TESEIDA, IL

(Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia, “The Theseid of the Marriage of Emilia”)

byGiovanni Boccaccio

(ca. 1341)

TheTeseida, or the “Story of Theseus,” is one of BOCCACCIO’s early works, begun probably in the late 1330s, when he was still living on his own in Naples, but not completed until after he had been forced to return to Florence as a result of the economic crisis of the early 1340s. Boccaccio conceived of theTeseidaas an epic poem in the vernacular, and probably wrote it as a conscious response to DANTE’s call (inDE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA) for a classical epic in Italian. Emulating the classical masterpieces most admired by his age, Virgil’sAeneidand Statius’sThebaid, Boccaccio planned a poem in 12 books. He chose to write in a verse form that had previously been used in Italian lyrics and folk literature, the OTTAVA RIMA: a stanza of eight 11-syllable lines rhymingabababccthat he had used previously inIl FILOSTRATO. But despite its epic aspirations,Il Teseidais essentially an elaborate ROMANCE, in which Teseo (Theseus) plays a secondary role, and the chief interest is the love triangle between Emilia, Teseo’s sister-in-law, and her two admirers—the Theban kinsmen Arcita and Palemone. It was this love story that caught the attention of CHAUCER, who used Boccaccio’s poem as the chief source for his chivalric romanceThe KNIGHT’S TALE(ca. 1382).

The poem certainly begins in epic style, following Teseo, duke of Athens, in his wars with the Amazons.When he wins the war, Teseo weds the Amazon queen Ippolita, and returns to Athens with his Ippolita and Emilia, her beautiful sister. But he is immediately called to war again, this time against the tyrant Creonte of Thebes.He finally returns home with a number of prisoners from the Theban war, including the noble Palemone and Arcita.The martial deeds of Teseo thus constitute the first two books of the poem. Beginning in book 3, the love then moves to center stage. From their prison cell, Arcita and Palemone catch sight of Emilia walking in her garden, and both fall instantly and irrevocably in love with her. When Teseo eventually releases Arcita and frees him under the condition that he never return to Athens on pain of death, Arcita reenters Athens in disguise and serves in Teseo’s court in order to be close to Emilia. One day he is overheard lamenting his love by an informant of Palemone, and Palemone escapes from his prison, seeks out Arcita, and challenges him to single combat in the forest. They are discovered and separated by Emilia and Teseo, who convince them to resolve their dispute by taking part in a tournament that the duke himself shall arrange, the champion to be awarded the hand of Emilia as his prize. Ultimately Arcita is victorious in the tournament, but dies after he falls from his horse at the tournament’s conclusion. In the last two books of the poem, Boccaccio moves at a leisurely pace, stretching his narrative to conform to the 12-book epic structure. Arcita’s funeral and the funeral games (a conventional aspect of the classical epic) take up book 11, while book 12 is concerned with Emilia’s internal conflict between marrying Palemone and remaining a virgin devoted to the goddess Diana. The poem ends as she yields to Teseo’s persuasion and marries Palemone.

After the poem’s initial composition, Boccaccio added a dedication to Fiammetta, his secret name orsenhalfor his nominal lover Maria d’Aquino (though it is debatable whether such a woman ever actually existed). He also added sonnets to introduce each book and somewhat pedantic glosses to imitate a well-known commentary on theThebaidby Lactantius. It was all designed to give his poem the tone and grandeur of a true epic.While Boccaccio and many of his admirers may have thought he had written an Italian epic, most more modern readers have been less certain of that designation. When Chaucer retold the story, he shortened it by some two-thirds, and it is specifically the epic trappings—the first two books and the last two— that Chaucer found easiest to cut.

■ Anderson,David.Before the Knight’s Tale: Imitation of Classical Epic in Boccaccio’s Teseida. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.

■ Boccaccio, Giovanni.Theseid of the Nuptials of Emilia(Teseida delle nozze di Emilia). Translated with an introduction by Vincenzo Traversa. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.

■ McGregor, James H.The Shades of Aeneas: The Imitation of Vergil and the History of Paganism in Boccaccio’s Filostrato, Filocolo, and Teseida. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.