摘要：The point of departure for this discussion is Boccaccio’s iconic pro-tagonist Andreuccio of Decameron II.5, poised at a Neapolitan well in order to bathe after a fall into a latrine. The second of the three “adventures” or “accidents” in the novella’s narrative arc, the episode at the well is often overshadowed by the more repulsive and frightening fall from Madama Fiordaliso’s toilet and raid on the archbishop’s putrid tomb.1 Still, the adventure at the well is not without an element of disgust, albeit subtle, that has perhaps seemed to some critics as secondary to the arc of the narrative. Andreuccio’s bath accomplishes the purification of his body and perhaps the sharpening of his wit, as Ceretta has suggested, but at the expense of Neapolitan drinking water. The modern science of bacte-riology may inform our contemporary concept of contamination; yet I will argue that the understanding of water contamination in medieval Italy was such that we may question Andreuccio’s act in terms of public health and sanitation without anachronism. The case of Andreuccio offers a glimpse of the collision of two distinct water cultures of Naples and northern Italy that were both familiar to Boccaccio. Andreuccio’s Perugian provenance should have infused him with a culture of water protectionism that facili-tated the civic life of industrious Apennine towns, and his bath in the well marks a distinct departure from the values of that culture.
