Pilgrim Wombs, Physicke and Bed-Tricks: Intellectual Brilliance, Attenuation and Elision in Decameron III:9

This article investigates the reception of Boccaccio's novella of Giletta di Narbona, Decameron III:9. The novella, which inspired many plays, including Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, has received controversial judgments from the critics, based on its allegedly sketch-like plot design. The author proposes a reassessment of the novella, showing the connections with other novelle, such as that of Griselda (Dec., X:10). The author's contention is that Boccaccio deliberately muffles the verve and genius of III:9 to cause the surrounding tales to shine brighter.

The tale's plot, revolving around the thematic threads of Giletta's infatuation and the fulfillment of her medical challenge, incorporates a critique of Christian asceticism and eroticism, whose origin may be traced back to the fabliaux. Boccaccio's witty sequence of events presents the role of matrimony and child bearing in the complex balance of medieval societal dynamics. Having dealt with the religious and ritualistic aspects of Giletta's growth to parenthood, the author scrutinizes the medical and psychological motives behind Boccaccio's depiction of a female physician.

On the foundation of the Platonic and Hippocratic notion of a mobile uterus, which was inherited by the Salernian School, the author highlights how the "wandering womb," allegorizes and parodies Giletta's vicissitudes in her attempt to become a mother. By escaping her courtly, chauvinistic milieu and by healing the King of France, Giletta exerts her dead father's intellectual and social function, thus getting to marry her beloved Beltramo. She then proves able to carry out her absent husband's governing duties, and eventually tricks him into sleeping with her. She begets two children, thus fulfilling Beltramo's nearly impossible requests. By an errant life, Giletta "gains manipulative and even sadistic mastery over what has made her abject to herself and to others."