• Decameron was one of the first pieces of Italian literature
    • Written around 1350 and rewritten in the 1370s
    • Founding, major piece in Italian literature and prose
    • Was praised in its time but also banned for being obscene later
  • Contains one hundred tales over ten days told by seven women and three men (a group called a brigata)
    • The group escaped Florence after the Plague, and they spend their time telling stories
  • Leaping and linking from the ancient texts to the Decameron
    • The other texts that we’ve read (Odyssey, Plato, Virgil) spanned two thousand years before the Decameron
    • Bocaccio lived 1300 years after Virgil and 2400 after Homer
    • Bocaccio read Virgil’s works in Latin, but he did not read (but knew about) Homer and Plato because he didn’t know Greek
      • The translation and recuperation of ancient Greek and Roman knowledge drove the Italian Renaissance
      • Bocaccio + Petrarch were its first proponents
  • Decameron Keywords; words to think about and consider
    • compassion
    • humanity
    • intelligence
    • reason
    • love
    • wit
    • beauty
    • laughter
    • youth
    • honor/honorable/honest
  • Bocaccio versus the “Author”
    • Bocaccio
      • Had an intelligent father but was illegitimate
      • Went to law school, learned a lot about literature
      • Friends with Petrarch
      • Controls the book
    • The Author
      • The voice who states that he wrote the book
      • Representation of Bocaccio
  • The “Author” in recovery from lovesickness
    • Author states that he was in pain because of love
    • Shows appreciation for his friends because they helped him through it
    • Wants to help others get through lovesickness
  • The Decameron’s addressees
    • At the time of writing, lovesickness was a big issue for Bocaccio’s contemporaries
    • Arts, medical literature, etc. were created to describe it
    • Bocaccio wishes to address women who often don’t have an outlet to express their lovesicknesses
      • Signals philogyny, or love of women
  • Ways of seeing the Decameron’s frame: Worlds and Tales
    • The frame gives the book as a whole a “complex, stylistic, semantic, and ideological coherence”
    • The macrostructure of the frame supports the microstructures of the individual novellas and tales
    • The novellas are ordered precisely and acquire meaning through their placement in the frame
    • Each tale builds its own world, whether it be from the Author or each one of the characters

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  • Frame as binding mechanism
    • Bocaccio defends his work using the Author as a character in different parts of the book, such as the introductions and conclusions (Outer Frame)
      • Wanted to build a literary tradition in Italian
      • Establish secular literature as an art form
      • State that world-building and play are essential human activities
      • Celebrate Florence nad its culture
    • Author’s narration of the “main story”
      • Describing the brigata, introducing each day, etc.
      • Transitions between stories, reactions to stories
      • Describing the background
      • Keeps names of storytellers anonymous to protect their reputation; names are representative of their personalities
    • Novellas inside of the main story
      • Storytellers tell 100 stories with different themes and ideas
    • Characters in the novellas tell tales
      • Inside of the story, a character might tell a story
      • Characters act as surrogates for their real-world counterparts
  • The plague: a horrific but necessary beginning
    • Reference to Dante and how he brings the reader through hell before starting
    • Thinks of it as a necessary evil
    • Boccacio’s description uses medical and historical sources; is very accurate
    • Humans didn’t understand the Plague’s origins and its consequences
    • Killed 30-60% of Europe’s population and originated from the East, likely from China
    • Many different responses to the plague: isolation, make merry and live each day as its last, quarantine in groups, adopt a minimalist lifestyle
    • Brigata leaves town, justifies the decision based on natural rights
    • Almost everyone who lived in their households either died or fled
    • Led to social breakdown
    • Many social and familial bonds broke, social expectations degenerated
    • All human industry is destroyed; Bocaccio asks, “where have all these thiings gone?” (ubi sunt?)
  • The political world of Florence and the political structure set up by the storytellers
    • Florentine Republic - an oligarchy that was ruled by the elite
    • Rose and fell in power, was temporarily replaced by signories, or a de facto principality (single ruler)
    • In the brigata, the members are all equal
      • Ruled by a monarchy where the ruler rotates every day
    • Bocaccio relates the historical aspects of Florence to the Decameron
  • The pastoral locus amoenus
    • Pastoral setting, brigata lives in a villa with gardens
    • Each garden acts as a locus amoenus which is a safe space
  • A separate space for literary world building
    • Chaos of the “real world” plague vs. the order of the villa and stories