• Barolini’s Essay - the wheel of the Decameron
    • Two part structure in the introduction: damaged, plague city of Florence and the rebirth of intelligence in the countryside
  • Day 1 Story 1
    • Told by Panfilo (all loving)
    • Has a lengthy preamble about religion and if prayers are truly efficient
    • Argues that God can hear all sincere prayers through insincere ones; they always arrive at their destination
    • Ser Cepparello is an awful person (symbolic of a chaotic world) who is able to be seen as a great person (stable unity of God)
      • Cepparello is described as one of the worst types of people ever
    • Ceparello is a merchant, a job which is often praised in the Decameron
      • Currently unemployed, was a notary (legal accountant), cheats and murders
      • The French call him Ciappelletto which is indicative of the human tendency to distory reality
    • Story acts as a parody of different literary traditions, such as confessional and the hagiographic
      • False confessions have comedic timing with Ceparello lying in his answers while the reader knows its the opposite
    • Different “circles” of listeners
      • Priest: believes all of Ciappelletto’s words, criticizes his parishioners for not being like him
      • Usurers/Loaners: eavesdroppers, laugh at the lies
      • The Faithful: believe the priest and believe that many miracles have been done through his body
      • Brigata Listeners (real world): No way to know if Ciappelletto truly repented, but Panfilo suggests that as long as your faith is true, you will be accepted
      • Us (the reader): Bocaccio argues that wicked things may provide beneficial truths, even if those truths are naturally ambiguous
    • Why make this the first tale?
      • Ciappelletto is the first “model” storyteller
      • The rest of the stories fall under Ciappelletto’s; signifies following stories will be raunchy but attempt to appeal to God
    • Day 1
      • Tales 2, 3, and 4 relate to religion
      • 2 talks about a Jewish merchant who notices that the Church is corrupt but is prospering because of it, making Christianity favorable; merchant’s reasoning
      • 3 has a “wise” Jew tell a tale within the tale about how it’s impossible to know which of the major religions was valid; uses metaphor of three brothers with three rings with none of them knowing which ring is real
      • 4 shows a monk exposing the hypocrisy of his Abbot by playing a trick on him even though the Abbot planned to expose the monk’s trick
    • Bocaccio intends to show that religious officials are not above “regular” humans and are not in a position to judge
      • Also argues that all faiths are similar
      • Uses merchants to show that you need to work together to prosper
  • Day 2’s theme is “reversals of bad to good fortune”
  • Continues general theme of intelligence
  • Merchants become frequent protagonists
  • Day 2 Story 5 takes the form of a folk/fairy tale and shows the romances of education
    • Starts as a typical exposition of a folk tale; Andreuccio hears of Naples and brings 500 gold to make his fortune there
    • Switch in perspective from Andreuccio to the Sicilian woman
    • Situational irony: Andreuccio has no knowledge of his situation, but the reader/other characters in the story do
    • Perugia stands for the land of innocence while Naples stands for the land of cunning and trickery
    • Story takes place as a series of journeys
      • Perugia to Naples
      • The journey inside of Naples: inn, market, Malportugia, church/tomb, well
      • Parody of the “journey to the underworld”
    • Trebling: patterns of three
      • Bocaccio uses trebling to show Andreuccio’s education
      • Andreuccio falls three times, and each time, he goes into darkness and gains a little bit more insight
        • Fall 1: Falls into the toilet, realizes that he’s been tricked, leaves while naked and covered in sewage
        • Fall 2: Meets two men who inform him that he would have been killed had he not fallen
          • Is lowered into a well in order to clean up, but the two thieves leave him while guards come
          • Develops suspicion but still doesn’t know where he’s going
        • Fall 3: Goes into the tomb and grabs the jewelry off of the Archbishop’s finger
          • Understands that the two thieves are trying to trick him, takes the ring and lies to the thieves
          • Left for dead inside of the tomb, faints and is described as looking like a corpse
        • Andreuccio is able to free himself from the last fall by grabbing the leg of another thief
          • “Resurrected” as a new man who is no longer innocence
    • Perspective changes throughout the story
      • We are never “with” Andreuccio until when he is in the tomb; always above/below/removed from him
      • Signals that the listener’s should have empathy only when Andreuccio is in the tomb, as we gain information from him
    • Each fall is a mock version of different moments on a spiritual journey as told on the Christian calendar
      • Fall 1: fall into filth and sin, leaving Eden and going to the real world
      • Fall 2: Baptism, cleansing of sin
      • Fall 3: sacrament of Confirmation; Confirmation shows proof that one is Christian, an adolescent kisses the ring on a bishop’s finger
        • Entry into the “light” of Christian knowledge, symbolized by the theives’ lantern
        • Andreuccio literally steals the ring
      • Has references to Dante, especially in Dante’s books and worlds (Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise)