The Decameron Analysis

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.