Griseldis (Decamerons)

The banishment (exile) of the Griseldis (detail), Italy, around 1490. After this painting, the previously unidentified Master of the Griseldis received his emergency name .

Griseldis is a fictional character who appears for the first time in the Decameron . She is the daughter of a poor farmer who is married by a prince. This prince puts Griseldis through various tests to find out whether his wife is completely devoted to him. Griseldis endures all these trials and tortures patiently .

reception

Boccaccio's Italian story was translated into Latin by Francesco Petrarca and thus made accessible to a wider audience. While in Boccaccio's version the criticism of the unnecessarily cruel prince prevailed, Petrarch's praise of the patient wife, who is completely devoted to her husband and prince, is in the foreground.

Petrarch's version in particular was then the template for further translations and adaptations. A German adaptation by Heinrich Steinhöwel was published in 1473 . Chaucer uses the fabric in his Canterbury Tales .

The subject is repeatedly adapted and taken up in all of Europe's literatures, for example by Hans Sachs , Friedrich Halm , Gerhart Hauptmann and Maria Edgeworth . Alessandro Scarlatti , Antonio Vivaldi and Jules Massenet set the material to music.

The image of the patient Griseldis has survived to this day, but hardly plays a role in the art, music and literature of the 20th and 21st centuries; However, Hedwig Courths-Mahler published a gruesome novel by Griseldis in 1917 , in which a poor young noblewoman moves into the household of a count who is said to have murdered his wife. There are also parallels to Daphne du Maurier's bestseller Rebecca (1938). In 2016, Janina Janke and Toni Bernhart attempted a modern adaptation for the theater with their staging of the Griseldis based on a manuscript from 1713 from the archive of the Marienberg Abbey , which took place in 2016 in the new building of the Marienberg Abbey Library.

The asteroid (493) Griseldis bears her name.

See also

• Bluebeard

literature

• Dieter Vetter: The "Griseldis" of Petrus de Hailles. A philological comment . Olms, Hildesheim 2009, ISBN 978-3-487-13834-3
• Christa Bertelsmeier-Kierst: “Griseldis” in Germany. Studies on Steinhöwel and Arigo (= Germanic-Romanic monthly. Supplement 8). Winter, Heidelberg 1988, ISBN 3-533-04031-3 (also: Berlin, Free University, dissertation, 1985).
• Two lovely vn useful hystories, of obedient, steadfastly keyed, vnd patiently pious pious wife, against their marriage mauling, lots of good and useful to read , 1554, e-book of the University Library Vienna ( eBooks on Demand )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Raffaele Marabito: La storia della diffusione di Griselda dal XIV al XX secolo. In: Studi sul Boccaccio 17 (1988), pp. 237-285.
2. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 5, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.