Sanguinaccio e pene asinino : reazione all'autoaffermazione animale e femminile in una novella del Fuggilozio di Tomaso Costo

In the Renaissance, the prevailing attitude toward animals remained anthropocentric exploitation. Ecofeminist theory claims that the patriarchal status quo requires that beasts and women be submitted because of their shared instinctual nature that pushes the latter closer to the ‘animal' category. II, 22 in Fuggilozio (1596), a novella collection by Tomaso Costo, shows, I argue, that late Renaissance culture subjected these “others” to identity manipulation to perpetuate patriarchal hegemony over those deemed inferior. The tale promotes such objective through the chaos erupting from the appropriation of power by the farmer woman and her metaphorical double, the pig. Up to this point in the story, power is exclusively wielded by the human male, here the farmer. Via his alter ego, the donkey, he rectifies such misappropriation, by reclaiming the right to life and death over the pig, that symbolizes his wife's uncontrolled sexual passion.

In the transfer of lust on the food level (husband and wife make blood sausages from the pig), the woman's sexual drive, however, results only subdued. Carnal desire still dominates her: she eagerly grabs a sausage, that is in fact the donkey (aka her husband)'s member. The damaging consequences of her act are averted by the farmer's censorial intervention. He abandons any attempt at collaboration between equals, such as the culinary one. The novella communicates the patriarchal message that the only solution against the beastly, uncontainable nature of women is the restoration of the hierarchical principle, which sacrifices them and animals to the male human's expectations. [Publisher's text]

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