I have chosen to study Boccaccio’s “De Mulieribus Clairs”.
The literal translation to English is “The Famous Women”. The original
manuscript was published in 1374 and is thought to be one of the very first
biographies totally dedicated to documenting the feats of women. Primarily the
women that are mentioned in the work are women of the past or biblical women.
There is little to no reference of modern day women found in the text. The
manuscript was translated into a variety of different languages including French
and is called the “Des Cleres et Nobles Femmes” which is currently housed at
the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. This manuscript took up twenty years of
Boccaccio’s life and turned into a fond project for him. I found this
manuscript after I sent a pleading email to my professors begging for help
finding something that I would find interesting enough to pour hours and hours
into research, she did not disappoint! She suggested this particular manuscript
because I usually focus my projects on textiles and since this manuscript was
based on females there was a large quantity of dresses and gowns represented
for me to look at and compare. I
honestly didn’t think I was going to be able to work with textiles for this
project and am very happily surprised that I get to look at something that I
already loved while investigating a subject that I have yet to learn a whole
lot about!
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