decameronian combinations: andreuccio

Russian Liter&we XII 11982) I31 -144 North-HollandPublishing Company

DECAMERONIAN COMBINATIONS: ANDREUCCIO

ALDO ROSS1

0.1. IN THE STYLE OF CROCE. The novella of Andreuccio da Perugia in the Deca-

meron (II 5) was chosen as the object of what has up to the present been regarded by respected authorities as "a memorable stydy", lla masterly investigation of setting" by Croce. Croce unhesitatingly expresses his admiration for its really "quite perfect" "internal logic". Precisely in order to bring out this quality he devotes the first part of his study to an exposition of the novella, "partly summary, partly commen- tary", as he says in the transition to the second part, in which he deals more specifically with the "artistic character of the novella" (while in the last two parts he concerns himself with its historical background and its content).

So Boccaccio's narrative discourse is in part con- tracted and in part expanded by Croce's paraphrases, periphrases, rewritings of all sorts. Croce admits (57) that the transition from Boccaccio's A-text to the B-text of its "re-statement" has involved a distinct loss, an inevitable impoverishment, given that "the spirit Boccaccio put into his narration" was bound to be diminished, and is in fact altogether destroyed; and it is just this spiritual bonus that marks off "a work of art" from 'a simple piece of story-telling".

When one compares Croce's approach with that of more recent techniques of text-analysis one must imme- diately recognize that Croce's procedure makes no attempt to deconstruct, to dismantle, to segment the text. The first concern of Croce's rewrite is to lay stress on those narrative cruxes where implication plays a leading part.

This is how Croce develops the first attributive sequence concerning Andreuccio (status: "cozzone di cavalli"[horse-trader], attribute: "si come rozzo e

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132 AZdo Rossi

poco cauto" [being clumsy and incautious]):

13 I... to show that he was there to buy, being clumsy and incautious he kept bringing out his purse full of florins in the midst of the crowd of passers-by'.

The Perugian horse-trader felt unknown and almost an object of mistrust in an unfamiliar city and among unfamiliar people; and the thought crept into his mind that he might be considered a man of words rather than deeds, and that people might think that his failure to strike any bargains arose not so much from motives of economic interest as perhaps from lack of money. This suspicion, exciting his self-esteem and vanity, in- duced him, almost as if to lay claim to professional seriousness, to bring out and display his purse, con- taining five hundred fine gold florins. In this imaginary defence of his dignity against the imaginary risk he thought he was running in the opinionofthose he was dealing with, he failed to consider thathe was not at home in his little Perugia, but in populous Naples, where, though such display of wealth might arouse some respect, it was much more likely to prove dangerous.

The inter-propositional logic is developed subtly (but conjecturally: notice the recurring perhaps: "joining other merchants who, having perhaps already made the same journey, could provide him with useful advice and guidance" [47], "... as perhaps from lack of money" [471, )I... perhaps Andreuccio had heard tales of similar pieces of good fortune" [48], etc.): using the procedures of empirical psychology and ad- dressing himself circuitously to the textual reality considered on the referential level, Croce strives to bring as close as possible the poles of temporal sequence and implication. It is a matter of reworking the textual information in such a way as to allow the sequences to interact on one another, according to the internal axis of the novella and the external axis of the whole collection.

From the passage just quoted let us take two in- stances particularly rich in implication: the attribute of "vanity" and the affective diction of "five hundred fine gold florins". Now, still confining ourselves to this third section which Croce is paraphras- ing, we find two hermeneutic prevarications: Andreuccio is described as "clumsy" and "incautious", the trait of "vanity" arising only later, at 511, when on re- ceiving the servant-girl's invitation, he concentrates on the fact that he considers himself to be "a hand‘-

Decameronian Combinations 133

some young man"; as for the "fine gold florins", it is remarkable that this phrase not only remains hidden in its internal recurrences (there are four: 55 3 [2x1, 42, 631, but occurs only once externally, that is to say in VIII 10 37, in the novella of Salabaetto and the Sicilian woman of easy virtue, Jancofiore, which has many strik- ing structural analogies with the novella of Andreuccio: "he [Salabaetto] brought her five hundred fine gold florins". Croce's study makes no mention of this novella (even at points where he discusses Sicilian prostitutes he prefers an extra-textual reference, to Pontano's Antonius): but this recurring phrase seems to me un- mistakable evidence of how the internal memory of the Decameron affected its writing, the process being similar to that which produced variants in the manuscripts of the Divine Comedy (according to Contini's theory) and of the Decameron (according to a theory of mine).

Correlatively with an epiphrastic amplification, one should consider a compendious contraction, especially since it is concerned with the sequences that most characterize and distinguish the manuscript tradition of the Decameron, not least in connection with the thorny problem of the author's variants. In 5536-37 the text regains its natural priority over all the subtle and useful methodological speculations that have recently been made concerning Boccaccio's master- piece: we are indeed confronted with two versions of the novella, involving one more, or one fewer, "actant". Without repeating here the arguments in favour of two versions by the author, or conversely of a copyist's reworking, we can at this point recall that Fiordali- so's "helpers" in the version reproduced also in the B(erlin) autograph are the old woman who knew Andre- uccio, the expert servant-girl who with the greatest discretion draws the rash and fatuous Perugian from his inn, the boy who attends him in the room while Eiordaliso goes into the other room with "her women", the servant-girl, and the criminal chief Buttafuoco. In many codices (it is doubtful whether they can be regarded as a "group", but they nevertheless represent almost half the manuscript tradition) the explicitfunc- tion of the boy ("fanciullo") is on the whole redistrib- uted to the servant-girl ("fanticella"), who, however, remains retroactively "una fanciulla". In this circum- stance, Croce's critical attitude is remarkable: he ignores the evident uncertainties I have here brought to light, which exist in both the alternative solutions:

150 But, when Andreuccio was left alone in the room that was to be his, had undressed to his doublet, and

134 AZdo Rossi

went to a place nearby to relieve himself, one of the floorboards came loose, and he tumbled into an alley, fouling himself all over,.. Down in the alley where he had fallen, he shouted, at first in vain, to alert the people above...

In his reading, as one can see, Croce "removes" both the "fanciullo" and the "fanciulla", confining himself to an actantial zero, in which he has the sup- port of the text, at §331 where in an exchange of dia- logue Fiordaliso omits to specify the helper: "I have indeed, God be praised, someone who can be sent to say you are not to be waited for!" We have here, then, a slow and fairly precise reading, enough so to allow itself "a small textual footnote" according to which "the word 'scarabone' ["criminal chief"] should be printed with a capitals, in conformity with Boccaccio's intentions when he wrote it" (67); here Croce is apply- ing to §59 a suggestion that has not, I think, had much success (except in L.Russo's edition). But the fact is that Croce sets out to devote less attention to the narrative discourse than to the historical content that can be recovered from the novella by an "ab- stracting procedure in itself entirely legitimate, since in a historical document there is no question of preferring the beautiful to the ugly" (60). But, of course, before distinguishing the beautiful from the ugly t the metalinguistic operation of paraphrase should have been conducted with more functional instruments: the very evident textual misinterpretations (at least three) together with the omissions (I have chosen one) in Croce's re-telling do not arise from his own inad- equacy but from the unreliability of the means he em- ploys:

ERRORS: a) "At his appearance [i.e. that of the procurer],

certain of the more compassionate neighbours, who had gathered around Andreuccio, advised him with kind words to obey, if he held his life dear" (51).

b) "... the two rogues, with no pity for the now useless instrument they had picked up on their way, and also perhaps (though without suspecting that simpleton of having tricked them) out of bestial rage at their disappointment, let the lid of the tomb fall" (53).

c) I'... the novella of Andreuccio takes place, evi- dently, on a hot night of the Neapolitan summer, since the 'great heat' is twice mentioned, when we are told that because of it, Andreuccio, as


soon as he was left alone in the room, undressed to his doublet, and, a little later, that the servants of the Signoria, being thirsty 'from the heat', went to the well to drink" (72-73).

OMISSION: 11 . . . having confided to his travelling-compan- ions and to the innkeeper what had happened to him, he was advised to leave Naples without delay" (54).

In case a), by far the most important, it is indeed true that in 554, to which Croce refers, linguistic indicators of a situational nature are lacking: "Cer- tain of the neighbours, who best knew what sort of man he was, speaking humbly to Andreuccio, said...". But the whole system of the sequence 5541-53, based on the high/low semic opposition, excludes the possibility that the neighbours can "gather around Andreuccio", i.e. can be on the same level with him (cf.I.2). In case b) it is clear that Croce has missed the commuta- tive force of the second "adventure", if he can confi- dently state that the two thieves do not suspect "that simpleton of having tricked him", against the entirely unambiguous affirmation of 97%: "These men, who were, besides, as cunning as he...", which can also be seen in relation to novella VIII 10 46: "Salabaetto, grown cunning, left". Textual interpretation depends also on the occasions, where one has case c): Croce's asser- tion that the parametric indication of "great heat" occurs twice, in §37 and 567, whereas the insistence on this element is present from §3Q, with the very phrase "caldo grande" transferred to the means by which the "ciciliana" weakens Andreuccio's resistance: "Since their conversation had been long and it was very hot, she called for Greek wine and sweetmeats, and had him served with drink...". With this comment we are in the area of minutiae, though not of points open to question, as we are in the case of the omission that has been noted; from Croce's exposition it seems almost as if it was Andreuccio's travelling-com- panions who advised him, while it is indeed the innkeeper who closes the great narrative sequence of the novella, - 585:

as he had begun it: §3: "informed by his host" "by the advice of their host" (for the progress-

ive symmetry of his/their see V.4.2.).

0.2. IN THE STYLE OF PROPP. Croce's study, though careful, fails to chart the

morphology of the novella, or to distinguish precisely how the narrative discourse is jointed into the factual discourse.

136 Aldo Rossi

As far as the internal divisions are concerned, no doubts are possible: the introduction 51 makes it clear that the story falls neatly into three sections ("in one night surprised by three serious mischances"); 92'stands apart, functioning as a link with II 4 and answering §2 of II 6, which provides a valedictory link with the story of Andreuccio; §§3-54 concern the misadventure with the Sicilian prostitute, 5555-70 the mishap of the well, with the consequent "initiation"; §§71-85 the misadventure of the Archbishop's tomb, with the final happy ending. The structure of the last misadventure-stories displays a series of equivalences which lead us to consider them as replicas of each other, however distinct their functions, while both are closely grafted onto the first section, which pre- sents on its own a development almost equivalent to that of the other two (51/ 15 +15).

For an evaluation (far from uncontroversial) of Andreuccio's misadventure with Fiordaliso, we may take as a starting point that undisputed groundwork of the study of narrative laws, V.Ja.Propp's MorfoZogija skazki (1928). I shall of course refer, in the first instance, to the third chapter of this work, which is concerned with tabulating the "functions of characters" by means of propositions, abstractions, symbols: Initial situation (i).

Name and status of the protagonist: 53 - "There was, as I have heard, a young man in Perugia, whose name was Andreuccio di Pietro, a horse-trader".

Preparatory part. I: separation. One of the members of the family leaves home: §3.- "never having been away from home before, he went there [to Naples] with some other merchants" (e3: a member of the new generation).

II: prohibition. A prohibition is imposed on the protagonist (k). III: viozation. The prohibition is violated (9). According to Propp, the two functions constitute a paired element. The motive force of the folktale is provided by the "predicted" occurrence of a disas- ter: §3- "to show that he was there to buy, being clumsy and incautious he kept bringing out his purse full of florins in the midst of the crowd of passers-by". The violation of a code, albeit implicit, favours the-entry on the scene of the antagonist.


IV: investigation. The antagonist tries to recon- noitre: 57 - "The young woman, who had first seen Andreuccio's purse and then the familiarity of her old companion with him, . ..cautiously began to ask who he might be and where he came from, and what he was doing here, and how she knew him" (v3: an investigation through other persons). V: secret information. The antagonist receives information concerning his/her victim:58- "And she told her everything about Andreuccio's doings..." (~3). VI : trap. The antagonist tries to deceive the victim in order to gain possession of his property: 99 - "The young woman, having by her cunning found out all she wanted to know about his relations and their names, formed a plan, using this knowledge" (j: the antagonist changes form, working through persuasion).

Complicity. VII: connivance. The victim falls into the trap and thus gives the advantage to the enemy: §14 - "But he, knowing and suspecting nothing of this, thinking he was going into an entirely honest place and to a dear woman, went freely, the girl going ahead, into her house" (~3: according to Propp the usual pattern is: prohibition /violation: insidious invitation / welcome).

Exordium. VIII: injurious action. The antagonist inflicts injury by taking the victim's property: 540 -"...now that she had got that for which she [Fiordaliso] had set the trap, pretending that she, a woman of Palermo, was the sister of a Perugian, she paid no more attention to him, but went quickly to shut the door he had gone through when he fell" (x5: a function described by Propp as "of extraordinary importance", with "an exceptional variety of forms").

From the morphological point of view one can define as a "folktale" every account of an injurious action (X), developed through intermediate functions up to a

marriage (N) or to other functions by means of which a resolution is achieved: repayment (S), the removal of the injury (Pm), rescue from pursuit (S), etc. An injurious action always generates a new movement.

So far, it has been possible to establish a perfect correspondence between the preparatory part of the folktale, whose components have been catalogued by Prow, and the story of Andreuccio's first misadventure.

138 AZdo Rossi

But once we reach the exordium we have to choose dis- cretely among the functional combinations Propp offers. We need not now concern ourselves greatly with function IX: mediation, "the announcement of the misfor- tune that has befallen the protagonist" (even though this is present, with Andreuccio waking the whole Mal- pertugio district with his furious stone-throwing). What is more relevant is function XVII, which in Propp's sequence follows the struggZe (L) between protagonist and antagonist: the marking (Ml: the protagonist receives a mark on his body). In fact Andreuccio is ejected from the Sicilian's house through the privy ("vanella" or "vinella"), his body being in conse- quence marked: 538 - 'I... he was daubed with the filth which filled that place".

A.J.Greimas, who has attempted a more rigorous model, trying to redistribute Propp's 31 functions in- to pairs of opposites, notes that in the preparatory part it is possible to oppose under the denominator of communication the negative series interrogation vs re'- ponse and the positive symmetrical series marque vs reconnaissance [to be interpreted: &mission (d'un signe) vs re'ception (de ce signe)].

The stink that remains attached to Andreuccio not only makes the merchant unpleasant in his own eyes (556: "And disgusting himself by the stink that he smelt on himself..." ), but functions as a mark of recognition for others, such as the thieves (558: "And while they spoke, one of them said, 'What does this mean? I can smell the strongest smell I think I ever smelt', and, having said so, raised his lantern some- what, and saw the wretched Andreuccio..."), who are prompted by this sign to perform a lustration, which determines the second movement of Andreuccio's Neapoli- tan misadventures ‘(564: "Going towards the cathedral, Andreuccio still stinking powerfully, one of them said, 'Can't we find some way for this fellow to wash himself a little somewhere, so that he doesn't stink so dreadfully?'" ). The propulsive nature of this function has, of course, already been perceived by other read- ers, notably by Getto: 'I... Andreuccio... will be forced to withdraw in total defeat, without money, without clothes, and carrying a strong stink. But it is just this last thing, staying with him as a conse- quence of his fall into the alley, thatwilldetermine the subsequent leaps of the story, which seemed to have reached a definitive conclusion, with the protagonist on his way back to the inn".2 However, there is still no adequate evaluation of M1, of the specific context that characterizes Andreuccio's mark, which is


closely linked with his lustral fall in the well (which at first sight lends itself to a reading in terms of ritual).

In his transcription in narrative units of a Bororo myth described by L&i-Strauss in Le Cru et Ze hit, Greimas goes beyond his theoretical model, which anti- cipates a marking by the "victorious test" (as the result of the test) and admits the possibility that the marque may be inverted: in fact, during the opening sequence the son violates the mother, and so it is she who wears on her belt the plucked feathers that will arouse suspicion and recognition on the part of the father. Louis Marin, for his part, analysing canto nine of the Purgatorio, realises that in this text "une histoire" is narrated, i.e. that of Dante, who, having passed through the Ante-Purgatory, arrives with Virgil in Purgatory, where the poet has a dream and on waking finds himself at the gates of Purgatory, to learn that he has been helped in his enterprise by Lucia, who has come down from heaven:

L'histoire qu'il raconte est celle du franchissement par le heros d'un obstacle dans une marche vers un but determine: c'est le moment de l'kpreuve, moment tres stereotype dans le recit, dans lequel le heros regoit une marque, un signe distinctif qui le qualifie pour une autre sorte d'epreuve, et lui permet ainsi d'y ac- ceder. Or, dans le chant IX, notre heros reqoit une double marque; dans la premiere partie du chant, le songe; dans la seconde, les 7 P que l'ange ecrit sur son front. 3

Looking at MI in the light of the Purgatorio is an operation whose usefulness we can appreciate when we try to define the value of Andreuccio's washing in the well. Propp's IstoriFeskie korni volBebnoj skazki (19461, a work which goes beyond "morphology", to in-

vestigate the historical roots of fairy-stories, con- tains a section on rites of initiation (to which Props, following in the footsteps of Saintyves, is in- clined to reduce the genetic model of the tests to be found in fairy-stories). In these rites the ingred;ient of severity is indistinguishable from the sadistic. In a work published in Berlin in 1902, H.Schurtz, like other scholars, reveals that boys were driven to disgust by being forced to drink their teacher's urine, etc. "They were shut into a trench, with water and filth and covered with the dung of animals. Without going into details, Schurtz says that "they were ex- pected not only to endure those sufferings, but to

140 AZdo Rossi

overcome their disgust"' [my italics]. Once we have raised the suspicion that Ml belongs

within the context of initiatory rites, we can attempt to close the exordium with the typical clause: return of the protagonist (+ symmetrical to his leaving: +): 555 - "without knowing where he was going, he set out to return to the inn".

On the protagonist's mistaken way back he meets "by chance" 556 the Donor (the two thieves) who pro- poses the sharing (D6) of the magical agent, i.e. the bishop's ring, by means of theft (Z8) I to which his response is positive (El). But between the execution of this task and the result is interposed the condition imposed on Andreuccio of going down the well. With the appearance of the officers of the law, this condition seems likely to coincide with function XXI, persecution (P4: in the form of a well), beyond all the initiatory values connected with such a rite; there follows XXII, rescue (S3: the protagonist is transformed into a diabolical apparition). The movement is concluded with the return of the protagonist (J-): 570 -II... so he decided to leave; and he went,

without knowing where". By chance again the protagonist once more meets the

Donor (the two thieves) who propose to send him into the tomb (D6): he is motivated to agree deceitfully to the bargain (El8) and removes the magical agent (Z8). For this he is punished by the Donor, subjected to persecution (P4: shut inside the tomb), followed by rescue (S3: the protagonist is transformed into a thousand devils), with the final obtaining of the magical agent and the return (J-): 584 -"with that ring on his finger he went on his way trusting to chance, came to the sea-shore and then found himself back at his inn".

The sequence we have obtained can be transcribed thus:

e3 k q v3 X5 Ml + D6 {El Z81 P4 S3 + D6 El0 Z8 P4 S3

0.2.1. IN THE STYLE OF PROPP AND TRUBETZKOY. With Propp, clearly, we move on the plane of the

distribution of functions at the same level: however scrupulously he may subsequently have applied his instrument of "transformation", he did not succeed in integrating the level of his functional parataxes of the proposition into a transphrastic syntax of discourse. But it is no coincidence that the pure and simple tools Propp provides for dealing with a corpus


of folktales can be used to achieve the transcription of a novella belonging to a text such as the Decameron, which is only to some extent folk literature.4 And it goes without saying that the sequences constructued by Propp can validly be applied to the combinations list- ed in the 101 tales taken into account by Afanas'ev: that is, Propp did not set out to construct a grammar of the story in general; the credit and the responsi- bility for this must go at least in part to his suc- cessors (as he himself admitted in his reply to Levi- Strauss, published in 1966). But none of this detracts from the applicative fertility of Propp's method well beyond the context in which it took shape and was developed. The bringing together of three names, Saus- sure-Propp-Trubetzkoy, suggestively proposed by Avalle on the basis of a "science of relationships and functions", may be very fruitful. But there is more: Avalle can now begin to trace the general lines of a comparison of Saussure with Propp in the particular fields of literary semiology, now that the more precise information is becoming available on Saussure's researches into Germanic myths and legends (still ly- ing in the unpublished Geneva notebooks). But as far as the third, Trubetzkoy, is concerned, one is obliged to compare the Grundziige der PhonoZogie of 1939 with Propp's MorfoZogija of 1928.5 And at this point it be- comes interesting to speculate what would have been the attitude of the linguist Trubetzkoy if he had applied himself at all systematically to literary criti- cism; the hypothesis is not entirely fictive, if it comes to that, since Trubetzkoy in fact gave classes in Vienna on the technique and art of Dostoevskij, the Russian notes for which were published between 1957 and 1963 by the Novyj EurnaZ of New York and were published in a German translation in 1964.6

The texts with which Trubetzkoy concerned himself in these classes are certainly very complex. On the other hand, there exists a whole critical literature on Dostoevskij, the more recent being rooted in formalism, which was bound to exert its pressure on the great phonologist's methodological approach. Michail Bachtin's ideas about the ideological-po.lyphonic structuring of Dostoevskij's narrative were playing an important part in influencing the inheritors of the first Russian formalism. The most that can be said is that one can recover Trubetzkoy's methodological plan in the principles of phonology more precisely than in these critical reflections. But there is one point which I think it is essential to stress adequately: the typology of characters paradigmatically sketched

142 AZdo Rossi

on the basis of "implicit" and "explicit" discourse. The semic analysis of the "character", or rather the "agent" or "actant" is involved. Propp realised that many elements of his research required deeper investigation: e.g. "We see that the study of the attributes of characters, which I have merely sketched, is of extraordinary importance". For instance, the propositions that Propp identified, and condensed into an outline, display, when coupled (as he himself suspect- ed) common and opposed features, and offer the possibility of extracting new underlying "deep" categories, which would define the combinations of which these functions would represent the products. So there emerges the possibility of reaching, by analysis, smaller units, of splitting the atom, so to speak. As has from time to time been supposed, it would be a question of considering initially distinct functions "as a group of transformations of a single identical function" (Levi-Strauss).

For Trubetzkoy every unit results from its contrast with every other with which it comes in contact. If a character A is defined by being placed in proximity to B, C, D.. .N, the opposition A vs B shows up A's feature a, which is in turn in contrast with B's feature b; the opposition A vs C shows up a second feature al, which is in contrast with C's c, and so on up to the opposition A vs N, which shows up and against N's n. On the other hand, the process described as a circular one, because to define B, C...N it is not enough to place them in contrast with A: they must also be con- trasted among themselves, with the possibility of mul- tiple, interwoven roles. What is vital is that the autonomy of the unit should be asserted, together with the possibility of combinations that can once again be defined with the musical metaphor of "counterpoint". One could propose a "stemmatic" representation of this sort:

A--------------B

a1 ,),,. p;-------------A+

'. -. If -------______ --‘-/I

a2 :I x,

'\ '. ,'

~‘yIn2--------------~ n

-----_-_______ a3 $,,/‘~=-\{n3 ------------ ---C cn

------_ --------________ D an n4Un


NOTES

1. B.Croce, "La novella di Andreuccio da Perugia"(a lecture read to the Neapolitan national historical society at a general meeting of the members on 30th March 1911), in Storie e leg- gende napoZetane (Bari 1919), 47-83 (SLN). Cf. G.Contini, Letteratura italiana deZZe origini (Firenze 1970), 747 (LIO) The present study has its philological basis in a textual work, from which I take my quotations: "Prospettive perun'edi- zione critica de1 'Decameron"', in Testi e interpetazioni (Milano/Napoli 1973). It is part of a broader, more widely ranging work with the title La combinatoria decameroniana: AnaZisi de2 discorso e Zinguistica testuaZe, of which I have offered some advance samples from 1966 onwards: cf. "Semiolo- gia a Kazimierz sulla Vistola", in Paragone XVII (1966),!@202, p.109; "Da Cerisy a Kazimierz: nuova critica e semiologia", in Vita e Pensiero L (1967), N-4, 379-80; then in "Le nuove fron- tiere della semiologia: cinema e narrativith", in Paragone XVIII (1967), p212, which reports a discussion with T.Todorov that took place within the framework of the first semiology seminar at Urbino, two years before the publication of Gram- maire du De'camerox (The Hague/Paris 1969). This anticipation has been mentioned by M.Corti in "Critica letteraria e semiologia", in AZmanacco Letterario Bompiani 1969, 157 (and later in Metodi e fantasmi [Milano 19691).

2. G.Getto, "La composizione della novella di Andreuccio", in Vita di forme e fome di vita neZ "9ecarneron" (Torino 19581, 78-94, cf.87.

3. L.Marin, "Essai d'analyse du chant IX du 'Purgatoire"', in Psicoanalisi e strutturaZismo di fronte a Dante (Firenze 1972), vol.11, 183-216, cf.188.

4. It is useful to recall that A.N.Veselovskij demonstrated beyond argument in 1865 that fable i?25 of vol.5 of A.N.Afanas'- ev's collection, "The shepherd's daughter", was derived from the story of Griselda in the Deccuneron (X lo), in the context of his theory concerning the passage of Italian legends (Reali di Francis) into Russian folktales, perhaps with the mediation of Slavic-western adaptations (cf. Buovo d'Antonio and Puli- cane).

5. D'Arco S.Avalle, Corso di semiologia dei testi letterari, (1972-72) (Torino 1972), especially 181-201.

6. N.S.Trubetzkoy, "0 metode izuzenija Dostoevskogo", in Uovyj ,Z&n.aZ vol.48 (New York 1957), 109-21; "0 dvuch romanach Dos- toevskogo, ibid. ~01.60 (1960), 116-37; "Rannij Dostoevskij", ibid. vol.71 (1963), 101-27; then Dostoevskij aZs KilnstZer (Den Haag 1964).

decameronian combinations: andreuccio

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