ABSTRACT
The Sei giornate deal with the three stati (states of life) of contemporary adult women: nuns, wives and prostitutes; the first two states, however, are treated almost exclusively from a sexual angle, as—it goes without saying—is the third. In Pietro Aretino's Sei giornate, on the other hand, it would be useless to try and find an alibi for the transgressive behaviour of women, other than the underlying motif of their unhappy condition in society. Between 1534 and 1536 Charles V had won a victory against the Turks at Tunis, and consequently Aretino changed from allegiance to the king of France to support for the emperor. In Aretino's representation of Roman courtesans, therefore, a social reality seems to be portrayed with a parodic component implicitly mocking the contemporary linguistic purism of the letterati rather than its amateurish adoption on the part of fashionable courtesans.
