The tragic tale of Violante and Didaco in the versions of Pierre Boaistuau and Jean de Marconville: From the nouvelle to the exemplum

Abstract

De la bonté et mauvaistié des femmes (1563) shows a considerable number of references to several authors whose names appear in the text itself or mentioned in the margins. However, some of these sources were never consulted directly and for others Marconville eluded or avoided any acknowledgement. As indicated by Richard A. Carr (2000), of all these silenced sources the most relevant and widely used is certainly the one by the French humanist Pierre Boaistiau, Sieur de Launay, (¿1517?-1566). All the treatises of Vies des femmes illustres of the end of the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, with the exception of Marconville’s work, ignore the gruesome story of Violante and Didaco which is inspired in the fifth nouvelle of the Histoires tragiques by Boaistuau. This article intends to reveal the formal and ideological strategies deployed by Marconville in the elaboration of his own version of the story, as well as in the consecution of his didactic and moral purposes mentioned in his dedicatory to serve as an exemple: “que cela serve de miroir et exemple perpetuel aux lecteurs pour guider et conduire leurs actions et reformer l’estat de leur vie”.