The Decameron XI: Thoughts

Final Thoughts - Reading Boccaccio During Corona


It's been ten very interesting days as I saw the narrative around the Coronavirus change day by day, while hiding away in my own apartment with Shanghai's winter sun shining in through the windows. As I wrote atop each post over the last ten days, The Decameron has become oddly relevant to me as I found myself on extended leave because of the Coronavirus. Although nowhere near as deadly as the Black Plague of the 14th century, the fear and suspicion around the Coronavirus was and is very real. I myself have had a relatively good time, thanks to a good employer and a solid internet connection, but I was definitely in need of the diversion Boccaccio could provide.

The set-up of The Decameron is timeless in its simplicity. On the 'First Day' of its story we are introduced to ten youths who hide away in an empty villa while the Black Plague ravages Italy. They decide to tell each other tales to keep them diverted. From the 'Second Day' onward they set themselves a daily theme: gaining fortune after hardship; re-gaining what was lost; unhappy lovelove won; quick wit; cuckolded husbands; general trickery and tomfoolery; a day of free choice; and deeds of great munificence. As the days progress, tales begin to respond to each other, to work up towards a general theme or to rebut a previously made statement. What this adds up to is that it does begin to feel like you're listening to ten friends engage in a back-and-forth. Boccaccio's frame narrative comes alive by the little touches of personality he brings to his characters, whether it is Filostrato's moroseness over his frustrated love life or Filomena's rumored about love life.

The Decameron is set in an idyllic world in which the horrors of the plague exist but can also be escaped by traveling a few hours away. It's a world in which servants are at your beck and call and gardens are luscious and fragrant and evergreen. There are valleys, fountains, daily songs and games. It is a beautiful world, despite its horrors, and this is reflected in the tales as well. They are a riot, full of affairs, pirates, betrayal, conciliation and friendship. Some are erotic, while others are tragic or hilarious. Over the days, I found myself mainly focusing on the gender balance within the tales and within the frame narrative. Seven women and three men, ten tales a day, each covering the actions of men and women alike. Boccaccio addresses the whole Decameron to the "ladies", stating that he wrote it for their amusement and elucidation, as they do not have the same opportunities to divert themselves as men.

The Decameron is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it can be read as a proto-feminist work, highlighting the inequality between men and women. On the other hand it is full of micro-, and macro-, aggression against women. Although they have minds of their own, they still end up the property of men and are still subject to their whims. By focusing on the first, I was always negatively surprised by the latter, for which I am mostly to blame. The Decameron is a medieval work, written in a time when women were treated nowhere near equal to men, legally or socially. The freedom they possess within the tales was not a reality, and yet the tongue-in-cheek tone of the whole book betrays an awareness that this state of affairs is unjust.

At the heart of The Decameron, or so Boccaccio states in his prologue, is the idea of providing comfort and companionship in times of hardship. I get to see the need for and effectiveness of this myself on a daily basis now as everyone here rallies around each other, providing as much support as possible, whether it is a shoulder to cry on or a laugh to distract from the worries. For me, The Decameron has also been a great source of distraction, despite, or perhaps because of, its timeliness. Books, or collections, such as this are a great way to take the mind of other worries and it is no wonder that they remain as popular. Boccaccio took his inspiration from all kinds of French or Italian fables, Greek stories, The Golden Ass, and, of course, Dante's Divine Comedy. What this also emphasized for me was the interconnectedness of Europe's literary history. Many of our stories come from a shared origin. They have been retold, reshaped to fit new times, new places, and in this way they tie different lands and cultures together. Stories are set across Italy, in Greece and in Saladin's court; they cover mostly the aristocracy but also give space to the working classes. Without sounding too cliche, The Decameron is a great reminder of what we all have in common: namely our desire to connect, to share stories and find common ground. The Decameron, written in vernacular prose, became an inspiration and a template for many works that followed it, perhaps most famously Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

I purposefully stayed away from reading too much about the Decameron, whether it was other blog posts or academic papers. I wanted to go into the book without any expectations because I wanted to experience the stories on their own merit. The lovely thing about that was that it did feel as if each day I spent a few hours in the company of others, being amused and perhaps annoyed by them, despite staying mostly in my own apartment. Reading a book such as this in a similar circumstance in which it was created provides a unique window into the work and as such The Decameron will hold a special place in my heart from now on.

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