The Decameron: A Monument to Ingenuity - Book Report/Review Example

The Decameron: A Monument to Ingenuity The Italian Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Decameron, a memorable collection of hundred tales, was written between the years 1348 and 1353 and was translated to English as ­The Decameron in 1620. Boccaccio presents a group of ten friends, three men and seven women, who take refuge in a villa outside Florence in the time of the plague. There they spend the time telling stories over a period of ten days, which constitute the hundred tales that have their sources in the Egyptian, Arabian, Persian, Indian and French folktales and narratives of the time. According to Edward Hutton, ­ The Decameron has the weakness of character in contrast with Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, modeled on a similar oral narrative structure. “In Chaucer, the tales often weary us, but the tellers never do; in Boccaccio the tales never weary us, but the tellers always do.” And he further points out that in Latin art, “the narrative or drama rises out of the situation rather than out of the characters of the persons” (x). It can be observed that the significance given to the situation makes the narrators wade in as the characters in the tales, regardless of class, race and gender, gain the freedom to carry themselves the way they like, beyond any moralistic or rational concerns. Almost all of them exhibit a certain amount of ingenuity that makes them their own masters in life’s adventures and mishaps. Guido A.Guarino1 observes in his introduction to Boccaccio’s Concerning Famous Women that “in the Decameron the author’s first desire was to entertain, while in the biographies of women it was to teach”(xxiii). He notes that “in the light tales” of The Decameron, “Boccaccio is guided primarily by artistic, rather than pedagogical reasons” (xx). Though he says of Boccaccio that “beneath all his laughter he remains a moralist” the treatment of all the stories in The Decameron exhibits a light treatment of the topics and are distinctive in that they sound logical and witty thanks to the various characters who face difficult situations in life with utmost resourcefulness. Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, in his The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy traces the major influence The Decameron had on the Renaissance playwrights. The fact that Boccaccio presented these tales in the most convincing and dramatic manner may be the reason for it. As Radcliff-Umstead observes, “The modern heroine, as portrayed in the Decameron, resents the social conventions and family upbringing that deny her the chance to enjoy sexual pleasures before marriage” (242). In many of the tales, Boccaccio presents women who transcend the sexual morality of the times, and the cases where they and the men involved have to use their intelligence to overcome a difficult situation are aplenty. In the first story of Day One, Master Ciappelletto, described the “the worst man ever born” (The Decameron 3) who reveled a lifetime in treason, lechery and blasphemy, realizes that he is nearing his death after he was inflicted with the plague. As his friends find it difficult to look after or discard him, he asks them to summon a friar, and with a very cunning confession, convinces the friar that he is the holiest man living on the face of the earth. Thus, when he died, he was buried in a marble vault in one of the chapels and he became a saint. Ciappelletto’s act of cheating the friar or his becoming a saint in the end are not approved by the narrator Pamfilo, who in a judgmental streak comments that “he ought rather to be in the hands of the devil, in perdition, than in heaven” (12). But in stark contrast to this, we have the words from Ciappelletto, who reflects, “I have played so many dirty tricks during my life on the Lord God that it would be but a drop in the bucket if I played Him another now that I am about to die” (5). In Guarino’s words, a “scoundrel became a saint with a last sacrilegious act, when the flames of hell were already burning him” (xxiv) Ciappelletto was actually trying to help the Florentine brothers who were looking after him, and also to help himself from falling to bad fortune in the days before his death. Pragmatism just takes over morality and propriety. In the third story of Day One, Melchizedek the Jew is faced with the predicament of passing a judgment on the question of identifying the true religion among the three choices - the Hebrew, the Saracen and the Christian. He was asked this question by Saladin, the Sultan of Babylon, who was plotting to hold a charge against the Jew so that his immense riches can be extricated. He had to find “an answer that would save him from the snare” (17). Hence the Jew told the king a parable, of a man who had to pass on a ring, according to his family tradition, to the son who was to become the head of the family. He had three sons whom he loved equally, and he made two other rings, which could not be differentiated from the original, and secretly passed on the ring to each of his sons. He brought this story to the context of the question of the three religions and established that “each race believes it possesses the inheritance…But which one it is that is the true possessor remains a question to be solved, as with the rings” (18). Saladin was impressed by the way the Jew used his good sense to extricate himself from the snare. J.H Whitfield says that this tale has been taken sometimes “as the coming of the Renaissance, setting men free from the restraints of religion and morality” (Whitfield 58) In the fourth story, a monk is caught by his abbot for a lecherous affair. When the monk realizes that he had been spied upon by the abbot as he was frolicking with a peasant girl in his room, he thought hard to find an escape and decided to set a trap for the abbot. He locked the girl in his room, gave the key to the abbot and asked permission to go out. The abbot decided to find out the identity of the girl, but when he found her in the room, he was also possessed by lust and decided to sport with her while he may. The monk peeped into the room and saw everything in detail. When the abbot tried to reprimand him, he revealed the fact that he had witnessed the abbot too committing the same crime for which he was to be punished. The abbot realized the gravity of the situation and did forgive the monk. The question of morality does not exist in this tale, but what is significant is that the monk was cunning enough to contrive a trick that would save him in the end. The fifth story of Day One is the classic case of a virtuous woman saving her honor by using her wit to good effect. The Marquise of Monferrato is approached by King Philip le Borgne while her husband is away. The lady had to save her holy and blissful marriage from the advances of the king who had some malintentions. She ordered for a special dinner for the king that contained a variety of dishes, but all of them ere concocted of hens. When the king asked her about this, she replied, “although females may differ in garb and dignity, they are made the same here, as anywhere else” (24). This opened the eyes of the king, and realizing the folly of his misplaced amorous deeds, he leaves the virtuous lady alone. According to Fiammetta the narrator, this is “the story of how a noble lady retained her virtue by word and deed, and kept a man from violating it” (22). The first story of Day Two deals with the Florentine Martellino and his friends Stecchi and Marchese. Martellino pretends to be a cripple and claims that he had been healed over the body of Saint Heinrich. But people find out this fraud and try to manhandle him. His friends had to act fast so as to save him and themselves from the situation. They shouted with the mob against him and sneaked out to bring in soldiers on the pretext that they had been robbed by someone. The soldiers saw people beating up Martellino and took him for the robber. He was saved temporarily from the violent mob, but he was brought to the prince of Trevigi, and faced the verdict of being strung up by the neck. His friends went to their landlord who introduced them to Sandro Agolanti who was in good terms with the prince. He narrated the entire misadventure the threesome had and the prince had a heart laugh at this. He released Martellino and ordered for each of the three friends a fine suit of clothes. This story shows a variation of instances of ingenuity from the part of each of the friends and ends happily only since they were able to act sensibly in every situation. In the fifth story of Day Two, Andreuccio of Perugia visits Naples to buy horses but ends up in a series of misadventures. He is robbed by a loose woman who pretends to be his sister and he escapes from the trap set by her only to be accompanied by a couple of thieves who were set to steal a ruby from the fingers of the dead archbishop of Naples. He was forced to remain with them and act as their accomplice. However, he realizes in time that they just wanted him to go down in the vault where the body of the archbishop was buried and bring all the valuable things from there. After this was to be accomplished, he knew that they would get rid of him. He pretends that he could not find the ruby, and sensing what he had in his mind, the robbers pulled the lid in place and left. Andreuccio was desperate for a while but fate played its part and some other people, in fact a few priests, approached the tomb. They were also after the ruby, and when one priest tried to crawl down the tomb, Andreuccio caught his legs and pulled it down. All of them got scared and ran away from the place, leaving the lid open. Andreuccio was able to escape from all the misadventures he had in a single night because he was able to use his better judgment in all the cases, even when he was in grave trouble. The first tale of Day Three deals with Masetto da Lamporecchio who pretends to be deaf and dumb to get the gardener’s job in a convent. There, much to his wish, he ends up getting physically involved with all the nuns there and even the abbess. Once he lost his control, as he was overtaxed with the work of satisfying the nine women, and was forced to speak up about it to the abbess. He told to the abbess who was astounded to see the deaf man speaking, that it was some sickness that took his speech away and that he regained it only that night. The nuns wanted to keep the secret and therefore made him the steward. They spread the news that the dumb man regained his speech due to the prayers from the nuns. He had an easy life there and even “fathered monklets aplenty” (149). He was given a lot of material benefits for keeping the secret and he returned a wealthy man to his hometown when he was no longer a young man. Guido A. Guarino considers the Masetto story to be “one of the most successful in Decameron” (xx). Masetto’s act of trying to find a job in the convent because he wanted to be with so many women and the way he talked to the abbess about his feigned dumbness shows his resourcefulness and the way he survived there further attests to his ability to make the most of a situation. In the tenth tale of Day Four, a physician’s wife hides her lover in a chest, thinking him dead. The chest is stolen and taken home by two moneylenders. When they open the chest they find out the man who was not actually dead. They take him for a thief. The timely intervention of the chambermaid of the lady saves the man from getting hanged. She reveals that the man was locked in the chest by his ladylove herself, and the men who stole the chest had to pay a great amount of money in compensation. This story has the similar theme of the ninth story of day two where a youth carries himself in a chest to the bedchamber of the Genoese lady Zinerva. Radcliff-Umstead notices that “In neither of these tales is the chest used for amorous purposes” (92) as in the case of the second story of day nine. In the story analysed here, the woman tried to find a pragmatic solution when her lover drank by mistake the sleeping potion prepared by her husband. The chambermaid too was able to handle the situation well, by her timely intervention and speaking the truth. The sixth day was to be confined to the topic of “people who extricated themselves from some predicament, by means of a witty retort, or prevented loss, peril or mockery, with some ready flash or quick prevision.” (351) The fourth story of the day is a very good example of this, where Chichibio, the cook of Currado Gianfigliazzi, is escapes the wrath of his master with his witty ingenuity. While roasting fattened crane that the master wanted him to prepare for a dinner for his friends, Chichibio’s girlfriend Brunetta came in and cajoled him to tear apart a leg of the stork for her. When the master found out that the roasted crane had only one leg, he was furious and questioned Chichibio, who replied that storks had only one leg. The master left the subject to rest for the day as he did not want to spoil the dinner, but the next day he was still angry at Chichibio. However, Chichibio showed the sleeping cranes standing on one leg to his master and told him that they had only one leg. The master shouted ‘Ho-Ho’ at them and the cranes produced their other leg. But Chichibio reminded the master that he did not say ‘Ho-Ho’ the previous night to the roasted crane, in which case that too must have produced its other leg. Listening to this outrageously funny remark, the master broke to laughter and forgave the cook, as he was impressed by the prompt and ludicrous reply. In the third story of the Seventh Day, Gianni Lotteringhi hears a knock on his door. His wife Tessa tries to convince him that it was a ghost and they try to exorcise it. However, the knock was meant to wake up Tessa and the person responsible for it was her lover Frederigo. Tessa managed to warn her lover by her loud chant, which directed him to the place where she had kept some wine and eggs for him. The husband believed that they were successful in getting rid of the ghost with their chanting. The ready wit of Tessa saved the situation for herself and Frederico, while her husband was kept in the dark about what really happened. The eighth story of the day is a similar one where the rich merchant Arriguccio Berlinghieri is jealous of his wife Sismonda who entertains a lover, Ruberto. She ties a string to her big toe and the other end of it was kept near the window under which the lover can tug at it when he has arrived. The husband found out this ruse and went chasing the lover. In the meantime, she put another woman in the bed in her place. The husband in his fury did beat up this woman, cut her hair and brought his wife’s brothers to let them witness this. They found out that the woman was not his wife or their sister and reprimanded him for the misadventure. Douglas Radcliff-Umstead points out the influence of this particular story on Pietro Aretino’s comedy Il Filosofo: “In the comedy and in the novella a young wife takes a lover because her husband neglects his marital duties. Both works are a substitution theme” (184). Though cruel towards the woman, the timely wit of Sismonda saved her from the situation and ensured a future for her where she would not have to fear her husband. The first story of the ninth day is about Francesca getting rid of the amorous advances of the two gallants Rinuccio and Alessandro. She convinces them that they have to perform a heroic deed so as to win her. On a day when a notorious man died in Pistoia, she demanded Alessandro to stay in the tomb where the man was buried and Rinuccio to take the task of carrying the dead body of the man from the tomb to her house. Both of them complied, not realizing the plot she had on them. Alessandro stayed in the tomb like a dead man and Rinuccio took him all by himself and moved towards Francesca’s house in utter silence. The police saw them in the dark and their searchlights scared both the youths. Rinuccio dropped the body and ran for his life and so did Alessandro, in a dead man’s shroud. They tried to convince Francesca of what really happened but she did not believe them and got them dismissed summarily from their advances to woo her. Douglas-Umstead refers to this story and notes that “lovers in the Boccaccian tradition will risk anything” (148). It is the good sense that Francesca showed in realizing this and plotting successfully the perilous transportation in a chest that saves her from the nuisance of the two lovers. The first story of the Tenth Day depicts Messer Ruggieri de Figiovanni, a knight who served Alfonso, King of Spain. Ruggieri thought that the King bestowed his choicest blessings to those who did not deserve it. He was unhappy about the Kind gifting the unworthy knights castles, towns and titles indiscriminately. He decided to leave and expressed this wish to the king, on which the king gifted him one of the best and most beautiful mules. He sent a servant along with the knight, but not letting him know that he was actually the king’s spy. On their way, when Ruggieri prompted the animals to rest, the mule did not acquiesce and he commented that the mule was just like the King who gifted it to him. The kind got to know about this and summoned him to ask for an explanation. He explained that the king and the mule were indiscriminate, the former for bestowing gifts to unworthy people and the latter for not taking rest when it should. The king tried to convince the knight that it was his fortune, not him, that was to be blamed. However, the King rewarded him with royal munificence. Though the knight’s loud proclamation landed him in trouble for a while, he was able to communicate to the king his heart’s discontent and the rest of the events prove that he succeeded in the task of making the king think more about his actions. Thus he even overcomes fate to disprove the king, as he received the choicest blessings of the king in the end, just because he was able to justify himself and speak the truth in the best way possible to the king. The stories that are analysed here are just a few good examples of how The Decameron serves as a monument to ingenuity. The characters who are representative of each class race and gender of the Italian life contemporary to Boccaccio are all survivors. It is not their social position or self-righteousness that saves them from difficult situations. All of them are adept in using their mental faculties and logical ability to the maximum. It is a work that glorifies man’s ability to countenance the trials and tribulations of life, though presented at times with a tinge of humour. The work has aptly emerged from the abominable effects of the plague of 1348 that took away a lot of precious life, including that of Fiammeta, Boccaccio’s beloved. Boccaccio’s disregard for the conventional ideas of virtuous men and women is reflected in The Decameron, where the ability to overcome a difficult patch in life is given more significance than anything else. Human ingenuity is what Boccaccio values the most, it seems, if one looks at the way he looks through the crimes committed out of passion. In the preface to his book Concerning Famous Women, Boccaccio says: Nor do I want the reader to think it out of place if together with Penelope, Lucretia, and Sulpica, who were very chaste matrons, they find Media, Flora, and Sempronia, who happened to have very strong but destructive characters. For it is not my intention to give the word ‘famous’ so strict a meaning that it will always seem to signify ‘virtuous’, but rather to give it a wider sense, if the reader will forgive me, and to consider as famous those women whom I know to have become renounced to the world through any sort of deed. (xxxviii) This summarises Boccaccio’s stand on the subject matter of his books. The Decameron was not designed as a collection of stories that would have a moralizing effect. Rather, it exposes the little tricks people have to play in their lives for sustenance. Moreover, the sexual codes and morality that existed in a time and space different from ours but essentially on the same lines, must also have contributed to the raw, original oral narratives that exude a good amount of positive life energy. Edward Hutton reflects: It is true that Boccaccio deals with life and with life alone. It is true that life then, as now, made little of sexual morality. But with Boccaccio sexual immorality usurps or seems to usurp a place out of all proportion to its importance in life. It is here that Boccaccio is most conventional, for here his comic genius is seen at its best. (xiii) What constitutes his comic genius, as explained in the stories mentioned above, is how he depicts the characters get out of the immediate troubles when their immorality or fraud is about to be exposed. In many cases, the ingenuity they show in escaping punishment or humiliation leads the witnesses to think lightly of the offence and to forgive them with full knowledge of their follies. Or, in some cases, like Pietro of the tenth story of the fifth day, are able to forgive the offenders when they think about their own misdeeds which place them in no better position than the ones they were going to judge. The realism of The Decameron has its roots in the way the characters act naturally in specific situations, which also is part of their ingenuity. The truth is that the stories recounted in the work are neither a reflection Italian life of those days, nor are they originated in Italy. As J.H.Whitfield observes, The Decameron is a “free work of the imagination, in which old tales are given as much life as Boccaccio can afford” (70). The interventions from Boccaccio’s part, that appear in the introductions and conclusions to the stories, and also in the lyrical consummation of each day’s stories, prove that the entire pattern of the stories rely on a light-hearted strain. However, it remains at the core of the narrative that the very reason for the ten young people to entertain one another for ten days was a matter of grave concern – that of escaping the excruciating effects of the plague. In his conclusion to the book, Boccaccio reflects on his original design of The Decameron, which would be the best way to conclude the subject matter and effect of the book: …. considering the fact that the sermons our good friars preach nowadays to admonish us for our sins are in the majority of cases full of jests, jibes and jokes, I thought these trifles would not have been inappropriate in my stories, written as they were to rid women of melancholy. (665) Works Cited Boccaccio, Giovanni. Concerning Famous Women, translated by Guido A. Guarino. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1964. ---. The Decameron, translated by Frances Winwar. New York: The Modern Library, 1930. Hutton, Edward. Introduction to The Decameron In Two Volumes, Volume One. London: J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1955 Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas. The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969. Whitfield, J.H. A Short History of Italian Literature. London: Cassell and Company Ltd., 1962. Read More