An Anglo-Norman Prose Tale and the Source of the Seventh Novel of the Seventh Day in the Decameron

Prior to the publication of Schofield's classic study The Source and History of the Seventh Novel of the Seventh Day in the Decameron, ¹ there was general unanimity among critics that the source of Boccaccio's novella was the Continental French fabliau La Borgoise d'Orliens. ² Schofield, however, was influenced by an episode in the Old French Romans de Bauduin de Sebourc, dating from the first half of the fourteenth century, to believe that Boccaccio's version of "le mari cocu, battu et content" theme was founded "on a floating story of which both the Borgoise and the episode in Bauduin are variants independent of each other and of Boccaccio" (190). He did not speculate further on what might have been the nature of this "floating story" other than to trace the early history and possible sources of those features common to the episode in Bauduin and Boccaccio's novella but missing from La Borgoise d'Orliens. No version of "le mari cocu, battu et content" story which would satisfy the criteria stipulated by Schofield has been discovered since he published his study, but some evidence which he ignored or undervalued contributes to a better understanding of the probable nature of this lost exemplar. Once collated with the known facts, this new evidence supports an interpretation of Boccaccio's source materials different from that suggested by the texts assembled in Schofield's study.

The key text for such a revaluation is an Anglo-Norman (AN) prose version of "le mari cocu, battu et content" theme found in the four B-family manuscripts of the six surviving copies of La Maniere de langage de 1396, one of a group of treatises written as a guide to correct French usage for an Insular audience. ³ Schofield noted its existence as a French version of "le mari cocu, battu et content" theme, and gave a brief prose summary of its contents in English, but he knew it only from the unsatisfactory transcription in Shakespeare's Jest Book, and had little reason to pay attention to its crucially important context in La Maniere de langage. Its place in the history of Boccaccio's novella is described only by the cautious statement that "if derived from the Decameron it has been considerably modified, doubtless by oral transmission" (203). In noting the differences between the two texts Schofield suggested a relationship predicated on the fact that Boccaccio's version antedates La Maniere de langage by almost half a century. But in the history of an extremely popular tale which has circulated for many years through several different cultures, and which, by Schofield's own acknowledgement, must have lost many of its exemplars to a natural process of attrition, chronology is of limited significance in determining the precise relationship between texts. Examination of the similarities between Boccaccio's version of the 'mari cocu, battu et content' theme and that appearing in the AN prose treatise leads to the critically more efficacious conclusion that one of only two possibilities exists: either the AN version was derived from Boccaccio, or Boccaccio derived his novella from some earlier version of the AN text.

Since three of the four exemplars of the tale preserved in La Maniere de langage have been published in one form or another, access to it is not difficult, but for general readers interested in making comparison between the AN and Italian texts a detailed précis of the former will be of assistance:

A gentleman traveller proposes to tell the hostess of the inn where he has taken lodging an amusing story which he hopes she will not find offensive. It concerns a noblewoman of Burgundy who excelled in beauty and virtue all the other women of that region. The lady had a husband who was a good and valiant knight...