uxoria. Ascribed to Petrarch’s programme of reviving classical antiquity in the Christian era, the Latin Griselda is a meditated and learned literary enterprise that far surpasses the boundaries of free imitatio. In many respects, it is in fact a rewriting of the source tale rather than a faithful translation. By following the precepts on the falsehood of the fabula in the Rhetorica ad Herennium (1.8.12) and Cicero’s De inventione (1.19.27), Petrarch chose to substitute the free inventiveness of the fabula with the pattern of historical exemplum, to turn an absolute model of patient conjugal love into an example of moral virtue for Christian imitation.²⁵ In the second part of this chapter, I would like to focus on Petrarch’s understanding of the Griselda tale while also trying to provide answers to important questions that are at stake when we study the complex intellectual process of his translation. What idea did he entertain of the ‘Griselda fable’, the very apex of Boccaccio’s masterpiece? Did his predilection for historical verisimilitude lead him to misunderstand Boccaccio’s idea of fabula? Last but not least, was he aware of the Apuleian source of Boccaccio’s tale?

Petrarch’s ideal programme for restoring classical antiquity in the Christian era, as far as it concerns his Latin Griselda, was not limited to the twofold task of dignifying the original vernacular text and imposing a Christian allegory upon it. It also aimed to raise questions concerning the principles and effects of narrative invention. As a matter of fact, Petrarch’s resort to the concept of historical verisimilitude was meant to call into question Boccaccio’s use of the fabula as a privileged narrative genre. In the proem to the Decameron, Boccaccio—with an evident sprezzatura— had defined his hundred tales as ‘stories or fables or parables or histories or whatever you like to style them’,²⁶ and in a letter to Francescuolo da Brossano lamenting the death of Petrarch, he would refer to the Griselda tale as ‘the last of my fables’ (‘ultima fabularum mearum’, ep. 24, § 41). If we now turn our attention to epistle 3 of Petrarch’s Seniles, we will discover that the source of the Griselda tale is instead termed ‘ystoria’:

Rather than emphasizing Petrarch’s use of the term ‘ystoria’, scholars have focused instead on the Latin expression ‘cum et michi semper ante multos annos audita placuisset’, suggesting that Petrarch has here in mind a popular story heard many years earlier and widely circulating in Florence. Indeed, a few have examined both the popular narrative tradition and, in particular, the folklore cycle of Cupid and Psyche.²⁸ However, it is very unlikely that Petrarch is here referring to a popular antecedent of the novella, as Vittore Branca has rightly pointed out.²⁹

Another possible reading of the ‘dulcis ystoria’ is suggested by the conclusion of epistle 3, where Petrarch introduces the key question of the novella’s authorship: ‘Whoever asks me whether it is true; that is, whether I have written a history or just a tale, I shall reply with the words of Crispus, Let the responsibility fall on the author, namely my Giovanni’.³⁰ For the first time in the letter, the opposition between fabula and historia finally comes to the fore. By stressing this difference in favour of historia, Petrarch attempts to restore verisimilitude to a story that would otherwise be unbelievable. He then touches upon the question again at the beginning of epistle 4:

The most relevant question for us is whether Petrarch’s distinction between fabula and historia was simply rhetorical, or whether he attributed a connotative meaning to the former term. If applied to the Griselda tale, in fact, the notion of fabula could not only refer to the classical genre of fictive narrative, to which the tale properly belongs, but also to the most important source of the tale itself, the Apuleian fabula of Cupid and Psyche, just as both meanings are implied in Boccaccio’s defining of Griselda as ‘ultima fabularum mearum’. In this latter case, Petrarch’s use of fabula in epistles 3 and 4 would aim to establish a sort of pre-humanist dialogue with his friend and disciple Boccaccio on the Christian interpretation of the Cupid and Psyche myth. Petrarch had indeed a good knowledge of Apuleius’ works, although he maintained in Fam. 22.2 (dated 1359) that he had read them with no attention:

As both Robert Carver and Julia Gaisser have pointed out, Petrarch’s Legi semel is contradicted by the evidence of his own manuscript copy.³³ Here the text of The Golden Ass has notes in Petrarch’s hand written in two periods, c. 1340–43 and c. 1347–50, which suggests prolonged and repeated exposure to Apuleius’ work. Textual echoes from Apuleius can be found in Petrarch’s Rerum memorandarum libri and Africa. Moreover, he frequently introduces Apuleius into his letters, for example in the first epistle of the Familiares to Ludwig van Kempen, as well as in the penultimate epistle of the Liber sine nomine, in which the allusion is precisely to the fable of Cupid and Psyche.³⁴

The evidence of Petrarch’s sensitivity to Boccaccio’s borrowings from Apuleius is not to be found in plain sight. Nor could it be, given the profound transformation of Boccaccio’s original text—aptly defined as a retexere— and, more generally, Petrarch’s humanistic attitude to dissimulating too close an imitation.³⁵ The most important thematic evidence that can confirm Petrarch’s attention to the Apuleian model as a source of the Griselda tale is certainly his understanding of the common plot, which, as we have seen in both Apuleius and Boccaccio, revolves dialectically around two marriages. Upon this complex narrative dynamic of the Cupid and Psyche story, as well as on its later interpretations, Petrarch was able to build the allegory of his text.

The discovery of the Apuleian source in the Decameron must have suggested to Petrarch the invention of Griselda as a figure of the soul, according to Fulgentius’ allegorical interpretation of the Cupid and Psyche story in Myth. 3.6. In Fulgentius, Psyche’s betrayal of Cupid’s faith allegorizes the soul’s fall into sin due to an excessive desire for knowledge, a fall which requires a second covenant to restore the original faith. In Fulgentius’ interpretation, Psyche’s journey corresponds to the journey of the soul that tries to rejoin God, or in other words the history of Adam and, ultimately, the story of Griselda. And if this is true, a new question arises: if Griselda always keeps her faith, why is she abandoned? That is, what is the actual reason for her fall? To answer this question, we need to reread Petrarch’s envoy of the novella, which provides the necessary starting point for interpretation. The story of Griselda does not offer a model of patience that women should imitate but, rather, a model of firmness of faith in God that all Christians should follow. And if God puts us to the test— Petrarch adds—it is because He wants us to become aware of our own weakness. The text’s final message is therefore entrusted to the praise of three virtues: patience in misfortunes, obedience to the divine law, and firmness of the faith. A more careful analysis can show that Griselda’s virtues exactly correspond to the three Christian theological virtues, through which Griselda-Psyche, or the soul, can aspire to rejoin God. Gualtieri chooses Griselda, in fact, because she possesses Charity; she then keeps the Faith notwithstanding the terrible trials she has to undergo; and, finally, she does not abandon Hope even when Gualtieri sends her back to her father’s house. Faith, as the most important of the three virtues, is mentioned again at the very end when Gualtieri reveals to his wife that he has intentionally put her to the test: ‘Dear Griselda, I know your faithfulness well enough, I have observed it; and I do not believe there is anyone under the heavens who has reaped such great proofs of conjugal love’.³⁶ But Griselda’s journey to salvation, like Psyche’s, has been a hard path studded with trials. If she, unlike Psyche, accepts everything obediently, the divine secrets remain hidden from her and it is precisely this that represents her inner weakness. Griselda, like Psyche, is finally safe because she is disposed to lose everything, even her own life, for an infinite love, supported by the faith that is the authentic way to trust in God.

I believe it is clear at this point that the ‘alius stilus’ Petrarch adopted to translate the Griselda tale does not allude only to the choice of Latin as a linguistic medium, but also, and more properly, to the new allegorical interpretation hidden under the veil of the fabula. However, it has so far passed unnoticed that some allegorical elements were already present in Boccaccio’s Griselda, elements which must have directed Petrarch’s attention to the moral meaning of the novella. As Luca Carlo Rossi has pointed out, when Gualtieri sends Griselda away, Petrarch’s formula ‘Et camisiam tibi unicam habeto’ (§ 31) depends not only on Boccaccio (‘E tu una camiscia ne porta’, § 46), but ultimately on Apuleius’ ‘tibique res tuas habeto’ (Met. 5.26.6), which Petrarch glossed as ‘formula divortii’ in his MS.³⁷

This provides clear evidence that Petrarch also drew on the source of the Griselda tale, the fable of Cupid and Psyche. But already in Boccaccio, Griselda’s garment is an element that bears the allegorical meaning of wisdom. It is Martianus Capella, one of Boccaccio’s sources for his exposition of the Cupid and Psyche myth in the Genealogia, who clarifies this meaning: among Minerva’s gifts to Psyche, he says in De nuptiis 1.7, there is also the ‘interula’, which Remigius of Auxerre in his commentary on Capella’s locus interprets as an allegory of the virtue of wisdom.³⁸ This allegory is clear to Petrarch, who uses not only the term ‘camisia’, like Boccaccio, but also ‘tunica’, like Remigio.³⁹ Wisdom is, in fact, the greatest of Griselda’s virtues, and it is through wisdom that she can conquer Gualtieri’s love. If Griselda’s request to take only a garment with her already in Boccaccio allegorizes Salomon’s request for wisdom, Petrarch makes this parallel explicit by representing Griselda as a public judge.

Figure 3. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 2193, f. 58v.

In Seniles 3 and 4, Petrarch argues that the inspiration for and content of Boccaccio’s Griselda was fictive rather than historical. Such a criticism was probably aimed at his friend’s declared unwillingness to clarify the genre to which his own tales properly belonged. We saw, in fact, that in the proem to the Decameron, one of the few sections that attracted Petrarch’s attention (‘libri principium finemque perspexi’, ep. 3, § 3), Boccaccio vaguely termed his tales ‘stories or fables or parables or histories’, somewhat as Apuleius does in Lucius’ metanarrative account of the Chaldaean oracle foretelling his future adventures: ‘I will become a long story, an unbelievable tale, a book in several volumes’.⁴⁰ If this really were the content of Petrarch’s criticism, a new reading of the Decameron, and this time a careful and thorough one, would have persuaded him that Boccaccio did not mean to seek refuge in the abstract fancies of fabula. Rather, Petrarch would have seen that Boccaccio sought to provide through it a different conception of history, one that would turn everyday life into a source of narrative realism of the type revealed in Fiammetta’s principle of verisimilitude, described in her prologue to the last tale of the Calandrino cycle: ‘in the telling of a story, to depart from the truth of things betided detracteth greatly from the listener’s pleasure’.⁴¹

According to Vittore Branca, in the three Latin treatises De mulieribus, De casibus, and Genealogia, Boccaccio would go on to investigate the relationship between reality (or history) and imagination, and in Genealogia 14.9 he seems to answer Petrarch’s persistent questions on this very relationship. Here, Boccaccio provides a general definition of fabula and particular definitions of its four kinds. The general definition reads: ‘fiction is a form of discourse, which, under the guise of invention, illustrates or proves an idea; and, as its superficial aspect is removed, the meaning of the author is clear’.⁴² But Boccaccio’s focus is on the second kind of fabula, which at times superficially mingles fiction with truth. In this very blending, Boccaccio equates the writings of the Old Testament with those of the ancient poets: ‘where history is lacking, neither one concerns itself with the superficial possibility, but what the poet calls fable or fiction our theologians have named figure’.⁴³

In ‘A philologist’s remarks on memoria’, Friedrich Ohly has emphasized the chronological continuity between ancient and medieval worlds, as well as the continuity between myth and history:

Figure 4. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 2193, f. 58v.

This continuity is palpable in narrators such as Apuleius and Boccaccio, who have so much in common, but also in Petrarch, whose Griselda tale, his unique narrative experiment, aims at historicizing fiction without losing the allegorical potential of the Apuleian fable. In The Golden Ass, the character of Lucius observes and registers reality from a new point of view, leading Gianfranco Gianotti to aptly speak of a peculiar and humorous application of the ‘autopsìa’ and the ‘akoé’, or the fundamental criterion of truthfulness that the ancient historiographical legacy has established for a reliable reconstruction of events. This is the only way that ‘fabula sanctions the historical importance of everyday life, putting it on the same level of important public events, while erudite historiography provides the fabula with the narrative tools it needs’.⁴⁵ Seen in this light, Apuleius’ method shows a striking affinity with that of Boccaccio, as both aim at ‘docere’ and ‘delectare’, or in other words to provide ‘diletto’ and ‘utile consiglio’, upon which Boccaccio’s own narrative art is entirely based. Likewise, Apuleius, through Boccaccio, lends Petrarch a unique narrative material upon which to build his own story of Griselda, destined to enjoy great appreciation from later writers precisely because it was meant to be history and hagiography at the same time.

Trinity College Dublin

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¹ Apuleius’ works are cited with no further reference from Apulée, Les métamorphoses, ed. D. S. Robertson, 3 vols (Paris 1940–45) and Opuscules philosophiques et fragments, ed. J. Beaujeu (Paris 1973). Boccaccio’s works are cited from Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. V. Branca, 10 vols (Milan 1964–98).

² See, in particular, G. F. Gianotti, ‘Da Montecassino a Firenze: la riscoperta di Apuleio’, in Il ‘Decameron’ nella letteratura europea, ed. C. Allasia (Rome 2006) 11.

³ See G. Billanovich, I primi umanisti e le tradizioni dei classici latini (Fribourg 1953) 16–19.

⁴ See M. Cursi, M. Fiorilla, ‘Boccaccio’, in Autografi dei letterati italiani: le origini e il Trecento, tome 1, eds G. Brunetti, M. Fiorilla, and M. Petoletti (Rome 2013) 53. Emanuele Casamassima has instead attributed most of the glosses to Boccaccio’s hand. See his ‘Dentro lo scrittoio del Boccaccio: i codici della tradizione’, in Il ‘Decameron’: pratiche testuali e interpretative, ed. A. Rossi (Bologna 1982) 253–260 (254).

⁵ On the influence of the Apuleian fable upon Boccaccio, see my Boccaccio umanista: studi su Boccaccio e Apuleio (Ravenna 2014).

⁶ I proposed that the Cupid and Psyche fable should be identified as the source of the Griselda tale in ‘Apuleio alla fine del ‘Decameron’: la novella di Griselda come riscrittura della lepida fabula di Amore e Psiche’, Filologia e critica 32.1 (2007) 3–17. Prior to my article, Luca Carlo Rossi, examining the Apuleian elements in Petrarch’s Griselda, had also considered plausible an influence on Boccaccio. See ‘In margine alla Griselda latina di Petrarca’, Acme 63 (2000) 139–160 (152). Later, Jessica Lara Lawrence Harkins devoted a chapter of her dissertation (‘Translations of Griselda’, unpublished doctoral thesis (Washington University 2008)) to the comparison between the Apuleian fable and Dec. 10.10.

⁷ §27, trans. J. M. Rigg: ‘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 faceano’. All passages quoted from Boccaccio’s Decameron follow Rigg’s translation unless otherwise noted.

⁸ Met. 6.9, trans. J. A. Hanson: ‘Et ecce’ inquit ‘nobis turgidi ventris sui lenocinio commovet miserationem, unde me praeclara subole aviam beatam scilicet faciat. Felix vero ego quae in ipso aetatis meae flore vocabor avia et vilis ancillae filius nepos Veneris audiet. Quamquam inepta ego quae frustra filium dicam; impares enim nuptiae et praeterea in villa sine testibus et patre non consentiente factae legitimae non possunt videri ac per hoc spurius iste nascetur, si tamen partum omnino perferre te patiemur’. All passages quoted from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses follow Hanson’s translation unless otherwise noted.

⁹ §3, trans. H. E. Butler: ‘quod in villa ac non in oppido tabulae nuptiales sint consignatae’. All passages quoted from Apuleius’ De magia follow Butler’s translation unless otherwise noted.

¹⁰ §3: ‘Lex quidem Iulia de maritandis ordinibus nusquam sui ad hunc modum interdicit: uxorem in uilla ne ducito’.

¹¹ Met. 5.26: ‘“Tu quidem” inquit “ob istud tam dirum facinus confestim toro meo divorte tibique res tuas habeto, ego vero sororem tuam”—et nomen quo tu censeris aiebat—“iam mihi confarreatis nuptis coniugabo” et statim Zephyro praecipit ultra terminos me domus eius efflaret’.

¹² On the terms of Latin matrimonial law used by Apuleius (‘dos’, ‘iustum matrimonium’, ‘concubinatus’, ‘confarreatio’, ‘divortium’, ‘repudium’, ‘tempus lugendi’, ‘novus contractus’), and known to Boccaccio from his studies of canon law at the University of Naples, see F. Norden, Apulejus von Madaura und das römische Privatrecht (Leipzig-Berlin 1912, reprinted 1974) 90–125. See also C. Fayer, La ‘familia’ romana: aspetti giuridici e antiquari. Sponsalia. Matrimonio. Dote, 2 vols (Rome 2005) II 223–26.

¹³ § 9: ‘una povera giovinetta che d’una villa vicina a casa sua era’.

¹⁴ § 22 : ‘in presenza di tutti la sposò’.

¹⁵ § 17 : ‘Io son venuto a sposar la Griselda’.

¹⁶ § 48 : ‘Giannucolo, che creder non avea mai potuto questo esser ver che Gualtieri la figliuola dovesse tener moglie, e ogni dí questo caso aspettando, guardati l’aveva i panni che spogliati s’avea quella mattina che Gualtier la sposò’.

¹⁷ Met. 6.23: ‘“Cuius primae iuventutis caloratos impetus freno quodam coercendos existimavi; sat est cotidianis eum fabulis ob adulteria cunctasque corruptelas infamatum. Tollenda est omnis occasio et luxuria puerilis nuptialibus pedicis alliganda. Puellam elegit et virginitate privavit: teneat, possideat, amplexus Psychen semper suis amoribus perfruatur.” Et ad Venerem conlata facie: “Nec tu” inquit “filia, quicquam contristere nec prosapiae tantae tuae statuque de matrimonio mortali metuas. Iam faxo nuptias non impares sed legitimas et iure civili congruas”, et ilico per Mercurium arripi Psychen et in caelum perduci iubet. Porrecto ambrosiae poculo: “Sume” inquit “Psyche, et immortalis esto, nec umquam digredietur a tuo nexu Cupido sed istae vobis erunt perpetuae nuptiae”’.

¹⁸ § 62–63: ‘intendo di rendere a te a un’ora ciò che io tra molte ti tolsi e con somma dolcezza le punture ristorare che io ti diedi. E per ciò con lieto animo prendi questa che tu mia sposa credi, e il suo fratello, per tuoi e miei figliuoli: […] e io sono il tuo marito’.

¹⁹ § 67: ‘Gualtieri, tolto Giannucolo dal suo lavorio, come suocero il pose in istato, che egli onoratamente e con gran consolazione visse e finí la sua vecchiezza’.

²⁰ § 44–45: ‘La donna, udendo queste parole, non senza grandissima fatica, oltre alla natura delle femine, ritenne le lagrime e rispose: “Signor mio, io conobbi sempre la mia bassa condizione alla vostra nobilità in alcun modo non convenirsi, e quello che io stata son con voi da Dio e da voi il riconoscea, né mai, come donatolmi, mio il feci o tenni ma sempre l’ebbi come prestatomi; piacevi di rivolerlo, e a me dee piacere e piace di renderlovi: ecco il vostro anello col quale voi mi sposaste, prendetelo. Comandatemi che io quella dota me ne porti che io ci recai: alla qual cosa fare né a voi pagatore né a me borsa bisognerà né somiere, per ciò che di mente uscito non m’è che ignuda m’aveste; e se voi giudicate onesto che quel corpo nel quale io ho portati i figliuoli da voi generati sia da tutti veduto, io me n’andrò ignuda; ma io vi priego, in premio della mia virginità che io ci recai e non ne la porto, che almeno una sola camiscia sopra la dota mia vi piaccia che io portar ne possa”’.

²¹ § 6–8: ‘Virgo formosa etsi sit oppido pauper, tamen abunde dotata est; affert quippe ad maritum novum animi indolem, pulchritudinis gratiam, floris rudimentum. Ipsa virginitatis commendatio iure meritoque omnibus maritis acceptissima est; nam quodcumque aliud in dotem acceperis, potes, cum libuit, ne sis beneficio obstrictus, omne ut acceperas retribuere, pecuniam remunerare, mancipia restituere, domo demigrare, praediis cedere: sola virginitas cum semel accepta est, reddi nequitur, sola apud maritum ex rebus dotalibus remanet. Vidua autem qualis nuptiis uenit, talis diuortio digreditur’.

²² Trans. C. G. Osgood: ‘Fabulis laborantibus sub pondere adversantis fortune non nunquam solamen inpensum est, quod apud Lucium Apuleium cernitur. Quem penes Carithes, generosa virgo infortunio suo apud predones captiva, captivitatem suam depolorans, ab anicula fabule Psycis lepiditate paululum refocillata est’. All passages quoted from Boccaccio’s Genealogia follow Osgood’s translation unless otherwise indicated.

²³ Proem§ 10: ‘ristrette da’ voleri, da’ piaceri, da’ comandamenti de’ padri, delle madri, de’ fratelli e de’ mariti’.

²⁴ Proem§ 1: ‘Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti’.

²⁵ For an introduction to the most important questions at stake in Petrarch’s Griselda, see G. Boccaccio and F. Petrarca, Griselda, ed. L. C. Rossi (Palermo 1991) 9–21.

²⁶ Proem§ 13: ‘novelle, o favole o parabole o istorie che dire le vogliamo’.

²⁷ ‘subito talis interloquendum cogitatio supervenit, fieri posse ut nostri etiam sermonis ignaros tam dulcis ystoria delectaret, cum et michi semper ante multos annos audita placuisset, et tibi usque adeo placuisse perpenderem ut vulgari eam stilo tuo censueris non indignam et fine operis, ubi rhetorum disciplina validiora quelibet collocari iubet’. All passages quoted from the two letters follow Pétrarque, Lettres de la vieillesse (Rerum senilium), ed. E. Nota, 5 vols (Paris 2002–13) V (2013) 161–99 (citation, 163, § 4). For the English translation, Petrarch, Letters of Old Age, trans. A. Bernardo, S. Levin, and R. A. Bernardo, 2 vols (New York 2005) II 655–71.

²⁸ For the definition of the Griselda story as ‘a development of some rationalized form of the Cupid and Psyche folktales’, G. L. Kittredge, ‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 4 (1903) 149–275 (241, n. 4). Discussion in A. de Gubernatis, De Sacountala à Griselda: le plus ancien des contes aryens (Rome 1905); D. D. Griffith, The Origin of the Griselda story (Chicago 1931); W. Armistrad Cate, ‘The problem of the origin of the Griselda story’, Studies in Philology 29 (1932) 389–405; W. E. Bettridge and F. Lee Utley, ‘New light on the origin of the Griselda story’, Texas Studies in Language and Literature 13 (1971) 153–208.

²⁹ See G. Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. V. Branca, 2 vols (Turin 1992) II 1232, n. 6.

³⁰ § 1: ‘Quisquis ex me queret, an hec vera sint, hoc est an historiam scripserim an fabulam, respondebo illud Crispi: Fides penes auctorem, meum scilicet Iohannem, sit’.

³¹ § 1: ‘nescio an res veras an fictas que iam non historie sed fabelle sunt ab hoc unum: quod res tue et a te scripte erant, quanvis hoc previdens fidem rerum penes auctorem, hoc est penes te, fore sim prefatus; et dicam tibi quid de hac historia, quam fabulam dixisse malim, mihi contingerit’.

³² ‘Legi semel apud Ennium, apud Plautum, apud Felicem Capellam, apud Apuleium, et legi raptim, propere, nullam nisi ut alienis in finibus moram trahens. Sic praetereunti multa contigit ut viderem, pauca decerperem, pauciora reponerem eaque ut communia in aperto et in ipso, ut ita dixerim, memorie vestibulo’. See F. Petrarca, Le familiari, ed. V. Rossi, 4 vols (Florence 1933–42) IV (1942) 105–06, ll. 64–69.

³³ Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 2193.

³⁴ See R. H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford 2007) 124–27; J. H. Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and ‘The Golden Ass’: A Study in Transmission and Reception (Princeton-Oxford 2008) 77–82. For Petrarch’s glosses, see C. Tristano, ‘Le postille del Petrarca nel ms. Vat. Lat. 2193 (Apuleio, Frontino, Vegezio, Palladio)’, Italia medioevale e umanistica 17 (1974) 365–468.

³⁵ See, for example, his letter Fam. 22.2 to Boccaccio, which includes alternative readings for his Bucolicum carmen in order to avoid too close an imitation of Virgil and Ovid.

³⁶ § 35: ‘“Satis” inquit “mea Griseldis, cognita et spectata michi fides est tua, nec sub cielo aliquem esse puto qui tanta coniugalis amoris experimenta perceperit”’.

³⁷ See Rossi, ‘In margine alla Griselda’ (n. 4, above) 154. For the meaning of the legal formula, Norden, Apulejus von Madaura und das römische Privatrecht (n. 10, above) 120.

³⁸ ‘interiore tunica, hoc est supparo quod vulgo dicitur camisia. Per interulam designatur interior quaedam virtus, qua ipsam solam diligimus sapientiam quaque spretis omnibus aliis ipsi soli cupimus inhaerere’. See Tutti i commenti a Marziano Capella, ed. I. Ramelli (Milan 2006) 886. For the word ‘interula’, see Florida 9.18.

³⁹ § 31: ‘Senex […] tunicam eius hispidam et attritam senio, abdita parve domus in parte servaverat’.

⁴⁰ Met. 2.12: ‘nunc historiam magnam et incredundam fabulam et libros me futurum’.

⁴¹ Dec. 9.5.5: ‘il partirsi dalla verità delle cose state nel novellare è gran diminuire di diletto negl’intendenti’.

⁴² ‘Fabula est exemplaris seu demonstrativa sub figmento locutio, cuius amoto cortice, patet intentio fabulantis’.

⁴³ ‘Nam, ubi absit hystoria, neuter de possibilitate superficiali curat, et quod poeta fabulam aut fictionem nuncupat, figuram nostri theologi vocavere’.

⁴⁴ F. Ohly, Sensus Spiritualis: Studies in Medieval Significs and the Philology of Culture, trans. K. J. Northcott, ed. S. P. Jaffe (Chicago 2004).

⁴⁵ G. F. Gianotti, Romanzo e ideologia: Studi sulle ‘Metamorfosi’ di Apuleio (Naples 1986) 102–03 and 111.