#Decameron: Two Naughty Tales | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theloniousbach · 4 years

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The Decameron Diaries, Day 10 and Epilogue

I have finished Day 10 of The Decameron, but lost my notes for the Day in a Google doc accident and so the Diary will appear unfinished.

The last day was given over to tales of generosity and munificence. My summaries have never been uniquely valuable, so it is not a great loss and anyone, including me, when I recall this project to experience that quarantine story from 1348 while living the 2020 version. Wikipedia for instance does a perfectly fine job.

It can hardly be original to wonder if there is any thematic or other continuity in any particular story teller’s stories, including her/his day’s theme. But I’m only mildly curious so I’m not jumping to even a rudimentary search, much less a scholarly one. Dineo stands out as the naughty one and claimed a distinctive role in the frame tale. But I bet it’s negligible for the same reasons--14th Century understandings of literary technique and the personality--that character development in the stories is mostly limited to them serving as ciphers subordinated to plots.

The Epilogue is a bit of Boccaccio messing with us about any censoriousness we might have about language, anti-clericalism, and ribaldry. That is, the best parts.It’s been fun. It sure helped give me something to read over these past two months almost exactly. For the first 2/3s if not more when I really could only read in short bursts. It was also useful to read a story or so a day, sometimes more but I don’t think I missed a day until just this week. I didn’t eat all the box of chocolates at once which I certainly am prone to do.

Fun, but I’m ready to read an actual mystery novel or some such.I did lose the last day’s story summaries and probably a longer peroration on the day and the project.

But, it comes to nearly 8000 words, so that too is an agreeable landmark.

Next.

#2020 #The Decameron #giovanni boccaccio

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theloniousbach · 4 years

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The Decameron Diaries, Day 9

I am heading to the finish line and ready for the end.

This has been an apt and welcome exercise, linking a quarantining premise for a series of short tales. But 100 is a lot of stories and they are mostly little plots with little basis to care about characters. They can be moved around as pawns to whatever comic or moral effect.

When I started, I was only beginning to get my bearings in the Disruption and I couldn’t concentrate on longer narratives. I think I’m ready to dig into mysteries.

But this has been fun.

Today’s theme is no theme, just like the first day. In the idyllic opening as part of the frame, the young people both interact with wild animals in a Disney like manner and carry back flowers and herbs that show that they were carefree about death. That’s one of the only occasional references to their plague and sheltering in place.

1, 5/15–To rid herself of two annoying suitors, she has one go to a tomb and dress as a recently deceased person and the other to go bring her the “body.” If neither of them does (and she doesn’t expect it), she can send them packing. They actually do do as she wishes until the first one carrying the second is called out by the watch and drops his burden. They both run off. Yes, they proved their love but she can still spurn them.

2, 5/15–This may well be one of the stories brought into “The Little Hours” as it concerns a nun who is involved with a young man (not the gardener who pretends to be mute) and her jealous colleagues catch her to turn her into the abbess. They catch her in the act and go get the abbess who dresses hurriedly to catch them. The problem is instead of her wimple, she puts the trousers of the priest who was in bed with her on her head. The rules get relaxed for everybody.

3, 5/15–The painter rascals from previous stories fleece a friend who has come into money by telling he looks bad, sending him to bed, getting a doctor friend/victim/accomplice to tell him he’s pregnant (!?). The victim humorously upbraids his wife for being on top but also pays for a harmless concoction after which the doctor informs him that he’s not pregnant.

4, 5/15–Two “friends” have a falling out. The ambitious one seeks to join the papal ambassador with his dissolute friend as his valet. The valet gambles away his money and his friends. He makes a scene to make it appear that the responsible one is in the wrong up to and including convincing a group of peasants that his wronged friend is the actual thief and the one skipping out on debts. So it ends but there is promise of revenge.

5, 5/15–The rascal painters trick one of their number, already a victim of theirs, to think that a young woman is infatuated with him while getting his wife to witness him making a fool of himself.

6, 5/15–To sleep with his beloved, a young man with his traveling partner take advantage of her father’s hospitality. They are given a bed in a room with the father in mother in one bed (a baby cradle too, beside them) and the daughter in the third bed. When all are asleep, the two young people get together. The mother gets up to check on a cat making noise, while the other young man answers a call of nature. They end up in the same bed and the young lover gets back in bed with the father to whom he boasts. Wife gets in bed with her daughter and placates the father by saying she’s been in the bed with the daughter all night. Friend adds to the cover story by chiding his friend for sleepwalking and vivid dreams. All seems well. A bedroom farce in the same bedroom.

7, 5/16–A man dreams that his strong-willed wife is mangled by a wolf. She discounts his warning, even thinking that he is trying to keep her away from the woods so that he can do something behind her back. Therefore, she goes to the woods, of course, where she is indeed mangled by a wolf and is disfigured for the rest of her life.

8, 5/16–Two gluttons who sponge off others trick one another into getting their expectations raised for food and drink that others don’t deliver.

9, 5/16–Two young men visit Solomon for advice. The one with the obstinate wife is instructed to visit “Goose-Bridge” where he sees a muleteer beat a recalcitrant animal. Along with the queen’s lengthy preface about how women should be deferential and obedient, the vicious beating is disgusting. The other young man is rich and so generous to his fellows but doesn’t win actual friends. He though is upbraided by the wife because his motivation isn’t sincere but about pomp and pretense.

10, 5/16–Dineo’s story is sufficiently naughty as a simple trader and a poor priest who also work are friends. In a throwaway line, the priest tells the trader’s wife that he can turn his mare into a woman and back and forth. She asks to be turned into a mare so that she can help with the business. The priest agrees but tells the trader he must be quiet or he will ruin the spell once and for all. He has her strip and bend over on all fours, He examines all her flanks and all that is left is “to pin on the tail” which the husband naturally objects to. He speaks out and the spell is broken.

#2020 #the decameron #giovanni boccaccio

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theloniousbach · 4 years

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The Decameron Diaries, Day 4

As we are sheltering in place to avoid our current plague, I am reading Boccaccio’s tale of ten well-to-do young women and men who leave Florence during a plague and amuse themselves with a story a day for ten days.

They are generally amusing and sometimes pleasantly naughty, though today is mopey. These are stories, tales, plots, not short stories in any modern sense. The 14th Century understanding of character in a literary much less psychological sense is far from our own.

But it’s also true that I, as a reader, have a shorter attention span than I sometimes do, so this suits me as a reading project.

DAY 4

The theme is love that ends unhappily. But the Day opens with Boccaccio himself speaking to ladies/the audience outside the narrative. As such it is meta, about writing and about the project of the Decameron with mostly false modesty about what his accomplishment. There’s even a partial story of a father who shelters his son who comes to Florence having seen no other person is nonetheless entranced by his first sight of women. But then he drops the story. This is a quite remarkable section in odd relation to the work as a whole.This day’s King is forlorn from love and finds these stories of the sufferings of others a comfort. Hence the theme.

1, 4/14–A young widow takes a lover from her father’s court. When the King discovers what she has done, she has him killed and confronts her. She maintains her dignity and does not beg for mercy. She defends herself and her lover, calls her father’s devotion what it is, patronizing. He sends her her lover’s heart. He mourns for him but when she cries herself out, she dispassionately poisons herself to be with him everlasting.

2, 4/15–A rogue high tails it out of his small town for Venice where he portrays himself as a friar. He convinces a stupid but beautiful woman that the Archangel Gabriel will come to her in his form at night. This fraud works until word spreads. He escapes only briefly but is then humiliated publicly and locked up by his Order.

3, 4/16–Three young men and three sisters elope together to Crete, but their idyllic love sours on jealousy and intrigue. It all ends grimly.4,

4/17–A young couple fall madly in love on the basis of reputation and an exchange of letters and tokens. She is to be married off, so he seeks to kidnap her. Her entourage kills her in his presence. He destroys their ship, but because he has broken his grandfather’s, the King’s, pledge, he is beheaded for treason.

5, 4/17–This is the English traditional song, “Bruton Town” with some Italian spice, quite literally basil. A sister falls in love with an inappropriate suitor and her brothers kill him. “Bruton Town.” But then he comes to her in a dream and helps her find his body. She disinters him to bring his head home, reburying the rest. He puts his head in basil pot and cries over the plant. Her brothers take it away and she cries herself to death. The end.

6, 4/18–Two lovers each have foreboding dreams which are confirmed when he dies in her arms. They have secretly wed, so she tries to return him to his people. But she and her maidservant are found by the watch. The magistrate confirms that she is innocent but still tries to take advantage of her. She resists and her father gets her released. But she becomes a nun.

7, 4/18–A working class story finally, though it ends no better. Still our love is just as storied as the rich’s. A young spinner is attracted to an underling of a wool merchant. They meet for a picnic but first he dies from rubbing sage leaf on his teeth. Then she does by showing the magistrate who doesn’t quite believe the accusations against her how he died. She dies in the precise same way.

8, 4/19–Another died from grief story. Rich young man is sent away to get over an unsuitable woman. She has married when he returns and tries to persuade her. When he doesn’t, he dies from grief. Only at the church does she grieve over the body and die herself.

9, 4/19–A knight falls in love with his best friend’s wife who discovers the treachery. The betraying knight is killed and his heart is served by his ex-friend to the wife. He cruelly tells her and she throws herself out a window to her death. The husband leaves and the locals bury the two lovers together in the same tomb.

10, 4/19–Dineo bats clean up and shifts the other dire tone of the rest of the day with a story of deception that almost backfires. A young wife of a surgeon takes a lover who inadvertently takes a sleeping draught prepared for a surgery. He is doped up and taken for dead. She and her maidservant hide him in a trunk that ends up being taken home by some moneylenders. He wakes up inside their house and is accused of robbing them. To save his neck, the maidservant tells the story substituting herself as the lover’s mistress. Somehow that gets him off.

The day concludes, as they do, with a song by the sovereign for the day. Today’s king is unhappy in his own love life as he clearly has been spurned by one of their party. So his bad mood has tempered the day for everyone. Indeed, this is a dour day and, again, the lack of character development and understanding of character dynamics make these stories flat. We are prepared to engage with the characters more than they have in them for us.

The next day is the reverse image—couples who have been through calamities but survive happily.

#2020 #the decameron #giovanni boccaccio

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