摘要：Increasingly, critical practice has turned its focus to the reading of gen-der within the works of Giovanni Boccaccio — not just as the study of the representation of women within the novelle of the Decameron, but understood broadly as the convergence of language and gender in Boccac-cio’s oeuvre.1 Recent scholarship in this vein comes to terms with the au-thor’s rhetorical and ideological engagement with women, ranging from studies of female discourse within his narratives to his challenging objec-tifications of women which resist totalizing claims. Some scholars argue that we cannot ask whether or not Boccaccio was a misogynist or a femi-nist, claiming that his hermeneutics challenge these categorizations (most recently, Marilyn Migiel). Others, such as Millicent Marcus, have asserted that detecting misogyny in Boccaccio’s novelle, such as Decameron VIII.7, is a “misreading” because the novella itself critiques misogyny. Still others view the foregrounding of women producers of discourse within society as the origins of a feminist literary tradition (Teodolinda Barolini). To judge from the critical literature, Boccaccio’s apparently contradictory stance, from the dedication to lovelorn women in the Decameron’s Proem to the anti-feminist diatribes of the Corbaccio, shifts problematically from one of philogyny to one of misogyny. This dualistic interpretation hinders a reading of his corpus — let alone of singular works — in one direction or the other. Gender studies in Boccaccio have yet to examine the ways in which his views on the vernacular as the “volgare delle femine,” vis-à-vis Dante (Esposizioni Accessus, 19) impact upon our reading of the Decameron’s authorial voice and its dedication to “vaghe donne” (Decameron Proem, 9).
