The Decameron, by Boccaccio, is a frame story written in the mid fourteenth century. There are a hundred stories told over a span of ten days. On the second day, a man tells a story about a princess, Alatiel, who was sent away to marry a king. Before Alatiel reaches her destination, she has sexual experiences with a lot of different men. Alatiel is treated like an object and allows this objectification to happen because she is so fickle and does nothing to stop the men. The fickleness of Alatiel and the treatment of her as an object is evident throughout the story.
The story starts off portraying Alatiel as an object when her father, the sultan of Babylon, promises her hand to the king of Algarve (48). Alatiel has no say in who she marries. Instead she is a gift from her father to the king of Algarve. Alatiel goes with Pericone but his brother, Marato wants the princess also. Marato takes Alatiel and “a large part of Pericone’s valuable possessions'; to the ship they are leaving on (52). This sentence implies that Alatiel is one of Pericone’s possessions. Alatiel is treated like property again when she is on the boat. Two men think that her “her love could be shared like merchandise or money'; (52). Once she gets to a new destination the prince of Morea looks “for a way of possessing her'; (53). He doesn’t and can’t win her love because they do not speak the same language. However, this doesn’t ...
In the plays female sexuality is not expressed variously through courtship, pregnancy, childbearing, and remarriage, as it is in the period. Instead it is narrowly defined and contained by the conventions of Petrarchan love and cuckoldry. The first idealizes women as a catalyst to male virtue, insisting on their absolute purity. The second fears and mistrusts them for their (usually fantasized) infidelity, an infidelity that requires their actual or temporary elimination from the world of men, which then re-forms [sic] itself around the certainty of men’s shared victimization (Neely 127).
: What is woman perception for Boccaccio , How women represented in Decameron,Why is sexuality used in the Decameron?What are the differences between Chaucer and Boccaccio?What are the references of Dante take places in the Decameron
Over the course of time, the roles of men and women have changed dramatically. As women have increasingly gained more social recognition, they have also earned more significant roles in society. This change is clearly reflected in many works of literature, one of the most representative of which is Plautus's 191 B.C. drama Pseudolus, in which we meet the prostitute Phoenicium. Although the motivation behind nearly every action in the play, she is glimpsed only briefly, never speaks directly, and earns little respect from the male characters surrounding her, a situation that roughly parallels a woman's role in Roman society of that period. Women of the time, in other words, were to be seen and not heard. Their sole purpose was to please or to benefit men. As time passed, though, women earned more responsibility, allowing them to become stronger and hold more influence. The women who inspired Lope de Vega's early seventeenth-century drama Fuente Ovejuna, for instance, rose up against not only the male officials of their tiny village, but the cruel (male) dictator busy oppressing so much of Spain as a whole. The roles women play in literature have evolved correspondingly, and, by comparing The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue, we can see that fictional women have just as increasingly as their real-word counterparts used gender differences as weapons against men.
In Filostrato, by Giovanni Boccaccio, influence plays an essential role in where one person influences the other in many ways. The influence one has over another can be strong or poor. A strong influence where a person does or listens to everything someone says or a poor influence where a person does not listen to anything anyone says. Pandaro, who is a close friend to Trolio and a cousin to Criseida, has a strong influence on both of them to which he gets them to listen to him and use the advice he gives without question.
This essay will closely study and describe Rosso Fiorentino’s The Descent from the Cross. The painting depicts the process of Jesus Christ being taken off of the cross.
First, the government used a dangerous literal interpretation of a Biblical passage as justification for adultery under the guise of reproduction. Second, the state constantly reinforced its falsified morality by saturating daily routines with religious expressions. Lastly, the regime altered Biblical references to further its political goals, and then prohibited language to prevent exposing its duplicity. Although Gilead rather effectively erased women’s values to construct a hyper-patriarchy, The Handmaid’s Tale provides a voice for this silenced population.
The book then talks about viewpoints of women, both real and those who face tragedy. Women during this time were very secluded and silent, but the heroines contradicted that. This chapter talks about the images of women in the classical literature in Athens, and the role they had in society. Many tragedies were ones that formed by mythes during the Bronze Age. It showed the separation in what made women heroic, rather than average. While viewing other Scholarly sourcese, Pomerory writes her own theory, she used others
In The Descent of Alette Alice Notley has created an epic poem that confronts male hegemony. The tyrant symbolizes the corrupt patriarchy while Alette symbolizes the capabilities of a female to overcome their gender specific personality traits placed on them by society. Notley addresses the thesis continuously throughout the poem using form, symbolism, and historical context.
Decameron is a "fictional record of the stories that ten Florentine men and women told to entertain
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel in which Atwood creates a world which seems absurd and near impossible. Women being kept in slavery only to create babies, cult like religious control over the population, and the deportation of an entire race, these things all seem like fiction. However Atwood's novel is closer to fact than fiction; all the events which take place in the story have a base in the real world as well as a historical precedent. Atwood establishes the world of Gilead on historical events as well as the social and political trends which were taking place during her life time in the 1980's. Atwood shows her audience through political and historical reference that Gilead was and is closer than most people realize.
In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, women are subjected to unthinkable oppression. Practically every aspect of their life is controlled, and they are taught to believe that their only purpose is to bear children for their commander. These “handmaids” are not allowed to read, write or speak freely. Any type of expression would be dangerous to the order of the Gilead’s strict society. They are conditioned to believe that they are safer in this new society. Women are supposedly no longer exploited or disrespected (pornography, rape, etc.) as they once were. Romantic relationships are strongly prohibited because involving emotion would defeat the handmaid’s sole purpose of reproducing. Of course not all women who were taken into Gilead believed right what was happening to their way of life. Through the process of storytelling, remembering, and rebellion, Offred and other handmaids cease to completely submit to Gilead’s repressive culture.
Traditional female characteristics and female unrest are underscored in literary works of the Middle Ages. Although patriarchal views were firmly established back then, traces of female contempt for such beliefs could be found in several popular literary works. Female characters’ opposition to societal norms serves to create humor and wish- fulfillment for female and male audiences to enjoy. “Lanval” by Marie De France and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer both show subversion of patriarchal attitudes by displaying the women in the text as superior or equal to the men. However, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” also incorporates conventional societal ideas by including degradation of women and mistreatment of a wife by her husband.
In the story, the narrator is forced to tell her story through a secret correspondence with the reader since her husband forbids her to write and would “meet [her] with heavy opposition” should he find her doing so (390). The woman’s secret correspondence with the reader is yet another example of the limited viewpoint, for no one else is ever around to comment or give their thoughts on what is occurring. The limited perspective the reader sees through her narration plays an essential role in helping the reader understand the theme by showing the woman’s place in the world. At ...
Many short story writers have written about the gender and role of woman in society. Some of these stories express what Barbara Walter calls, “The Cult of True Womanhood” meaning the separation of both man and woman in social, political and economic spheres. In order to be considered a “true woman” woman were to abide by the set of standards that were given to her. Women were expected to live by the four main principal virtues - piety, purity, submissiveness, and domestication. In Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Storm,” Calixta the main female character breaks away from “The Cult of True Womanhood” when she has a sexual encounter with her past lover Alcée. The storm goes through many twists and turns that tie with their adulterous actions. Although she breaks away from the four main principal virtues, she in the end is considered to be pure innocent of heart because the action in which occurred happened instantly, and as white as she was, she was taken away from her innocence.
Marguerite of Navarre was a very influential humanist Catholic reformist. She married King Henry II of France, making her Queen of Navarre in 1527. Marguerite’s most famous work is her book The Heptameron, a series of short stories told to pass the time while stranded in a monastery. Her book was published 9 years after her death, in 1558 (Elmer, 2000, p. 56). One of the stories she wrote was “Novel XXX,” a cautionary tale about what can happen if one doesn’t stay pure. With Marguerite of Navarre’s influence, the inclusion of “Novel XXX” in The Heptameron say a lot about how sex and celibacy was perceived in the Renaissance.