Published in The Medieval Aesthetics

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The Novella di Ferondo develops two plot-lines typical of the medieval tradition, but whose joint approach shows the passage to the Renaissance worldview. On the one hand, the topic of adultery characteristic of the fabliaux, with their main characters: the stupid and vigilant husband, the seductive and submissive wife, the astute and lustful lover. On the other hand, the trip to the underworld to be purified by corporal punishment, which is related to the serious and moralizing line of the exempla and the Divina Commedia. However, the parody of the sacred discourses, the irony and the rupture of the stylistic isotopy constitute a burlesque eschatology. The humorous references to death, purgatory, the resurrection of the flesh and even the Annunciation show, in Bakhtin's terms, how laughter relaxes the fears imposed by official culture. The corrective violence that Ferondo suffers, as well as the exaltation of free erotic enjoyment and the identity mutations caused by disguise, reveals the resistance against disciplinary mechanisms. The ending of the story, a utopia of freedom conquered by deception to power, represents a victory of Renaissance hedonism over medieval asceticism.