The Motif of the Woman in Male Disguise from Boccaccio to Bigolina

The Italian fascination for literary works that include female characters who dress and act as men is remarkably pervasive in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, spanning a variety of genres including cantari, epic poems, comic plays, and novellas. ¹ The popularity of the motif in the late medieval and Renaissance novella is attested by D. R Rotunda, who lists no fewer than thirty-one instances in his Motif-Index of the Italian Novella in Prose. This preponderance becomes all the more remarkable when one considers the fact that Rotunda's list is rather inaccurate and fails to include a considerable number of relevant stories. ²