Il "cerchio tetro" di Dante e il "cammin" di Boccaccio

This paper offers a semantic survey of the word form tetro in Boccaccio's vernacular works. The adjective tetro, first employed by Dante in his Commedia with the meaning 'dark, gloomy', proves to be an extremely unusual word in the Italian language of the Middle Ages and therefore possibly difficult to understand. Starting off the analysis with Boccaccio's Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, it is firstly pointed out that the word form tetro occurring in Dante's Inferno («cerchio tetro», 7.31) is not connected by Boccaccio to the meaning 'dark, gloomy'. According to Boccaccio, tetro rather means 'worn out by use'. After a brief review of the use of the adjective taeter in Boccaccio's Latin works, it is then observed that the meaning of the word form tetro occurring in Teseida and Rime seems to closely correspond with the semantic interpretation of tetro in the Esposizioni ('worn out by use'). A possible explanation of such an interpretation by Boccaccio is finally presented.