Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75) was born in or near Florence, Tuscany, and devoted his life to writing. His father had hoped Giovanni would follow in his footsteps to the banking industry, but his son persuaded him to let him study Canon Law (church law) in Naples. After beginning his career as a writer, Boccaccio returned to Florence in 1340 due to political tensions making the status of a Florentine in Naples potentially dangerous. Boccaccio wrote many surviving works in both Italian and Latin, showing himself a master of both poetry and prose, and was patronised at courts around Italy.
Like The Canterbury Tales (on which it was a strong influence), The Decameron (a portmanteau of Greek words, meaning ‘ten days’) is a collection of tales within a frame-narrative. The frame-narrative sees a group of 7 young men and 3 women fleeing Florence for Fiesole to escape the Black Death, which arrived in the city in 1348. They spend 14 days together in a deserted villa, and for 5 nights a week (hence the title) each tells a story on a subject or theme set by a different member of their party. In total, the monumental work contains 100 novellas.
In a further similarity to The Canterbury Tales, the stories of The Decameron satirise details of contemporary life. Some tell of the greed and corruption of the clergy (picking up on Dante’s diatribes against them in The Divine Comedy), others the tensions between aristocratic families and the parvenu merchant class that was rising at the time (the Medici in Florence, for example). Throughout The Decameron runs Boccaccio’s almost modern sympathy for the plight of women, who were denied liberty and freedom of speech in 14th-century Tuscany while, simultaneously, men were free to indulgence themselves in learning, fun, and fulfilling careers.
Overall, the sentiments and construction of The Decameron make it a good place for modern readers to start in medieval literature. Boccaccio’s decision to write in prose, rather than the more esteemed form of verse, makes it especially accessible, as it is free of overt artistic flourishes and pretence. The collection’s variety of theme and genre means that there is something for everyone. Boccaccio is so great a writer that he is claimed by medieval and Renaissance critics alike for their period; Boccaccio exists on the border between the periods, and his work is all the more fascinating for it.