Marilyn Migiel, A Rhetoric of the Decameron (Book Review‪)‬

Marilyn Migiel, A Rhetoric of the Decameron. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 219. Written in accessible and inviting prose, Migiel's book is a compelling analysis of what she convincingly argues is a key factor in the communicative strategy of the Decameron; namely, its construction of a complex and gendered social and cultural discourse of which women are at once the objects, the alleged addressees, and the speakers, in the cornice as well as in the novellas. The book's contention is that the Decameron may be read as a laboratory in which a discourse about women is constructed and tested through the dialogue of sexed narrators--what Migiel labels "the sexed thought" that pervades the work. If the premise is apparently optimistic, and the brigata appears at first to engage in a seemingly equalitarian dialogue--even one that should favor, numerically, a female perspective about women--Migiel shows how the patriarchal, dominating social code that frames the work is only marginally challenged by the sequential unfolding of the narrative. What might initially be imagined as a leveled field of tensions between opposing rhetorical strategies is, in fact, progressively revealed to be another instrument through which the hegemonic patriarchal discourse is reinforced. As the work moves toward its conclusion, Migiel argues, the rhetoric of the Decameron increasingly limits and eventually closes off the possibility of women articulating an alternative discourse that may challenge the one elaborated by their male counterparts.