The Decameron ( ; or Decamerone ), subtitled Prince Galehaut (Old ), is a collection of short stories by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). It is sometimes nicknamed l'Umana commedia ("The Human Comedy"), as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dante Alighieri's Comedy "Divine". The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men; they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. The epidemic is likely what Boccaccio used for the basis of the book which was thought to be written between 1348 and 1353. The various tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons also contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence (for example on Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales), it provides a document of life at the time. Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered a masterpiece of early Italian prose.
Title The book's primary title exemplifies Boccaccio's fondness for Greek philology: Decameron combines Greek , déka ("ten") and , hēméra ("day") to mean "ten-day [event]",The title transliterates to Greek as δεκάμερον (τό) or, classically, δεχήμερον. referring to the period in which the characters of the frame story tell their tales.
Hexaemeron (Six Days, literally The Six-Day [Work]) was a familiar title in Boccaccio's day. It was commonly used for sermons and treatises commenting on the biblical story of the creation of the world, which took place in six days (and was therefore referred to as the Hexaemeron or Six-day work).Frank Egleston Robbins, The Hexaemeral Literature: A Study of the Greek and Latin Commentaries on Genesis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912; Jacobus C. M. Van Winden, “Hexaemeron”, Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 14 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1988), pp. 1250–1269. The tradition goes back to Patristic literature, notably Ambrose of Milan’s Hexaemeron also known as Exameron (ca. 378 C.E.).Cf. Frank Egleston Robbins, The Hexaemeral Literature: A Study of the Greek and Latin Commentaries on Genesis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912, esp. pp. 1-2, p. 16, and the bibliography. Practically, as Robbins's study makes clear, the term hexaemeron functioned as a shorthand for the six-day work of creation. Theologians therefore authored Contemplations, Chapters, Books or Treatises on the Hexaemeron, naturally shortened Hexaemeron. Following Robbins's bibliography, see for example, besides Basil of Caesarea's influential Hexaemeron (4th c.), Gregory of Nyssa's Liber in Hexaemeron (4th c.), Anastasius Sinaita's Contemplationes in Hexaemeron (7th c.), Auxilius's Capita in Hexaemeron (9th c.), Hugo of Amiens's Tractatio in Hexaemeron (12th c.). In thirteenth-century Italy Bonaventure still authored Collationes in Hexaemeron (1273, literally Talks on the Six Days) in the same tradition. Exploring the links between the Decameron and hexaemeral literature's exposition of creation usually structured in six chapters (one for each day), scholarship pointed out that Boccaccio’s ten narrators intervene following a cataclysmic outbreak of plague as though they were metaphorically re-creating a world through their stories, day after day.See Marco Veglia's commentary and the literature he adduces, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, commented by Marco Veglia, Milan: Feltrinelli, 2021, endnote 1; see also Brittany Asaro, "The Redemption of Eve: The Decameron as New Genesis", gender/sexuality/italy, 10, I-II (2023-2024). The mischievous critique of monastic culture contained in Boccaccio’s book also led some to wonder whether the erudite title Decameron might not comprise a parodistic dimension.Gerhard Regn, "The Incipit of the Decameron: Textual Margins as an Index of Epochal Change", Petrarch and Boccaccio: The Unity of Knowledge in the Pre-modern World, edited by Igor Candido, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 176-193. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110419306-009
Boccaccio's subtitle, Prencipe Galeotto, refers to Galehaut, a fictional knight sometimes called haut prince (high prince) in the 13th-century Lancelot-Grail. Galehaut was a close friend of Lancelot, but 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. Through this notorious episode, Galeotto had become the epitome of the romantic go-between in the Italian imagination – a Cupid able to bind two hearts. By subtitling his book Prencipe Galeotto, Boccaccio signals that he hopes his stories will bring young lovers together, providing them with an opportunity to use storytelling as a vehicle of flirtation (as the youths in the Decameron'''s frame story do) and ultimately fall in love. This reading finds confirmation in a memorable passage from Dante's Divine Comedy where two lovers explain they have fallen madly in love while reading the Lancelot-and-Guinevere story to one another, so that, in a sense, the romance had functioned as their very own Galehaut or "romantic go-between". The idea was encapsulated in Dante's oft-cited verse: "Galeotto fu ’l libro e chi lo scrisse" ("The book and its author was our Galeotto", Inferno, V, 137), crystallizing at once the image of Galeotto-as-book and book-as-love-dart. The verse is spoken in Hell, in the circle of the lustful, by Francesca da Rimini as she tries to justify her forbidden liaison with her half-brother and paramour Paolo Malatesta, blaming the Lancelot-and-Guinevere story for impassioning them to sex.Ronald L. Martinez, "Also known as "Prencipe Galeotto" (Decameron)", Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, edited by Victoria Kirkham, Michael Sherberg and Janet Levarie Smarr, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, pp. 23-40 DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226079219.003.0001
The description of Galehaut's munificence and savoir-faire amidst this intrigue impressed Boccaccio. By invoking the name Prencipe Galeotto in the alternative title to Decameron, Boccaccio also alludes to a sentiment he expresses in the Proem of the Decameron about the aim of his 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 men free to enjoy hunting, fishing, riding, and falconry.Boccaccio, Decameron, "Proem"
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, each member of the party tells a story each night, except for one day per week for chores, and the holy days during 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. Due to his wit, Dioneo, who usually tells the tenth tale each day, is allowed to select any topic he wishes.Lee Patterson Literary practice and social change in Britain, 1380–1530 p.186Boccaccio, Day the First
Many commentators have argued that Dioneo expresses the views of Boccaccio himself.The origin of the Griselda story p.7 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 framing interludes frequently include transcriptions of Italian folk songs.Context, Third Paragraph 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. Recurring plots of the stories include mocking the lust and greed of the clergy; female lust and ambition on par with male lust and ambition; tensions in Italian society between the new wealthy commercial class and noble families; and the perils and adventures of traveling merchants.
Analysis
Beyond the unity provided by the frame narrative, the 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, the Decameron uses Dante's model not to educate the reader but to satirize this method of learning. The 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."The Plague as Key to Meaning in Boccaccio's Decameron," in: The Black Death. Daniel Williman, ed. Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1982. pp 39-64. Ferrante, Joan M. "The Frame Characters of the Decameron: A Progression of Virtues." Romance Philology 19.2 (1965). 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.
Literary sources
Boccaccio borrowed the plots of almost all his stories (just as later writers borrowed from him). Although he consulted only French, Italian and Latin sources, some of the tales have their origin in such far-off lands as India, the Middle East, Spain, and other places. Some were already centuries old. For example, part of the tale of Andreuccio of Perugia (Day II, Story 5) originated in 2nd-century Ephesus (in the Ephesian Tale). Even the description of the central motivating event of the narrative, the Black Plague (which Boccaccio surely witnessed), is not original, but is based on a description in the Historia gentis Langobardorum of Paul the Deacon, who lived in the 8th century. Boccaccio also drew on Ovid's works as inspiration. He has been called "the Italian Ovid" because of his writing.
The fact that Boccaccio borrowed the story lines that make up most of the Decameron does not mean he mechanically reproduced them. Most of the stories take place in the 14th century and have been sufficiently updated to 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).