earticle

영어

This study aims to interpret Boccaccio's last fiction, il Corbaccio, one of the most controversial works of his, as a moral treaty rather than a simple literary fiction. In particular, by placing the work in a proper historical context in which the author lived as a public persona for his city Florence, the present study ultimately tries to delve into Boccaccio's view of women. In that regard, the comparison of the lurid misogyny represented in il Corbaccio with the contemporary concerns for women's vanity shows us that Boccaccio, by stressing men's vendetta against women, represented male-centered world-view throughout the work. The sumptuary laws of Boccaccio's ages and the contemporary fear of women's dominance over men, both of which are the main issues running underneath the work, are representative of this gender-biased view of women, society, and universe etc. In short, il Corbaccio, despite its literary form of fiction that seemingly does not present any social significance, is a moral treaty for enlightening contemporary male readers, because the work puts its emphasis upon the hierarchical order of the world based upon gender-relationship and offers a broad spectrum of ideological standpoints on how the nature and worth of women were understood in the institutional context of the mid-Trecento Florence.