Annali d’Italianistica 31 (2013). Boccaccio’s Decameron. Re-writing the Christian Middle Ages Olivia Holmes Trial by Beffa: Retributive Justice and In-group Formation in Day Eight When Lauretta is crowned queen by Dioneo on the Thursday evening at the end of Day Seven, she declares that she does not want to select the inverse topic — that is, since the previous day’s topic was the tricks that women play on their husbands, to turn now to those that men play on their wives — and thus to appear “di schiatta di can botolo,” the kind of snapping cur that wants immediate revenge. She decides to extend the theme for Day Eight to include, rather, all sorts of beffe: “donna a uomo o uomo a donna o l’uno uomo all’altro” (Dec. 7. Concl. 3-4). 1 Men would not seem to need vengeance, in any case, for the tricks of Day Seven are generally motivated by the subordination of women, who have to use clever subterfuges to get around their husbands’ mastery, whereas husbands do not usually need to play tricks to enforce their wills (Grimaldi 278). But in her very refusal to appear vindictive by making herself spokesperson for men’s revenge, Lauretta also touches upon a recurrent theme in the novelle of Day Eight: the retaliation often occasioned by tricks, and society’s need for effective judicial mechanisms. Story-telling on the previous day took place in an alternative space, the “Valle delle Donne,” in which narratives inherited from the Islamic and Christian patrimony of tales about female trickery tend to lose their originally misogynous connotations; indeed, the narrators, men and women alike, mostly approve of the wives’ successful stratagems for committing adultery. 2 But after dinner in this idyllic locale, the brigata then returns to its usual setting, and also, arguably, to the “real world” in which women (and perhaps men alike) are not allowed so much sexual license. Back at the palace, Filomena concludes the seventh day with a conventionally “stilnovist” ballata of longing to return to the arms of an absent beloved. At Lauretta’s instruction, the company then refrains from telling stories for the next two days, in honor of Christ’s passion. This two- day pause further underlines the different impetuses of the seventh and eighth days, despite their related topics: whereas the pranks of Day Seven were largely played in pursuit of feminine autonomy, those of Day Eight are more frequently 1 We may note that this list does not include the category of tricks played by women on women, according to a similar logic to the rule of thumb employed by American journalists in the mid-twentieth century by which black-on-black violence was not generally considered newsworthy. 2 See the opening of novella 7.5, where the narration is said to begin only after the members of the brigata have commended the adulterous wife of the previous tale for her behavior (“avendo già ciascun commendata la donna che ella bene avesse fatto e come a quel cattivo si conveniva” 7.5.2). Similar praise of the previous tales’ female protagonists also occurs on Day Seven in the introductions to stories 2, 6, and 7.