Generating Feminine Discourse in Boccaccio's Decameron : The "Valle delle donne" as Julia Kristeva's chora

Abstract

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY GENERATING FEMININE DISCOURSE IN BOCCACCIO’S DECAMERON: THE “VALLE DELLE DONNE” AS JULIA KRISTEVA’S CHORA NEAL MCTIGHE AT the end of Day VI, the seven ladies of the brigata depart for the uniquely feminine “Valle delle donne,” which is perhaps the most beautiful and harmonious locus amoenus in all of the Decameron. The “Valle delle donne,” however, is more than a mere ornamental space, and more than solely a locus amoenus.1 It is, I sustain, a pre-symbolic space that generates and empowers the feminine discourse that defines Day VII. The “Valle delle donne” lends Day VII a certain symbolic topology inside of which “si ragiona delle beffe, le quali o per amore o per salvamento di loro le donne hanno già fatte a’ suoi mariti, senza essersene avveduti o sì” (VII). In an effort to expose this locus amoenus as a presymbolic space, this paper explores the “Valle delle donne” through the lens offered by Julia Kristeva’s notion of the chora – an approach that has not yet been applied to a reading of Boccaccio’s “Valle delle donne.” The “Valle delle donne,” I believe, resembles Kristeva’s concept because both are pre-symbolic spaces in which energy and meaning are generated . Just as the semiotic chora is linked to the world of the symbolic, the “Valle delle donne” is likewise linked to the ten novellas that make up Day VII. That is, although the valley is not present in any of the stories of Day VII, it serves, however, to frame and determine the nature of the symbolic space in which the stories are told. In each of the ten novellas of Day VII, therefore, is recognizable the presence of an empowered 1 For a detailed analysis of the “Valle delle donne” as a model of the tradition of the locus amoenus, see Raja. For a discussion on the valley as an ornamental space, see Cerisola. YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY 41 feminine discourse – akin to the day’s theme – conceived in the Kristevan chora that is the “Valle delle donne.” What exactly is the chora? In the section entitled “The Semiotic Chora Ordering the Drives” of Revolution in Poetic Language (1974), a profound meditation as to how poetic language is constituted in speaking subjects, Julia Kristeva proposes an answer to this question. To begin, Kristeva borrows the term chora from Plato’s Timaeus. In this work Plato likens the chora to the figure of a mother – one who nourishes and cares for another living being. As commentator Miglena Nikolchina stresses, however, Kristeva’s use of the concept “is a matter not of a simple transfer from Plato, but of a radical translation” (164). In this light, Kristeva’s “radical translation” is built around two points of agreement with Plato: 1) the chora is generative; and 2) it is an indeterminable and mutable space. Building upon this, Kristeva defines the chora as a space that “precedes evidence, verisimilitude, spatiality, and temporality” (26). Moreover, she claims that the chora is “a nonexpressive totality formed by the drives and their stases in a motility that is as full of movement as it is regulated” (25). As such, “one can situate the chora and, if necessary, lend it a topology, but one can never give it axiomatic form” (26).2 Kristeva thereby claims that although one must use signifiers to express the notion of the chora, it is of great importance to note that the chora precedes the very linguistic sign that it determines and shapes. This is achieved because the chora is, as Kristeva elaborates, the “kinetic functional stage of the semiotic” (27; her emph.). The semiotic chora transmits to the symbolic sphere its own “semiotic articulations ” through “biological code or physiological ‘memory’” (29). One must keep in mind that although the symbolic sphere and its antecedent chora are distinct, once a speaking subject has been constituted, the two establish a mutual dependency. This dependency is formed because “[o]ur discourse – all discourse – moves with and against the chora in the sense that it simultaneously depends upon and refuses it” (26). The 42 ROMANCE NOTES 2 It is important to note Kristeva’s use of the term topology instead of topography...