Shrewd and Wanton Women: Adultery in the Decameron and the Heptameron

Abstract

The faithless wife, like her opposite, the wife who demonstrates her fidelity through many trials, is a character as old as the short story itself. Deceitful adulteresses, or would-be adulteresses, found in such diverse works as ancient Egyptian and Indian tales, Greek legends, and the Bible, feature prominently in several of the anonymous framed collections of short stories, of Eastern origin, which circulated widely in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. In the popular and influential collection known variously as Dolopathos, The Tale of the Seven Wise Masters, or The Seven Sages, for instance, such figures are used in the negative portrayal of women which dominates in both framework and stories: a lustful queen’s false accusation against her stepson is finally disproved, and, despite the stories told in her support, the tales told against women help convince the king of her duplicity. Medieval preachers used such misogynistic tales as exempla, using adulteresses to illustrate the qualities associated with the negative side of the Church’s two-fold representation of women: the temptress Eve rather than the Virgin Mary, and unredeemed fallen nature rather than divine grace. They were also among the sources of many fabliaux and of stories in later, literary framed collections.¹

We are very grateful to Zyg Barański and Giulio Lepschy for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.