• Day 6
    • Under the rule of Elissa and the midpoint of the Decameron
    • Theme is “characters who get out of a dangerous situation using their wits”
      • Highlights the emphasis on wit and cunning that has been present throughout the Decameron
    • Disruption of maids/servants infighting coming from the kitchen
      • Argument between Licisca and Tindaro over if women are virgins when they marry
        • Licisca argues that women often must wait too long for their fathers/brothers to marry them and they lose their virginity earlier
        • Licisca also states that women often play tricks on their husbands to keep them out of the loop, inspires Dioneo’s theme
      • The brigata women laugh at Licisca’s statements of lower-class “truth”, shows what the women really “know”
  • Story VI.10: Frate/Firar Cipolla
    • Dioneo typically strays away from the days theme but instead decides to stay on topic
    • Connection to II.5, the story of Andreuccio (trickery)
    • Connection to IV.2, the story of a wife cheating on her husband with the Archangel Gabriel
    • Focus on servants
      • The servant, Guccio, and his love interest, Nuta (a waitress), are both similar in the fact that they are both described as lower class and unattractive
      • Emphasis on classism
        • Nuta is just as careful as upper class women as to who she accepts, as she denies Guccio’s attempts at seduction
        • Implies that upper class women, and the brigata in general, hide their more unpleasant sides
          • Bigger analogy to the brigata and the idea of hiding from the “real world”, or plague
    • Dioneo talks a little bit about merchant protectionism, as he states that foreign goods hurt the Italian market
    • Big use of situational/dramatic irony
      • The friar implies that he’s BS’ing the audience by saying that he went to places such as “Conland”, “Clownland”, “Liarland”, and met a reverend named Dontblameme Ifyouplease
      • Talks about a bunch of silly artifacts, like the sound of bells in a jar and a vial of St. Michael’s sweat
      • The narrator is empathetic towards the audience because it’s easy to be seduced by a well spoken man
    • Cipolla is portrayed as a great orator and persuader
      • “Merchant hero”, mixes truth and lies in order to trick and convince
    • Bocaccio discusses the manipulation of the faithful (lower class must assume that the upper class/literate are telling the truth) and underlines a main literary device: substitution, or metaphors
  • End of Day 6
    • The brigata moves even further away from Florence, to the Valley of the Ladies
    • The women bath in a stream away from the men, knowing that they cannot be seen by the men in the group but also knowing that they are alone
      • They discuss that they have been honorable since moving away, having not acted in the same way as Licisca says that women do
      • The men later go to the stream to bath themselves
    • Dioneo states the theme of the day will be wives who play tricks on their husbands, and he justifies it by stating that the stories will provide pleasure + women only play tricks for “self-preservation”
    • Days 7, 8, and 9 will track the brigata’s journey back to Florence
      • Stories continue to feature Florentine/Tuscan characters and locations
      • More indecent tales, a tribute to medieval French tales
      • A local figure, Calandrino, appears in four different stories - intratextuality
  • Day 8
    • Lauretta is the queen, and the theme is tricks
    • Brigata leaves the Valley of the Ladies and goes to the palace, coming back towards Florence
    • They take a weekend break for religious purposes
  • Calandrino tales
    • First time that a set of recurring characters appears in the Decameron: Bruno, Buffalmacco, and Calandrino
      • Based on actual Florentine characters
      • All three are fresco painters which was a guild trade, meaning that many painters worked on a piece together as a job (not really artists)
    • Calandrino embodies many of the disliked traits in the book: Vanity, Greed, Foolishness, Ignorance, Misogyny
    • Tales focus much on food and hunger which was representative of medieval economics; food was extremely important, meat was scarce
    • VIII.3 - The Heliotrope
      • Cruel humor and situational irony, extremely popular in the Middle Ages
      • Calandrino and Andreuccio both act as unknowing characters who believe themselves to be sly
      • Dantean punishment: Bruno and Buffalmacco throw stones at him after he believes that he’s turned invisible, representative of “stoning him for his sin of hiding his good fortune”
      • Bocaccio may be satirizing misogynists of his time by implying that Calandrino, who is an idiot, thinks misogynistically and beats his wife
    • Calandrino represents as an outsider from the countryside, while Bruno and Buffalmacco are representatives of Florentine tricksters and merchants
    • Many Calandrino tales detail his issues with his wife