Regarded as one
of the masterpieces of Western literature, the Decameron is a
compendium of one hundred tales. The stories are told by several narrators who
have fled the plague-ridden city of Florence; in the country home of their
host, the escapees pass the time by telling tales to each other. In this work
Boccaccio departs from the transcendental idealism of the poetry of Dante
Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch, bringing to literature the same realism that
fourteenth century Italian artists brought to painting. Written in vernacular
Italian prose, the Decameron conveys the earthiness, ambiguity,
paradox, and subtlety that characterize human experience. Also of significance
is the fact that the tales, rather than presenting a set view of morality, as
was usual in the Middle Ages, encourage conflicting interpretations, signaling
the historical change from a unified, God-centered world view to a diverse,
human-centered one encompassing varying and sometimes conflicting perspectives.
Composed between
1348 and 1353, the Decameron first appeared in manuscript form in
1370. Its first printed edition is believed to be the Neapolitan Deo
Gratias edition, now dated
at 1470. In his catalogue of Boccaccio's work, Italian librarian Alfredo Bacchi
della Lega records 192 fifteenth- and sixteenth-century editions. Some of these
are noted for the artistry of their design, and two, texts prepared by Ruscelli
(1552) and Salviati (1587), are notorious for their emendations. In 1812 the
only complete surviving copy of the 1471 Venetian edition of the Decameron printed by Christopher Valdarfer
fetched a record auction price when it was bought by the Duke of Roxburge. The
first English translation of the Decameron is by John Florio and was published in
1620. During the twentieth century there have been a number of popular and
scholarly English translations.
In the Renaissance, laughter in
its most radical, universal, and at the same time gay form, emerged from the
depths of folk culture, it emerged over a period of some fifty or sixty years
and entered with its popular (vulgar) language the sphere of great literature.
It appeared to play an essential role in the creation of such masterpieces of
world literature as Boccaccio's Decameron. The walls between official and
nonofficial literature were inevitably to crumble.
Another example of humanism that
can be seen throughout the one hundred tales in The Decameron is the work's
vast and varied world. Geographically, the stories cover a lot of ground and
the range of social classes included is also numerous. E. H. Wilkins in his
History of Italian Literature notes the extensive roll of actors in the work,
which include "kings, princes, princesses, ministers of state, knights,
squires, abbots, abbesses, monks, nuns, priests, soldiers, doctors, lawyers,
philosophers, pedants, students, painters, bankers, wine merchants,
inn-keepers, millers, bakers, coopers, usurers, troubadours, minstrels,
peasants, servants, simpletons, pilgrims, misers, spendthrifts, sharpers,
bullies, thieves, pirates, parasites, gluttons, drunkards, gamblers,
police--and lovers of all sorts and kinds". Boccaccio does not leave out
any of the social classes or colorful characters who constitute the human
condition in this earthly life.
Boccaccio deals with the topic of
man's goal on earth by presenting one hundred different views of the human condition.
Rather than returning to the Church and its traditions for answers to questions
about man, Boccaccio decides to find man's goal by first investigating him. He
observes how man reacts in various situations and paints these miniature
pictures of humanity struggling with Fortune and surviving because of his own
intelligence.
The literary piece contains
allegory and symbolism for the reason that Boccaccio had been educated in the
tradition of Dante's Divine Comedy which used various levels of allegory to
show the connections between the literal events of the story and the Christian
message. However Decameron uses Dante's model, not to educate the reader but to
satirize this method of learning. The Roman Catholic Church, priests, and
religious belief become the satirical source of comedy throughout. This was
part of a wider historical trend in the aftermath of the Black Death which saw
widespread discontent with the church. Many details of the Decameron are
infused with a medieval sense of numerological and mystical significance. For
example, it is widely believed that the seven young women are meant to
represent the Four Cardinal Virtues (Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and
Fortitude) and the Three Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity). It is
further supposed that the three men represent the classical Greek tripartite
division of the soul (Reason, Spirit, and Lust). Boccaccio himself notes that
the names he gives for these ten characters are in fact pseudonyms chosen as
"appropriate to the qualities of each". The Italian names of the
seven women, in the same (most likely significant) order as given in the text,
are: Pampinea (the flourishing one), Fiammetta (small flame), Filomena
(faithful in love), Emilia (rival), Lauretta (wise, crowned with laurels),
Neifile (cloudy), and Elissa (God is my vow). The men, in order, are: Panfilo
(completely in love), Filostrato (overcome by love), and Dioneo (lustful).
The literary piece may also contain
imagery simply because Boccaccio uses this image of Fortune freely in his
works, especially on Day Two of The Decameron, where "changes of fortune"
is the assigned topic. Although the brigata often
acknowledge God as the author of some of the twists and turns of fortune, some
of the stories can leave an impression more of a general randomness and
unpredictability in human affairs. People are always being destroyed then
saved, or saved and destroyed, finding then losing (or losing then finding)
love or wealth. In many of the stories, the fortunes of the characters change
so often that it's impossible to know how they'll end until they end. And even
then, things are still up for grabs. Some of the plot twists are so ridiculous
and profane that Boccaccio almost seems to be mocking the idea of God as the
force behind them.
Boccaccio's characters in The
Decameron are less concerned with preparing for the world to come, either by
conscientious adherence to Christian principles or quiet meditation on the
hereafter, than with enjoying what the world of the living has to offer. Most
of the characters accept the world as it is, realizing that, aside from the
possibilities presented by their own ingenuity, they are powerless against the
accidents of Fortune and yielding readily and joyfully to the irresistible
impulses of their own passions.
The tales focus on the themes of
love, fortune, and intelligence. All of the stories eschew theological
considerations in favor of more earthly considerations. Nature is the backdrop
against which the majority of these stories of love, fortune, and trickery are
played out. Just as the plague had been the great equalizer of Italian society,
so nature, in the abstract, is the common denominator in the hundred tales.
Within the context of nature, men are seen as autonomous and self-determining
and the virtues that are extolled are not those of the faithful Christian but
those of common middle class people.
In his tales, Boccaccio makes the
point that nature is a constant and cannot be changed by circumstance. Like the
natural world against which his characters are set, human nature is also
constant. No force of society, regardless of where its authority is derived
from, can change man's true nature. Like the plague, nature and man exist apart
from social or moral conventions and institutions that attempt to reshape them
are misguided and are satirized in many of the tales in The Decameron.
The theme used in the piece is love because the
Decameron operates in a world
with a complex understanding of what it means to love and be loved. It's also a
world that allows for the truly cruel and perverse, the sinful and the
merciless all in the service of love. Boccaccio takes the prescribed rules for
the game of courtly love from Andreas Cappelanus and breaks them all, with hilarious and tragic
results.
Almost all the stories are about love and lust. The most important
message seems to be that love is a natural and powerful force that can't be
denied; it overwhelms reason and common sense; it transforms people. In The Decameron, love is usually
consummated in sex. Gentlemen have chaste love for their ladies only if they
can't get their hands on them for some treason.
Another theme that we can include is social classes
because the question of women's place in this social hierarchy is complicated.
Across all social classes, women were seen as subservient and soft, unsuited by
their feminine nature to manage economic or political affairs. Some of the
stories promote this idea; some turn it on its head. In the ideal surroundings
of their country estate, equality seems to reign among the ladies and gentlemen
of the brigata. But the final tale they here is a rude awakening to what
they'll probably find back home.
In a number of ways,
the Decameron can actually be seen as an early example of or a
precursor to Romanticism in its most basic form. Not only is it clearly a celebration
of life in the face of a grim reality, but it is a specifically and carefully
constructed celebration. Fair child distinguishes between "romanticity",which
is in every human, and the practice of Romanticism.
A number of relationships do
exist among the texts at a surface level, providing other possible reasons for
the Romantic fascination with Boccaccio. Much Romantic poetry, like
the Decameron, involves an attention to landscape and the natural world,
the importance of intense human emotion and passion, particularly when
associated with Love, and an attention to strangeness in beauty or to the
exotic.
In
addition, anyone can see that these things were not told in church, where
everything should be treated with reverent words and minds (although you will
find plenty of license in the stories of the church) nor were they told in a school of
philosophers, where virtue is as much required as anywhere else, nor among churchmen or other philosophers in
any place; but they were told in gardens, in pleasure places, by young people
who were old enough not to be led astray by stories, and at a time when
everyone threw his cap over the mill and the most virtuous were not reproved
for it.
