Heartbroken by a Rapier

Objects play an important role in Boccaccio’s novellas. In this novella a rapier is used as a tragic means to end the life of a person and to the start of an afterlife of torture. However, the rapier is not used by the main character of this novella and is described only briefly, which adds to its symbolic value. We will use a colorful folio from a 15th century, Florentinian manuscript to discover this novella and to discover the role of the rapier. But first a few lines from the novella…