2008 Congress<\/a><\/p>\n[Published on our first website on 16 May 2012]<\/p>\n
In romance, the decapitation of a character does not always signal death, as the head can speak and even reattach itself, most famously in Gawain and the Green Knight<\/em>. \u00a0In the medieval romance, macabre imagery such as being tricked into eating a lover\u2019s heart, or dying gruesomely for love, are commoon motifs. \u00a0The praising of body parts, the blazon<\/em>, is also common in medieval romance, as is the social convention of venerating saintly relics. \u00a0In all these motifs, the dismembered body comes to represent various aspects of social need, often related to communal values or communal fears about the breakdown of such values.<\/p>\nIn The Decameron<\/em>, the fourth day is dedicated to telling stories of love that ended unhappily. \u00a0Perhaps the most interesting tale here is the fifth story, the story of Lisabetta\u2019s murdered lover. \u00a0With the retrieval of her lover\u2019s head and her devoted care for the basil pot in which she buries the head, Lisabetta usurps her brothers\u2019 desire to rid her of her lover. \u00a0The story hints, however, that the brothers have failed their sister by not finding her a suitable husband. \u00a0Their homicidal scheme to save the family honor eventually leads to the discovery of their sister\u2019s affair and their role in the lover\u2019s murder.<\/p>\nWithin this story of macabre imagery of love and sympathy for sinful lovers there is also a subtle moral for those who place too much emphasis on their place in the community rather than their moral duty to a family member. \u00a0The merchant-class brothers do not kill the lover for the dishonor to their sister, but rather for the threat the affair has to their social standing. \u00a0In this tale, images and motifs mix together in conflicting ways, perhaps pointing to conflicts within the understanding of the social dynamics represented in these tales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mary Leech (University of Cincinnati) “Social Virtue and Family Honor in Boccaccio’s Unhappy Romances” Abstract of Paper Presented at the 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, 2008) Session on “Heads Will Roll: \u00a0Decapitation Motifs in Medieval Romance” Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence Organized By Jeff Massey and Larissa Tracy 2008 Congress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1023,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3886"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3887,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3886\/revisions\/3887"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}