On Famous Women Literary Elements

On Famous Women Literary Elements

Genre

Biographical.

Setting and Context

Various settings such as Egypt, Rome, the Biblical setting.

Narrator and Point of View

Giovanni Boccaccio is the third-person narrator.

Tone and Mood

Feminist, adulatory, mystic, metafictional, recollective.

Protagonist and Antagonist

The women are the protagonists. In Eve’s story, the serpent is the antagonist.

Major Conflict

The women face different conflicts throughout their lives. Some of the conflicts are related to their femininity.

Climax

The women, “Orithya and Antiope," succeeding in their leadership roles despite their gender.

Foreshadowing

“Erythraea, or Herophile” engages in foreshadowing by prophesying about the future.

Understatement

The women’s abilities are overstated; some are given attributes, such as immortality and divinity, that make them equivalents of goddesses.

Allusions

Allusions to history, folklore, mythology, and the Bible dominate the accounts regarding the famous women.

Imagery

The women are extraordinarily gifted.

Paradox

Eve's fall is paradoxical because she was made by God's hands and was given everything she could require to be happy in paradise.

Parallelism

The various triumphant conquests, of the women, are compared throughout the book.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

Sibylle epitomizes divinity.
‘Royal girdle’ denotes political power.

Personification

N/A

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