The Decameron

The Decameron

Joel King

GE4455 Literature

October 26, 2005

Joshua Wilkes

Completed about 1353 by Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron takes place in Florence in 1348. About the same time that Boccaccio was writing The Decameron, the plague or Black Death was making its way through Western Europe. About a fourth of the population of Europe died from the plague. Boccaccio himself had someone personal die from the plague. His lover, Maria d’Aquino, died in 1348. He represents her in many of his stories as Fiammetta. Having gone through the plague, Boccaccio knows what he’s talking about.

Like I said before, this story takes place in 1348 in Florence, Italy during the time of the plague. The narrator explains to us that Florence is filled with sick and dieing people. There are dead bodies outside of household doors from neighbors bringing the dead decaying bodies out to be collected by the becchini. Often times they had too many bodies that they didn’t know what to do with them. Four to five bodies would be carried to the church graveyard at a time. Many of the houses were abandoned or only one person would be living in these big beautiful houses because all the family members have died of the plague. Then the narrator takes us into a church where seven young women are talking. One of the women, Pampinea, suggests that they leave the city of Florence and live in the countryside where they all have country homes. Because they no longer have a reason to stay there, all family and friends have died, there is no one to take care of. After discussing it and making sure there are men along with them, they decide to go to the countryside and live. While they are living in the country, they elect to have a leader each day. To pass the time to stay out of the hot afternoon sun, they tell stories to one another.

One of the stories they told was about a man with a prized falcon. For this story, the person telling it, Dioneo, had to tell the story so that it was a love story that ended happily after a period of misfortune. The reason Fiammett had Dioneo tell the story in this manner, I think, is because after seeing all the death back in Florence she wants things to end happily with all of them. He tells a story in which a rich man becomes poor, after falling in love. A woman loses her husband to death. The woman’s son becomes ill, the only thing that will help her son recover fast in her son’s eyes, is a prized falcon owned by the poor man. The woman tries to get the man to give up the falcon, but asks for it too late. Because the man in so in love with this woman, he cooked his prize falcon for her to eat, because she’s worth it he says. After she returned home, her son dies a few days later.