The Case of the Court Entertainer: Popular Culture, Intertextual Dialogue, and the Early Circulation of Boccaccio’s <i>Decameron</i>

Previous articleNext article FreeThe Case of the Court Entertainer: Popular Culture, Intertextual Dialogue, and the Early Circulation of Boccaccio’s DecameronWilliam RobinsWilliam Robins Search for more articles by this author William Robins is President of Victoria University in the University of Toronto (e-mail: [email protected])PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAs a self-assured vernacular literary culture consolidated in fourteenth-century Italy, Italian writers frequently measured their own achievements against previous genres and traditions—Latin classical poetry, Occitan and Sicilian lyric, French romances, rhetorical and philosophical instruction, and so on—sorting out which features of these traditions remained vital enough to be drawn upon in new literary experiments, and which features needed to be abandoned or thoroughly transformed. One legacy that presented a unique set of challenges was the quasi-theatrical practice of giullari, minstrel-like entertainers who busked in the streets or performed at wealthy dinner parties, telling stories, singing songs, and cracking jokes in hope of being rewarded with food, money, or clothes. The most conspicuous practitioners in this tradition were uomini di corte (court entertainers), performers who wandered from court to court; their hallmark talent was a repartee of pleasantries, jokes, and barbs (piacevolezze, facezie, motti), many of which, repeated by word of mouth or recorded in writing, entered into a popular repertoire of humorous anecdotes. When trecento writers considered the relationship of their own verbal artistry to popular traditions of entertainment, the figure of the uomo di corte served as an emblem of the performative energy, verbal wit, and scurrility associated with giullari.This essay demonstrates how trecento writers themselves broached their perplexing relation to performative traditions of entertainment. I explore their concerns by eavesdropping upon an intertextual conversation about uomini di corte that takes place across a series of texts composed by four Florentine writers. In these four texts (each of which is in dialogue with the preceding ones) the figure of the uomo di corte encapsulates concerns about how vernacular literature might mediate between popular and elite cultural registers. Eavesdropping upon this conversation, I analyze each of these four texts, teasing out their literary-cultural import and paying particular attention to the aesthetics of creative imitation and allusion. This intertextual conversation is set in motion by Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321), who names the uomo di corte Guiglielmo Borsiere in Inferno 16. Dante’s concerns about social deportment are sharpened by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) in his novella about Guiglielmo Borsiere, Decameron 1.8. In turn, Boccaccio’s judgments about uomini di corte received a quick response from a fellow writer of humbler status, Antonio Pucci (c. 1310–88). Finally, in the 1390s Franco Sacchetti (c. 1335–c. 1400) crafted his own reply to both Boccaccio and Pucci.The key step in this chain of rewritings, at least for my purposes here, is Pucci’s response to Boccaccio, first, because this borrowing has never been noticed and thus merits fuller description, and, second, because of its early date. Composed sometime between 1353 and 1361 (reasons for this dating are set out in the Appendix to this essay), Pucci’s reworking of Decameron 1.8 provides an early, indeed perhaps the very earliest, piece of evidence for the existence of the Decameron. It adds a new dimension to our understanding of the earliest circulation of Boccaccio’s masterpiece, providing insights into how it was received and which of its features excited attention. Pucci’s subordinate social status as a hireling of Florence’s signoria distinguishes him sociologically from other early readers of the Decameron of whom we know, his visibility in trecento Florence as a non-elite, civic poet aligning him in some respects with the subaltern position and cultural function of a uomo di corte. Thus while the first part of this essay examines the intertextual conversation among Dante, Boccaccio, Pucci, and Sacchetti, the final part reassesses the cultural milieux in which the Decameron first appeared in light of Pucci’s engagement with Boccaccio concerning the cultural significance of court entertainers.As the linguistic evidence from trecento Italy shows, the term uomo di corte designated a menial attendant at an aristocratic court who provided recreational entertainment or witty conversation, which enhanced the sociability of the court and embellished its prestige.1 The term is used most widely of itinerant performers in search of largesse, but it is also used for long-term retainers or occasional hirelings. Common synonyms are giullare, giocolatore, buffone, and istrione. Although modern commentators sometimes consider a uomo di corte to be the same as a cortigiano or even a cavaliere, and although translators of the Decameron into English often render the term as “courtier,” such interpretations are misleading. It is true that Franco Sacchetti praises some uomini di corte as “mezzi cortigiani” (half courtiers), and there was indeed an expectation that the most talented performers would be suitable ornaments of aristocratic milieux.2 Nevertheless, the term in its trecento usage was a fancy label for jongleur-like entertainers who hung around courts angling for rewards. They certainly were not of aristocratic or gentle status, not even if, as sometimes happened, they were honored by being symbolically “knighted” and called cavalieri di corte.3Their entertainments combined low and high registers, tailoring the edgy humor of popular culture to suit the expectations of an elite audience. As an integral component of a noble lifestyle organized around conspicuous spectacles of wealth and prestige, performances by court entertainers were a characteristic adornment of aristocratic courts, occurring after meals and at grand feasts. Aristocratic enjoyment of such entertainments found moral legitimacy in the idea of “recreation,” whereby men and women burdened with cares of this world could, by means of the relaxing effects of playful diversion, attain physical health and spiritual renewal.4 The verbal wit of uomini di corte was also appreciated for contributing to the overall sociability of an aristocratic court, in line with the Aristotelian notion that pleasant and humorous conversation (eutrapelia) improves the mental disposition of both the speaker and the listeners.5 Yet if the venues were dominated by the needs of an elite class, the performers themselves were of markedly inferior status, often starting off as buskers or beggars, contortionists or con men; even if they enjoyed success, they lived hand to mouth as subaltern dependents. For the libidinal energies associated with the display of their bodies, for the stimulation occasioned by their words, and for the shamelessness of their apparent greed, they were treated with suspicion by church and civil authorities alike. Uomini di corte performed a delicate balancing act: they drew upon verbal entertainments that were highly charged with popular and subversive energies, subtly transmuting them so that they could be proffered to aristocratic listeners for their recreation and diversion.Trecento writers, conscious of the degree to which their own vernacular compositions blended popular appeal and highbrow urbanity, often addressed the fact that their work was both like and unlike the provocative diversions offered by uomini di corte. The anonymous author of the late thirteenth-century Novellino, striving to inculcate an aptitude for “bel parlare” (witty conversation) among nobles, presents his work as continuous with the courtly diversions proffered by uomini di corte. His gathering of tales includes several anecdotes about uomini di corte and their clever turns of phrase: “Saladino, lo quale era homo di corte, essendo in Cicilia per mangiare ad una tavola con molti cavalieri …” (A uomo di corte named Saladino once visited Sicily to dine at a table where many knights were gathered …), and so on.6 Petrarch, on the other hand, in a letter to Boccaccio, proudly distances his own poetry from the derivative artistry, histrionic display, and servile greed of jongleurs:Nosti quidem hoc vulgare ac vulgatum genus vitam verbis agentium, nec suis, quod apud nos usque ad fastidium percrebuit. Sunt homines non magni ingenii, magne vero memorie magneque diligentie sed maioris audacie, regum ac potentum aulas frequentant, de proprio nudi, vestiti autem carminibus alienis dumque quid ab hoc aut ab illo exquisitius, materno presertim charactere, dictum sit ingenti expressione pronunciant, gratiam sibi nobilium et pecunias querunt et vestes et munera.[You know the vulgar and banal breed that makes a living on words not its own; they have spread among us to the point of nausea. They are men of no great talent, but great memory and drive and even greater effrontery, who frequent the palaces of rulers and powerful men, devoid of anything of their own, yet dressed in others’ verses. Whatever someone has neatly said, especially in the vernacular, they declaim with inordinate emphasis, seeking the nobility’s favor, money, clothing, and gifts.]7Many other vernacular writers exhibit a mixture of appreciation and scorn: even when performative entertainments provided them with materials to appropriate or with attitudes to emulate, writers carefully distanced themselves from those aspects of the giullare tradition that might provoke charges of impertinence or scurrility.No vernacular writer exhibits a greater ambivalence toward popular entertainments than does Boccaccio in the Decameron.8 Boccaccio acknowledges that his collection of tales is heavily indebted to performative currents of jokes and storytelling through the many novellas that feature court entertainers, itinerant performers, and local jokers.9 In yet other novellas Boccaccio appropriates tales and motifs from the repertoire of popular storytellers, transmuting their materials into artfully crafted stories, far removed in tone and purpose from the crude badinage of giullari. Even while exploiting this repertoire Boccaccio often hides his tracks. For example, for the plot of Decameron 6.1, in which the noble Madonna Oretta wittily reprimands a knight for being an incompetent storyteller, Boccaccio draws upon an anecdote from the Novellino repertoire about a waiter who silences a long-winded uomo di corte with a witty insult; the servile context of uomini di corte is quietly purged from Boccaccio’s version, which offers instead a picture of refined, aristocratic sociability.10 Similarly, when the frame tale of the Decameron presents a gathering of aristocrats listening to diverting stories, some of them witty and some bordering on the licentious, one might well have expected to find entertainers at work, given that uomini di corte were the professionals traditionally tasked with proffering tales and witticisms to noble audiences; but there is no trace of giullari here, for they have been eclipsed by the decorous young aristocrats. In this respect, the Decameron is predicated in part upon a disavowal of popular storytellers and uomini di corte, despite the fact (or rather, because of the fact) that their repertoire has been ransacked by Boccaccio for compelling narrative material.Scholarship has approached the study of giullari and uomini di corte rather gingerly—there is a dearth of surviving texts, and scholars remain wary of projecting onto them a romantic nostalgia for a lost minstrel tradition. Even as promising a topic as the Decameron’s harnessing of popular storytelling has generally been sidestepped because of such methodological hurdles.11 Nevertheless, trecento writers often reveal mixed feelings about the proximity of their own works to contemporary forms of performative entertainment, and these mixed feelings—sometimes voiced explicitly, sometimes encoded in the semiotic play of their compositions—are available for historical examination. In the intertextual conversation traced below, four Florentine writers express different worries about the proximity of their art to popular traditions: to stake out their positions they treat the figure of the court entertainer as a stimulus for metaliterary self-reflection.The Figure of the Uomo di CorteDanteIn Inferno 16, the soul of Iacopo Rusticucci asks Dante the Pilgrim whether “cortesia e valor” (courtesy and valor) can still be found in Florence. Iacopo justifies his question by explaining that a recent arrival, Guiglielmo Borsiere, has brought dismaying reports about the current state of Florentine manners. Iacopo’s question prompts an outburst of righteous indignation by Dante, who laments that the rise of the nouveau riche has bred “orgoglio e dismisura” (excess and arrogance) which have eclipsed the true values of cortesia:“cortesia e valor dì se dimorane la nostra città sì come suole,o se del tutto se n’è gita fora;ché Guiglielmo Borsiere, il qual si duolecon noi per poco e va là coi compagni,assai ne cruccia con le sue parole.”“La gente nuova e sùbiti guadagniorgoglio e dismisura han generata,Fiorenza, in te, sì che tu già ten piagni.”Così gridai con la faccia levata.(Inferno 16.67–76)[“… tell us if valor and courtesy still livethere in our city, as once they used to do,or have they utterly forsaken her?Guglielmo Borsiere, grieving with us hereso short a time, goes yonder with our companyand makes us worry with his words.”“The new crowd with their sudden profitshave begot in you, Florence, such excessand arrogance that you already weep.”This, my face uplifted, I cried out.]12 Dante presents a simple schema of the decline of cortesia: the good old days of true noble civility, associated with Iacopo Rusticucci and his fellows (most of whom flourished in the early and mid-1200s), have recently (that is, around the end of the thirteenth century) given way to a debasement of courtliness caused, in the pilgrim’s estimation, by a distressing lack of manners among Florence’s foreign immigrants and nouveau riche.13This message of decline has already been brought to Iacopo Rusticucci by Guiglielmo Borsiere, who, unlike Iacopo and his fellows, is not himself an aristocrat. Early commentaries on the Commedia explain that Guiglielmo Borsiere was a famous uomo di corte of the late thirteenth century.14 Guiglielmo Borsiere registers, but is not responsible for, the debasement of cortesia, a point that is noted by Boccaccio’s student Benvenuto da Imola, who observes that Dante made a wise choice in having Guiglielmo as the figure “qui dolet de curialitate perdita in patria sua, quia ipse erat optimus judex in tali causa, et bene noverat curialitatem et curiales suae patriae” (who grieves about the loss of courtliness in his own country, because he was a superb judge on such a topic, for he had known his country’s courtliness and its courtly persons).15 As a superlative entertainer, his knowledge of curialitatem and curiales would have entailed a familiarity with numerous courts, a professional’s grasp of audience expectations, and a credible estimation of appropriate remuneration—making him an accurate barometer of the state of courtly behavior. For Dante, Guiglielmo Borsiere represents a period in the past when the respectful wit of a court entertainer and the civilized decorum of noble patrons had properly converged; in those days, a subaltern dependent who was well integrated into the courtly scene could recognize “cortesia e valor” better than can the current arriviste members of the Florentine elite. Additionally, Guiglielmo Borsiere’s reproof of current aristocrats is in keeping with the expectation that one task of uomini di corte was to deliver criticism couched in humor and irony; thus when Iacopo says that Guiglielmo “assai ne cruccia con le sue parole” (makes us worry with his words), he describes the uomo di corte as if reprising the role of the scold, now with more acerbity than humor.Michele Scherillo has suggested that this reference to Guiglielmo Borsiere—along with Dante’s naming of two other uomini di corte, Ciacco (Inferno 6) and Marco Lombardo (Purgatorio 16)—entails a metaliterary moment of self-reflection. Dante, during the period when he wrote the Commedia, traveled among aristocratic courts in northern Italy, flaunting his skill as a vernacular poet in order to secure the support of patrons: “he knew how to steer clear of the dissipations of the uomini di corte, but if not out of choice than out of like them he had to for his living hand to the of to them his as or and and anecdotes Dante’s status at the courts of his Petrarch, for example, Dante, by ac and at the court of when by he the crowd as as verbis ac apud ac quick wit who with words and was place and by Dante that if the true of he would be better anecdotes reveal a memory of Dante as a poet who, when in the position of a court entertainer and at himself in such a Inferno Dante his own with the of Guiglielmo Borsiere, the historical Dante is an itinerant an of vernacular an aristocratic court Dante in et in vernacular around like a in more we have no is the vernacular an so is As both an and an like Borsiere, a better understanding of true courtesy than his patrons and can also a of Dante into a literary more than the badinage of entertainers like perhaps the is that forms of like that made when aristocratic sociability properly are not to the current for which Dante out a new of vernacular the figure of a uomo di corte as an to into about the decline of and verbal Dante a that would be to and by a series of vernacular in his the Decameron Boccaccio the figure of Guiglielmo For the tale of the first reports an anecdote about a that this uomo di corte once to an When asks the entertainer be in his Guiglielmo che non che la I you have have them Decameron his and a As in Dante, Guiglielmo here, as a uomo di corte, is a social inferior who better than many men of In Boccaccio’s tale the key term has as its and the uomo di into a world of and courtly In the good old days uomini di corte like Guiglielmo powerful to with decorum and or at least that is the moral that upon which with a about the of the uomini di corte of in a at with the by Pucci that be a di corte e e il qual Guiglielmo Borsiere, non a non e di uomini e e da di la uomini che là a il e la uomini e e con e e le e con sì come e di in in e che in in le e le e non e con uomini e il di e e e con che già Guiglielmo uomini di e in a court entertainer, a with manners was Guiglielmo Borsiere and who not in the least his For to the of those who despite their and the and of and these court entertainers of more like who have not been brought at court, but among the and of In those days, it used to be their to which they of their energy, to where or had among to and to the of the and the court with and as to the of the of which they for the of rewards. they are to their of and and is them in the of they one both and of and and to noble men to that are and the words and are the most is the one who is in the among them and is most honored and rewarded by the most Guiglielmo I of was honored upon his and given a by the of to uomini di corte once several at among the and with with witty entertainment, and with uomini di corte with and of a of sociability among nobles, they In the anecdote that by Victoria as a Guiglielmo Borsiere a uomo di corte of the old against whom current courtly are and found Guiglielmo Borsiere as the of Decameron Boccaccio that about the of courtly are to be in light of Inferno 16. The with the Commedia is so that in when Boccaccio composed a on the he his of Guiglielmo Borsiere from Decameron di corte, uomo e di era il e il e e e con e novella e il che non e e con e e was a di corte, a of great and behavior. and his performed such as among and and the of and also sometimes the of those who were with pleasant and and them to are that the modern not the more and such men and the more are their and words, the more they are and the more they are has Boccaccio’s of the same in Decameron 1.8 and the that he already considered Inferno an frame of for the Decameron 1.8 as as of more narrative than on Inferno 16, a around the figure of Guiglielmo In a the relationship between Decameron 1.8 and Inferno in light of Boccaccio’s where new narrative are in response to linguistic and features in an In the of Decameron the features of Inferno most responsible for are the of the term cortesia, the of a figure as a uomo di corte, and the tone of Dante’s Dante the decline in on recent in the of the elite Boccaccio the of in the servile uomini di aristocrats are to be brought into the if the entertainers of step to the Boccaccio’s the historical of courtesy and a for uomini di corte their role of a culture of aristocratic has Boccaccio’s tale of Guiglielmo Borsiere has as Guiglielmo e to an of cortesia, so the members of the Decameron’s with their rhetorical a sociability that the social by the Boccaccio as an author his witty diversions not to listeners (or so he but rather to a in this about uomini di corte an of of the of the of the Decameron in the of the we might into Boccaccio’s metaliterary he is also about how his own is both to and different from the entertainments associated with giullari and uomini di corte. the figure of Guiglielmo Borsiere, Boccaccio his indeed his about this intertextual Boccaccio’s of the of the Decameron with Guiglielmo Borsiere’s wit acknowledges the verbal skill of entertainers repertoire Boccaccio so often draws Yet for Boccaccio this with the of between the Decameron and the offered by contemporary and the tradition of court entertainers so into two and by that onto a of decline from Dante, Boccaccio both and both acknowledges and his to the performative traditions of and Pucci, a fellow Florentine and a of to the Decameron’s of uomini di corte. In his of world and the di of by its modern an to a of the appropriate for of different social and the men, knights and court entertainers di and and In this del of

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