The Decameron

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The Decameron Heptameron

• CNE/ENG 120
• 11/15/04

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The Decameron

• Author Giovanni Boccaccio
• Culture Italian (Florentine)
• Time c. 1353 CE
• Genre prose fiction (novella, or short stories)
• Names to know Alibech, Griselda

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Significance

• Held to be the greatest achievement in prose
  fiction in a vernacular language of Southern
  Europe during the Middle Ages.
• His work helped to inspire the development of
  Humanism in the Renaissance.

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Decameron

• 100 stories told over 10 days
• Setting plague year of 1348
• Historical note Boccaccios lover, Maria
  dAquino (Fiammetta) died in the plague he makes
  her a character in the Decameron.
• Boccaccio was a Dante scholar, he held a teaching
  appointment in Florence he also was the first
  Italian to learn ancient Greek.

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Framing Narrative

• The historical plague of 1348
• Background story Characters are all young
  aristocrats. 7 ladies and 3 gentlemen withdraw
  from Florence to their country estates to escape
  the plague.
• 1/4 of the population died of this - the death
  rate in Florence approached 70.

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Narrative Focus

• Set against an event of devastating personal,
  political, and moral effects, Boccaccio focuses
  his tale on pleasure the pleasure of
  companionship, story-telling, sex.
• The nobles agree on a plan of story-telling to
  pass the time. Each tells one tale a day
  sometimes a general topic is assigned, sometimes
  they tell what they wish.

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Contrast with Dante

• Think of Paolo and Francesca - their tale
  illustrates the dangers of story-telling
  (corrupted by Arthurian romance, they are doomed
  for eternity).
• In contrast, Boccaccio emphasizes the restorative
  pleasure of story-telling and literature (oral
  and written stories).

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Focus

• Boccaccio tells some racy stories he also looks
  clearly at greed, wit, stupidity, and cruelty
  human reality.
• He did influence Chaucer, although were not sure
  which works Chaucer had read.

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Four Tales

• We can look at these as 2 pairs.
• 1) Melchizedek (an actual historical figure)
  outwits a ruler story advocating religious
  tolerance Alibech will outwit the monk who
  takes advantage of her tale highlights the
  problem of the religious orders not keeping to
  their vows of chastity.
• 2) Tofano and his adulterous wife contrast with
  Gualtieri and the patient Griselda who has much
  in common with Medieval saints.

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Introduction

• Boccaccio describes the advent of plague, its
  physical symptoms, and its effects on morals and
  society.
• Symptoms buboes death within 3 days of the
  appearance of symptoms.
• Spread rapidly by contact with those sick or
  their things spread to animals. People began to
  avoid the sick their possessions.

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Societal Breakdown

• Boccaccio describes various types of reactions to
  the plague. All respect for the laws of God and
  man had virtually broken down.
• Those who could, fled for the countryside.
• This scourge had implanted so great a terror in
  the hearts of men and women that brothers
  abandoned brothers, uncles their nephews, sisters
  their brothers, and in many cases wives deserted
  their husbands. But even worse, almost
  incredible, was the fact that fathers and mothers
  refused to nurse and assist their own children.

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Disposal of the Dead

• Corpses left on doorsteps in the night for pick
  up the next day.
• Mass graves in churchyard trenches.
• 50,000 died in Florence from March - July.

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The Characters Meet

• Where do the characters meet?
• How old were the women, and what was their
  relationship to one another?
• Pampinea proposes that they withdraw from the
  city to their various country estates, shunning
  moral looseness while feasting and merrymaking
  within bounds.
• She presents their families as dead or fled.

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Arrival in Fiesole

• The 7 women meet up with 3 men, of whom Dioneo is
  most attractive and witty. The men provide some
  protection.
• They agree to tell stories in the heat of the
  day, to amuse themselves.

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1st day, 3rd Story The Three Rings

• Filomena tells it. Moral prudence brings its
  reward.
• Saladin, sultan of Egypt, approached the
  money-lender Melchizedek for money. To get it, he
  resolved to use force in the guise of reason.
• Asked him which of the 3 laws (Jewish, Saracen,
  or the Christian) he thought truly authentic.
• Melchizedek saw through him, replied so as not to
  fall into the trap. Tells a story about 3 men and
  their rings.

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The Story

• The great, wealthy man left his ring to one of
  his sons, who then left it to his heir, etc.
  Finally it came to one man who loved his 3 sons
  equally. He promised it to each, had 2 others
  made. They then could not decide which was heir.
• He applied this to the Sultans question - each
  of the religions considers itself the heir of
  God, but the question of which one is truly heir
  hasnt been decided.
• What did the Sultan do then?

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3rd Day, 10th Story Alibech

• Dioneo is the narrator. Purpose to reveal how to
  put the Devil back in Hell.
• Location Tunisia
• Alibech, a fourteen-year-old, seeking to serve
  God in the best and easiest way
• At the advice of a Christian, she sets out for
  the desert, where she finds a series of hermits
  huts.

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The Devil

• The hermits she meets are afraid to take her in
  because of her prettiness - afraid lest the
  devil should catch them unawares.
• The young hermit Rustico takes her in, anxious
  to prove to himself that he possessed a will of
  iron.
• Succumbing to temptation, he seeks a way to
  seduce her through her desire to serve God.
• Alibechs Hell and Rusticos Devil

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The Taming of Hell

• Meanwhile, Alibechs family dies in a fire back
  in Gafsa she inherits everything.
• Neerbal, who had gone through his own fortune,
  sets out to find and marry her.
• The story coined a proverbial saying
• the most agreeable way of serving God was to put
  the devil back in Hell.

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7th Day, 4th Story The Woman Who Locked Her
Husband Out

• Told by Lauretta.
• She addresses Love, in keeping with Dioneos
  order that all stories that day be devoted to
  wives who have tricked their husbands.
• Premise The husband Tofano is irrationally
  jealous of his wife, who had given him no reason
  to be. Over time, she resolves to make him suffer
  for this ill which hitherto he had feared
  without cause.

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Infidelity

• In order to have a chance to be unfaithful, Monna
  Ghita encourages Tofano to drink.
• Once he was drunk passed out, she carried on
  with her lover, both at her home and at his
  house.
• Eventually, Tofano figured out that she herself
  was not drinking, making him suspect she was up
  to something.

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The Plot Thickens

• Feigning drunkenness, Tofano returns home. After
  his wife slips out to her lover, he locks the
  door behind her and awaited her return by the
  window.
• What did Monna threaten to do if Tofano did not
  let her in? How did he react?
• How does the story end?

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10th Day, 10th Story The Patient Griselda

• Gualtieri, the Marquis of Saluzzo, gives in to
  his subjects desire and marries. However,
  instead of a noblewoman, he marries a peasant,
  Griselda.
• Before marrying her, he makes her promise that
  she would always try to please him never be
  upset by anything he did or said. She also swore
  to obey him.
• What does Gualtieri do to Griselda, over the
  years? How does she react to his cruelty?

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The Moral?

• Griselda shares much of the character of Medieval
  saints, which perhaps accounts for the tremendous
  popularity of this story.
• Petrarch compared Griselda to Job.

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The Heptameron

• Author Marguerite de Navarre
• Time early - mid 16th c. CE
• Culture French
• Genre prose fiction, novella, short stories
• She introduced artists of the Italian Renaissance
  to the French court. This work is a tribute to
  it, by way of Boccaccio.

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Historical Context

• After the Reformation, France suffered social and
  religious upheavals.
• Marguerite was central to the cultural
  religious conflicts of her day . . . Paying a
  price for her reformist ideas.
• Issues debated in the tales the rights of wives
  within marriage, the legitimacy of rape, and the
  scandals perpetrated by Franciscan monks.

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8 Days of Tale-Telling

• Narrative Frame 10 chatterers (5 men, 5 women)
  are escaping from a variety of dangers (floods,
  bandits) when they take refuge in an abbey. To
  pass the time, they tell stories.
• They react to the stories told, discussing and
  debating their significance relevance to their
  own lives. Unlike those of the Decameron, the
  tales here are moral conundrums.
• The rule none should tell a true story.

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Unfinished Unpublished

• It seems that the Heptameron was unfinished at
  Marguerites death - she did not title it, and
  she did not publish it.
• It has no definitive text - the tales exist in 17
  different manuscripts.

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1st Day, 5th Story Two Friars a Shrewd
Ferrywoman

• First day is devoted to stories of low tricks
  played by women on men and by men on women.
• Narrator Geburon
• Concern the corruptness of friars
• When the Franciscan Friars decide to rape the
  ferrywoman, what does she do?
• How does the story end?

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4th Day, 32nd Story The Woman Who Drank from Her
Lovers Skull

• On the 4th day, the theme is the virtue
  long-suffering of ladies in the winning over of
  their husbands, of the prudence of men with
  respect to their wives for the preservation of
  the honor of their house lineage.
• Narrator Oisille.
• Concern The importance of defending honor

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The Mystery

• Bernage, when staying the night at a certain
  house, sees a mysterious beautiful woman, dressed
  in black, drink from a skull.
• Who is this woman, and why is she drinking from
  the skull? Whose skull is it?
• What advice does Bernage give the husband? Did
  the husband take it?

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4th Day, 36th Story The Husband Who Punished
His Faithless Wife By Means of a Salad

• Narrator Ennasuite
• Main characters the president of the Parlement
  of Grenoble, his young wife and her lover
  Nicholas.
• The husband learns of the affair from his loyal
  servant he obtains proof when he finds Nicholas
  and his wife in bed together.
• When faced with his wifes adultery, what is the
  husbands concern? How does he deal with the
  servant and Nicholas? With his wife?

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8th Day, 71st Story The Wife Who Came Back from
the Dead

• The 8th day is devoted to the most foolish and
  the most true stories.
• Parlemente (Marguerite herself?) tells it.
• The saddler Brimbaudier, a servant of Bacchus,
  had a good wife. When she seemed on the point of
  death, he wept and wailed. He appealed to his
  only audience, a pretty maid, eventually making a
  pass at her.
• What was the dying wifes reaction?

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The Moral?

• Many of the stories concern marital infidelity,
  of both husbands and wives.
• Compared to the stories of Tofano and Alibech in
  Boccaccio, here sexuality activity does not bring
  much pleasure.
• Marguerite focuses on the sad aftermath of sexual
  practices, whether fulfilled or unfulfilled.