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
