|
|
Article: Male piety and sexuality in Boccaccio's Decameron.(Giovanni Boccaccio)
- Article from:
- Philological Quarterly
- Article date:
- June 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 University of Iowa. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
This essay examines the tension between male piety and male sexual performance in selected novelle in Giovanni Boccaccio's fourteenth-century collection of prose narratives, the Decameron. Recent studies in medieval masculinities have sensitized the modern reader to the problems of practicing and performing male identities in medieval amatory literature. (1) Scholars are learning that being male can no longer simply--and erroneously--be understood as the enjoyment of social, economical, and physical power over women. Terms like "patriarchy" and "male-dominated society," through still frequent in criticism, can no longer be used as metonymies for the entire experience of ...