(1350–1352)
The Decameron is the most widely read and highly acclaimed work of Giovanni BOCCACCIO. Consisting of 100 short stories or novelle told within a frame story set in Florence during the BLACK DEATH of 1348, The Decameron is famous for its humor, its vitality, its realism, and its variety of tone and subject. The text is universally revered as the most significant contribution to prose fiction from the European Middle Ages, and influenced the development of narrative for centuries. Like CHAUCER’s CANTERBURY TALES and the Arabic THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, Boccaccio creates a frame for his story collection. After a famous detailed and horrifying description of plague-ridden Florence (a city that lost 70 percent of its population to the plague in 1348), Boccaccio describes how seven young Florentine ladies of good family meet three gentlemen by chance in a church, and how the 10 decide to leave the city for a country estate in the hills of Fiesole above Florence.As an antidote to the moral and political anarchy and stress of the disease-ridden city, the 10 young people resolve to pursue a daily regimen of orderly activity and entertainment at the estate, with the idea that the pleasure and recreation will restore their spirits (and therefore make them less susceptible to the pestilence). As part of the schedule, each of the characters will tell one story daily for 10 days. A king or queen is chosen for each day, and that person declares a theme to which all stories for the day must conform—all but those of the character Dineo, who reserves the right to tell the final story each day, and to be exempt from the theme. The beginning, in addition to the introductions and epilogues for individual tales and days, provides a frame and direction for the huge variety of narratives in the text. In addition some scholars have noted a thematic pattern to the tales. These seem to deal first with outside forces like fate or destiny that overwhelm human beings, and are then defeated by the efforts of human will; second, the tales present internal forces, in particular love, and how love causes both unhappiness (on Day Four) and joy (on Day Five); third, the use of human wit or cleverness to overcome obstacles or to trick others becomes the focus.All of the themes are reprised on the Ninth Day, when the theme is left open. After a good deal has been said about human vice and folly for the first nine days, the stories of the 10th Day are to tell of “those who have acted generously or magnificently in affairs of the heart or other matters”(Musa and Bondanella, 1982, 602). These tales contrast with the earlier ones in their emphasis on heroic virtue, generosity, and patience. In the end the great variety of the tales creates a complete human comedy, showing life as a whole, with all of its contradictions and diversity.
A few brief examples of the variety of stories included in the text will suffice: The 10th story of the third day, for example, is a FABLIAU involving a religious hermit named Rustico, who is approached by an innocent young convert named Alibech who seeks to learn the best way to serve God. Rustico convinces her that putting the devil back into hell (his euphemistic description of sexual intercourse) pleases God most—but the jest backfires when he is unable to keep up with Alibech’s religious zeal. The ninth story of the fifth day is a ROMANCE involving the unrequited love of Federigo for the lady Monna Giovanna. After Federigo squanders his entire fortune in vain pursuit of his lady, he is left with only a falcon. The lady has a son who falls ill and tells his mother that obtaining Federigo’s falcon will make him happy. Giovanna goes to Federigo to make the request, but Federigo, having nothing else to offer her, kills his falcon and serves it to her as a meal before she makes the request. This final act of generosity ultimately wins the lady’s love.
Perhaps the most influential tale in the text is the 10th story of the 10th day, the moral tale of Patient Griselda. This is a story of a poor woman married to the marquis of Sanluzzo, whose husband tests her fidelity and obedience by pretending to have her two children killed, professing to divorce her to marry a younger girl, and ultimately forcing her to prepare the house and welcome the new bride. In the end he reveals that the new “bride” is their daughter and that he has kept the children safe for 12 years, and he praises Griselda for her patient steadfastness. The tale was translated into Latin verse by Boccaccio’s friend and mentor PETRARCH, and retold by Chaucer as The CLERK’S TALE.
Boccaccio’s interest is in lively storytelling. He spends little time on the psychology of his characters, but rather shows us what they are like by what they do. Nor are his tales didactic in the sense of much medieval literature. Although Boccaccio greatly admired DANTE’s DIVINE COMEDY with its moral thrust, in many ways his Decameron seems particularly intended to answer Dante: The 100 tales specifically echo the 100 cantos in the Comedy, and in addition Boccaccio specifically alludes to Canto V of Dante’s Inferno, where the adulterers Paolo and Francesca refer to the book they were reading (apparently the French prose Lancelot) as their “Galeotto,” the go-between in Lancelot and Guenevere’s love affair. Dante’s implication seems to be that reading for pleasure may be morally precarious. Boccaccio subtitles his book “Prince Galeotto,” asserting thus that his book is to be read for pleasure, and that such reading is appropriate— even, as in the case of the 10 members of his brigata (the young narrators of the tales), restorative both physically and emotionally.
Bibliography
■ Bergin, Thomas G. Boccaccio. New York:Viking Press, 1981.
■ Branca, Vittore. Boccaccio: The Man and His Works. Translated by Richard Monges. Cotranslated and edited by Dennis J.McAuliffe.With a foreword by Robert C. Clements. New York: New York University Press, 1976.
■ Musa, Mark, and Peter Bondanella, trans. The Decameron. With an introduction by Thomas G. Bergin. New York: New American Library, 1982.
■ Olson, Glending. Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982.
■ Wallace, David. Giovanni Boccaccio: Decameron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.