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WIKIMAG n. 10 - Settembre 2013
The Decameron
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The Decameron, known also as the Book of Prince
Galehaut (Italian:
Decamerone di Giovanni Boccaccio.
Cognominato Principe Galeotto), is a 14th-century
medieval allegory by
Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a
frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people. Boccaccio
probably began composing the work in 1350, and finished it in 1351 or
1353. The various tales of love in The Decameron range from the
erotic to the
tragic.
Tales of wit,
practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic. In
addition to its literary import, it documents life in 14th-century
Italy.
Title
The book's primary title exemplifies Boccaccio's fondness for Greek
philology: Decameron combines two
Greek words, δέκα, déka
("ten") and ἡμέρα, hēméra
("day"), to form a term that means "ten-day [event]".[1]
Ten days is the time period in which the characters of the frame story
tell their tales. It is important to remember that the correct
pronunciation requires the accent on the last syllable, so Decameròn.
Boccaccio's subtitle, Prencipe Galeotto (Prince Galehaut),
refers to
Galehaut, a fictional king portrayed in the
Lancelot-Grail who was sometimes called by the title haut prince
("high prince"). Galehaut was a close friend of
Lancelot and an enemy of
King Arthur. When Galehaut learned that Lancelot loved Arthur's
wife,
Guinevere, he set aside his own ardor for Lancelot in order to
arrange a meeting between his friend and Guinevere. At this meeting the
Queen first kisses Lancelot, and so begins their love affair.
In
Canto V of
Inferno,
Dante compares these fictional lovers with the real-life
paramours
Francesca da Rimini and
Paolo Malatesta, whose relationship he fictionalises. In Inferno,
Francesca and Paolo read of Lancelot and Guinevere, and the story
impassions them to lovemaking.
Dante's description of Galehaut's munificence and savoir-faire
admidst this intrigue impressed Boccaccio. By invoking the name
Prencipe Galeotto in the alternative title to Decameron,
Boccaccio alludes to a sentiment he expresses in the text: his
compassion for women deprived of free speech and social liberty,
confined to their homes and, at times,
lovesick. He contrasts this life with that of the menfolk, who enjoy
respite in sport, such as hunting, fishing, riding, and falconry.[2]
Frame story
In Italy during the time of the
Black Death, a group of seven young women and three young men flee
from plague-ridden
Florence to a deserted villa in the countryside of
Fiesole
for two weeks. To pass the evenings, every member of the party tells a
story each night, except for one day per week for chores, and the holy
days in which they do no work at all, resulting in ten nights of
storytelling over the course of two weeks. Thus, by the end of the
fortnight they have told
100 stories.
Each of the ten characters is charged as King or Queen of the company
for one of the ten days in turn. This charge extends to choosing the
theme of the stories for that day, and all but two days have topics
assigned: examples of the power of fortune; examples of the power of
human will; love tales that end tragically; love tales that end happily;
clever replies that save the speaker; tricks that women play on men;
tricks that people play on each other in general; examples of virtue.
Only Dioneo, who usually tells the tenth tale each day, has the right to
tell a tale on any topic he wishes, due to his wit.[3][4]
Many authors have argued that Dioneo expresses the views of Boccaccio
himself.[5]
Each day also includes a short introduction and conclusion to continue
the frame of the tales by describing other daily activities besides
story-telling. These frame tale interludes frequently include
transcriptions of Italian folk songs.[6]
The interactions among tales in a day, or across days, as Boccaccio
spins
variations and reversals of previous material, forms a whole and not
just a collection of stories. The basic plots of the stories including
mocking the lust and greed of the clergy; tensions in Italian society
between the new wealthy commercial class and noble families; the perils
and adventures of traveling merchants.
Analysis
Throughout Decameron the mercantile ethic prevails and
predominates. The commercial and urban values of quick wit,
sophistication, and intelligence are treasured, while the vices of
stupidity and dullness are cured, or punished. While these traits and
values may seem obvious to the modern reader, they were an emerging
feature in Europe with the rise of urban centers and a monetized
economic system beyond the traditional rural
feudal and monastery systems which placed greater value on piety and
loyalty.
Beyond the unity provided by the frame narrative, Decameron
provides a unity in philosophical outlook. Throughout runs the common
medieval theme of
Lady Fortune, and how quickly one can rise and fall through the
external influences of the "Wheel
of Fortune". 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 Appetite, see Book IV of
Republic). 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, Fiammetta, Filomena,
Emilia, Lauretta, Neifile, and Elissa. The men, in order,
are: Panfilo, Filostrato, and Dioneo.
Boccaccio focused on the naturalness of sex by combining and
interlacing sexual experiences with nature. By weaving them the way he
does, Boccaccio permanently places sex into the world of nature by
making it seem normal.
Literary sources
Boccaccio, in turn, borrowed the plots of almost all of his stories.
Although he only consulted French, Italian, and Latin sources, some of
the tales have their origin in such far-off lands as India, Persia,
Spain, and other places. Moreover, some were already centuries old. For
example, part of the tale of Andreuccio of Perugia (II, 5) originated in
2nd century Ephesus (in the
Ephesian Tale). The frame narrative structure (though not the
characters or plot) originates from the
Panchatantra, which was written in
Sanskrit before 500 AD and came to Boccaccio through a chain of
translations that includes
Old Persian,
Arabic,
Hebrew, and
Latin.
Even the description of the central current event of the narrative, the
Black Plague (which Boccaccio surely witnessed), is not original,
but based on the Historia gentis Langobardorum of
Paul the Deacon, who lived in the 8th century.
Some scholars have suggested that some of the tales for which there
is no prior source may still have not have been invented by Boccaccio,
but may have been circulating in the local oral tradition and Boccaccio
may have been simply the first person known to record them. Boccaccio
himself says that he heard some of the tales orally. In VII, 1, for
example, he claims to have heard the tale from an old woman who heard it
as a child.
The Banquet in the Pine Forest (1482/3) is the third
painting in
Sandro Botticelli's series The Story of Nastagio
degli Onesti, which illustrates events from the Eighth
Story of the Fifth Day.
However, just because Boccaccio borrowed the storylines that make up
most of the Decameron doesn't mean he mechanically reproduced
them. Most of the stories take place in the 14th century and have been
sufficiently updated for the author's time that a reader may not know
that they had been written centuries earlier or in a foreign culture.
Also, Boccaccio often combined two or more unrelated tales into one
(such as in II, 2 and VII, 7).
Moreover, many of the characters actually existed, such as
Giotto di Bondone,
Guido Cavalcanti,
Saladin
and King
William II of Sicily. Scholars have even been able to verify the
existence of less famous characters, such as the tricksters Bruno and
Buffalmacco and their victim
Calandrino. Still other fictional characters are based on real
people, such as the Madonna Fiordaliso from tale II, 5, who is derived
from a Madonna Flora who lived in the red light district of Naples.
Boccaccio often intentionally muddled historical (II, 3) and
geographical (V, 2) facts for his narrative purposes. Within the tales
of the Decameron, the principal characters are usually developed through
their dialogue and actions, so that by the end of the story they seem
real and their actions logical given their context.
Another of Boccaccio's frequent techniques was to make already
existing tales more complex. A clear example of this is in tale IX, 6,
which was also used by Chaucer in his "The
Reeve's Tale", but more closely follows the original French source
than does Boccaccio's version. In the Italian version, the host's wife
(in addition to the two young male visitors) occupy all three beds and
she also creates an explanation of the happenings of the evening. Both
elements are Boccaccio's invention and make for a more complex version
than either Chaucer's version or the French source (a
fabliau
by Jean de Boves).
Literary influence
The compelling way in which the tales were written and their almost
exclusively Renaissance flair made the stories from the Decameron an
irresistible source that many later writers borrowed from. Notable
examples include:
- The famous first tale (I, 1) of the notorious Ser Ciappelletto
was later translated into Latin by
Olimpia Fulvia Morata and translated again by
Voltaire.
-
Martin Luther retells tale I, 2, in which a
Jew converts to Catholicism after visiting
Rome
and seeing the corruption of the Catholic hierarchy. However, in
Luther's version (found in his "Table-talk #1899"), Luther and
Philipp Melanchthon try to dissuade the Jew from visiting Rome.
-
Marguerite de Navarre,
Heptaméron.
- The ring parable is at the heart of both
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's 1779 play
Nathan the Wise and tale I, 3. In a letter to his brother on
August 11, 1778, he says explicitly that he got the story from the
Decameron.
Jonathan Swift also used the same story for his first major
published work,
A Tale of a Tub.
- Posthumus's wager on Imogen's chastity in Cymbeline was
taken by
Shakespeare from an English translation of a 15th-century German
tale, "Frederyke of Jennen", whose basic plot came from tale II, 9.
- Both
Molière and
Lope de Vega use tale III, 3 to create plays in their respective
vernaculars. Molière wrote L'école des maris in 1661 and Lope
de Vega wrote Discreta enamorada.
- Tale III, 9, which Shakespeare converted into
All's Well That Ends Well. Shakespeare probably first read a
French translation of the tale in
William Painter's Palace of Pleasure.
- Tale IV, 1 was reabsorbed into folklore to appear as
Child ballad 269,
Lady Diamond.[7]
-
John Keats borrowed the tale of Lisabetta and her pot of basil
(IV, 5) for his poem,
Isabella, or the Pot of Basil.
-
Lope de Vega also used parts of V, 4 for his play El ruiseñor
de Sevilla (They're Not All Nightingales).
-
Christoph Martin Wieland's set of six novellas
Das Hexameron von Rosenhain is based on the structure of the
Decameron.
- The title character in
George Eliot's historical novel
Romola
emulates Gostanza in tale V, 2, by buying a small boat and drifting
out to sea to die, after she realizes that she no longer has anyone
on whom she can depend.
- Tale V, 9 became the source for works by two famous 19th century
writers in the English language.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used it in his "The Falcon of Ser
Federigo" as part of Tales of a Wayside Inn in 1863.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson used it in 1879 for a play entitled The
Falcon.
- Molière also borrowed from tale VII, 4 in his George Dandin,
ou le Mari Confondu (The Confounded Husband). In both
stories the husband is convinced that he has accidentally caused his
wife's suicide.
- Giuseppe Petrosinelli in his libretto for
Domenico Cimarosa's opera
The Italian Girl in London uses the story of the heliotrope
(bloodstone) in tale VIII, 3.
- The motif of the three trunks in
The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare is found in tale X, 1.
However, both Shakespeare and Boccaccio probably came upon the tale
in
Gesta Romanorum.
- At his death
Percy Bysshe Shelley had left a fragment of a poem entitled
"Ginevra", which he took from the first volume of an Italian book
called L'Osservatore Fiorentino. The earlier Italian text had
a plot taken from tale X, 4.
- Tale X, 5 shares its plot with
Chaucer's "The
Franklin's Tale", although this is not due to a direct borrowing
from Boccaccio. Rather, both authors used a common French source.
- The tale of patient Griselda (X, 10) was the source of Chaucer's
"The
Clerk's Tale". However, there are some scholars that believe
Chaucer may not have been directly familiar with the Decameron,
and instead derived it from a Latin translation/retelling of that
tale by
Petrarch. It can be generally said that Petrarch's version in
Rerum senilium libri XVII, 3, included in a letter he wrote to
his friend Boccaccio, was to serve as a source for all the many
versions that cirulated around Europe, including the translations of
the very Decameron into French, Catalan - translated by
Bernat Metge - and Spanish. Lope de Vega, who adapted at least
twelve stories from the Decameron to the scenes, wrote El
ejemplo de casadas y prueba de la paciencia on this tale, which
was by far the most popular story of the Decameron during the
15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. The Venetian writer
Apostolo Zeno made on it,and partially on Lope's play, a
libretto named Griselda (1701) which was to be musicated,
among others, by
Carlo Francesco Pollarolo (1701),
Antonio Maria Bononcini (1718),
Alessandro Scarlatti (1721),
Tomaso Albinoni (1728) and
Antonio Vivaldi (1735).
-
Christine de Pizan often used restructured tales from Decameron
in her work "The
Book of the City of Ladies" (1405).
Film
and television adaptations
A number of film adaptations have been based on tales from The
Decameron.
Pier Paolo Pasolini's
Decameron (1971) is one of the most famous.
Decameron Nights (1953) was based on three of the tales and
starred
Louis Jourdan as Boccaccio.
Dino De Laurentiis produced a
romantic comedy film version,
Virgin Territory, in 2007. The tales are referenced in
The Borgias (2011 TV series) in season 2, episode 7, when a
fictional version of
Niccolò Machiavelli mentions at a depiction of the
Bonfire of the Vanities that he should have brought his friend "the
Decameron" who would have told the "one-hundred and first" tale.
Boccaccio's
drawings
Since The Decameron was very popular among contemporaries,
especially merchants, many manuscripts of it survive. The Italian
philologist
Vittore Branca did a comprehensive survey of them and identified a
few copied under Boccaccio's supervision; some have notes written in
Boccaccio's hand. Two in particular have elaborate drawings, probably
done by Boccaccio himself. Since these manuscripts were widely
circulated, Branca thought that they influenced all subsequent
illustrations.
See also
References
External links
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