This study is an attempt to answer several intriguing questions regarding the transformation of the transgressive Italian novella into its Spanish exemplary counterpart. For a Boccaccio reader familiar with stories in which the established moral and religious order is constantly challenged through the depiction of secular and ecclesiastic characters who commit all kind of transgressions (adultery, incest, homoerotic acts, etc.), Spanish novellas stand out for the constant sententious remarks of their narrators and their tendency to condemn the infractions of their characters. However, they narrate plots which have highly erotic content that could raise serious doubts about the sincerity of their rhetoric.

Although both the Spanish and the Italian novella seem to share characteristics associated with a didactic-rhetorical tradition that tends to employ narration in order to prove an argument set out in a clearly stated hypothesis and validated in a conclusion, intrusions by Spanish narrators run profusely throughout their novellas. Furthermore, the highly rhetorical nature of the Spanish novella and its sententious tone seem very distant from Boccaccio’s ironic stories (Branca 51), in which even the predominant rhetorical discourses of the Church (confession, the sermon, hagiography) become the object of mockery. Indeed, while Boccaccio’s novellas represent a diverse population of both honest and corrupt noblemen, peasants, clergymen, nuns, and merchants, the Spanish novellas rarely revolve around characters related to the Church and avoid any criticism of the sacrament of confession, the celibacy of the clergy, the veneration of saints, or any of the dogmas attacked by the Reformers and firmly defended by the Council of Trent (1545–64). On the contrary, Spanish plots tend to narrate love stories and private transgressions (marriage, clandestine marriage, rape, adultery), while constantly referring to specific legal procedures and particular laws, – the preand post-Tridentine laws regarding marriage.

Considering that Boccaccio, a precursor of the Renaissance and of many ideas articulated by the Reformation movement, wrote his stories between 1345 and 1352, and that the Italian genre was introduced into Spain by Timoneda in 1567 (three years after the ending of the Council of Trent), the absence of explicit criticism of the Church and the sententious tone of the Spanish novella can be associated with the increasingly repressive atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation.