The Decameron VI: The Sixth Day

As some of you may know, I currently live in Shanghai, which means that the setting of The Decameron has become beautifully relevant to me all of a sudden. In Boccaccio's collection of tales, seven young women and three young men have hidden themselves away behind a deserted villa's walls to sit out the Black Plague as it ravishes 14th century Italy. While the Corona virus isn't quite as horrifying as the Black Plague (at the moment at least), it has been enough for all of us to be put on extended leave. Hence, I will be spending the next ten days hidden away in my own apartment, desperate to amuse myself and to forget what's happening outside. My tiny apartment may not be a villa and I may be there on my own (+ cat), but it is the place where I will be joining Boccaccio's hideaways.

The Sixth Day

Our cast:

Ladies:                            Men:
Pampinea                        Panfilo
Fiammetta                      Filostrato
Filomena                         Dioneo
Emilia
Lauretta
Neifile
Elissa

The Preamble

'The Sixth Day' starts off lovely, with 'the whole of our hemisphere ... already suffused with the fresh light of dawn', but just as our ten storytellers assemble settle down for today's tales, they are interrupted by 'a great commotion'. Calling out the steward, he explains that two of the servants have gotten into a tiff. One of them is arguing that a mutual friend of theirs went into her marriage very much a virgin, while the other, a woman herself, could not be more outraged at the suggestion. The day's Queen, Elissa, leaves it to Dioneo to decide who was right and he sides with the woman. Initially this interruption feels a bit random, but it is a nice reminder that the world outside is continuing to spin. Our storytellers may be hiding themselves away but that doesn't mean all their worries have disappeared. 

Once the whole situation has been settled, they once again begin their telling of tales, focusing on stories of wit and quick repartee.



The Tales

Elissa, today's Queen

Our first tale is told by Filomena and shows a lady halting a man halfway through a horrendously told story with a quick put down. Pampinea follows with the second tale in which a baker makes a friend through a quip and a gift of wine. Lauretta's third tale shows a woman righteously snapping back at a sanctimonious Bishop. The fourth tale is told by Neifile, in which Fortune gifts a man a quick answer that saves him from a beating. Next is Panfilo and his tale of a master painted and famous jurist who find common ground in their horrible appearance. Fiammetta's tale is the sixth and gives usa  rather blasphemous reason why a particular family both the ugliest and the noblest. In Filostrato's seventh tale brings us back onto the 'gender equality' train as a woman found to be having an affair puts both her husband and the courts in their place. The eighth tale is Emilia's and in it she criticizes the sin of vanity. Ninth is the queen, Elissa, with a fancy quip and a high-jump over a tomb. Dioneo is once again the last to tell his tale, this time focusing on a monk who tricks a whole village into believing a bunch of coal is a relic.

The 'Sixth Day' is a rather short day since brevity is the soul of wit. It unfortunately also means that not all that much is too be said. Although the 'Sixth Day' is just past the middle mark of The Decameron, it seems to be a moment for Boccaccio to remind both the reader and his storytellers that their world is, in many ways, an imaginary one. In her tale, Lauretta describes a woman who, when propositioned by a Bishop on behalf of his friend, puts them both in their place. She also mentions that '"alas, [she is] no longer with us, having died in middle age during the present epidemic"'. It's a reminder of why exactly they are in hiding and that the stories they are telling are, purportedly, about people they know and may have lost. It adds some sadness to the narrative but also grounds it a little bit.

Of course we have to address Filostrato's tale, which describes:

'a statute, no less reprehensible, to be sure, than it was severe, which without exception required that every woman taken in adultery by her husband should be burned alive, whether she was with a lover or simply doing it for money'.

Our heroine, Madonna Filippa is caught by her husband and in his anger he almost strikes her and her lover. Realizing that will have untold consequences for his own person, he turns to the law and denounces her. Although her friends try to convince her to deny she not only confirms her husband's charges, but launches into an argument against the statute. It holds a strong resemblance to a similar speech in Fiammetta's tale on the 'Fourth Tale':

'"as I am sure you will know, every man and woman should be equal before law, and laws must have the consent of those who are affected by them. These conditions are not fulfilled in the present instance, because this law only applies to us poor women, who re much better able than men to bestow our favours liberally. moreover, when this law was made, no woman gave her consent to it, nor was any woman even so much as consulted. it can therefore justly be describes as a very bad law."'

Again, the Socratic idea that love makes philosophers out of us all is proven true. It is also a very political statement, which I thought was very interesting. After asking her husband whether she has ever denied him in bed, to which he agrees that she hasn't, she poses the question whether she should be punished for putting the love and energy he didn't claim to good use. By the end of the tale the law is overturned, but only in favour of those who did so for love. Women who take payment for being unfaithful (i.e. sex workers) are still to be burned. The negative attitude towards sex workers is still something we're struggling with to this day, but the sentiment of the tale is still a nice one.

There is also a fun theme running through two or three of the tales about the Baronci. According to the footnotes in my Penguin edition, the Baronci were a rich Florentine family, who were also 'notoriously ill-favoured'. Fiammetta's tale describes an argument between some youths on which Florentine family is the noblest and oldest one. Scalza argues it is the Baronci since:

'"|The fact of the matter is that when the Lord God created the Baronci, He was still learning the rudiments of His craft, whereas He created the rest of mankind after He had mastered it."'

Scalza's argument is that the Baronci are so ugly because when they were created at the beginning of time, God was only starting out creating humans. Apparently this was considered so blasphemous that the story was either replaced by another or changed thus in translation that the blame was given to Nature or to Prometheus, rather than God. It shows how tricky the translating of these kind of works can be in different time periods, as it has to be adjusted to fit contemporary tastes and taboos.

Certaldo, the setting of the tenth tale and Boccaccio's final resting place

Fun Fact:

In Dioneo's tenth tale, a friar regales a naive crowd with a tale about his travels and the people he has met. One of those is 'The Reverend Father Besokindas Tocursemenot'. This is rather tongue-in-cheek, just read it very slowly if it doesn't make sense straight away. He also makes the following promise about the ash crosses he draws on them:

'"I must tell you that all those who are marked with the sign of the cross by these coals may rest assured that for a whole year they will never be touched by fire without getting burnt."'

What the crowd hears is the exact opposite of what the friar actually says. This story is also set in Cerltado, the city where Boccaccio spent his last few years and may also have been born.

Set Up of the Seventh Day:

The set up for the next day is actually a little more comprehensive than any of the ones before. Elissa crowns Dioneo as the next day's King and, inspired by the argument they witnessed at the beginning of the day, he sets the theme as:

'the tricks which, either in the cause of love or for motives of self-preservation, women have played upon their husbands, irrespective of whether or not they were found out.'

The ladies initially demur, either from false modesty or from having something to hide, but Dioneo convinces them by referencing the lawlessness happening outside their palace walls.

Usually at this point they have a bit of a song and dance, but since the tales were so short, they have a lot of their day still left. Elissa takes the other ladies to see 'the Valley of Ladies', a beautiful sounding valley that is our third 'locus amoenus', which is a literary device and is usually a beautiful place in which the heroes can find comfort or shelter. We've already had a villa and a palace, and now we have a valley with shade, a perfectly clear lake, a stunning waterfall, and distant hills with palaces on them. Once again, my apartment feels woefully inadequate. After the ladies return, Pampinea tells the men about the Valley and after they have also bathed there, Dioneo decides that the next day's tale telling will take place in the Valley.