Franz X. Winterhalter, The Decameron (1837)
Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron
Dec 22, 2014
The Frame: A Story of Therapeutics (treatment)
During the plague, the medical tracts addressed three issues:
1) The etiology (causes) of the plague
2) Possible treatments for the sick
3) Courses of action to prevent the spread of the plague
(the physical and psychological methods to be used to protect
oneself from the plague)
(From Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages, Glending Olson; 1986)
Techniques to Avoid the Plague
1) Flee wicked airs (astronomical and geographical explanation
of the cause)
2) Be cheerful; do not occupy ‘your mind with death, passion,
or anything likely to sadden and grieve you, but give your
mind over to delightful and pleasing things.’
3) Spend your time ‘in gardens with flagrant plants, vines, and
willows, when they are flowering.’ (Also frequently sing, dance,
have relaxing conversations.)
4) Avoid ‘the depressing affects of seeing and hearing nothing
except what betokens death.’
(From Literature as Recreation, pp. 164-183)
The Brigata and the Garden
Pampinea functions as the mouthpiece of Boccaccio
who knows all the regimens advised in the medical tracts.
The Brigata and the Garden
“The spot in question was some distance
away from any road, on a small hill that
was agreeable to behold for its
abundance of shrubs and trees, all
bedecked in green leaves…. Delectable
gardens and meadows lay all around,
and there were wells of cool, refreshing
water…. And on their arrival the company
discovered, to their no small pleasure,
that the place had been cleaned from
top to bottom, the beds in the rooms
were made up, the whole house was
adorned with seasonable flowers of
every description, and the floors had
been carpeted with rushes.”
(pp. 19-20)
The Brigata and the Garden
John William Waterhouse, A Tale from the Decameron,
(The Enchanted Garden) 1916
The Brigata and the Garden
“… during the meal there was pleasant talk and merry laughter from
all sides. Afterwards … Dioneo took a lute and Fiammetta a viol, and
they struck up a melodious tune, whereupon the queen … formed
a ring with the other ladies and the two young men, and sedately
began to dance. And when the dance was over, they sang a number of
gay and charming little songs.” (p. 22)
Pampinea, instead of playing
chess or other games at hand,
proposes telling stories,
“an activity that may afford
amusement” instead of
“anxiety”. (p. 23)
A song the Brigata might have played and danced to:
Song: Decius
Performers: Jordi Savall and the Medieval Company
Album: Jaufre Rudel Troubadour
(Mid-12th C., the Prince of Blaye in Southern France)
Figure of Garden in the Genesis
“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden;
and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made
all kinds of trees grow out of the ground - trees that were
pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the
garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil.”
• God’s law or prohibition introduced first in the Garden of Eden
• The initial life-world of mankind but after the fall,
a paradise lost; a blissful state of existence to be regained
• By its absence, it refers us to an original crime; an eternal
source of nostalgia or melancholy
Figure of “Garden” in Lucretius
“…those who follow their true nature never feel cheated of
enjoyment when they lie in friendly company on velvety turf
near a running brook beneath the branches of a tall tree and
provide their bodies with simple but agreeable refreshment,
especially when the weather smiles and the season of the year
spangles the green grass with flowers.” (Book 2, p.36)
• Nature provides a safe haven, a refuge for Lucretius’
physicist-philosopher who is detached from others and
the trivialities of daily life
• It affords a body free from pain, a mind released from worry
and fear for the enjoyment of pleasurable sensations.
Figure of Garden in the Decameron
• Functions not as a reminder of loss / fall or an object of
nostalgia but as the sign of possibility of a new beginning;
a new life; recovery
• It stages a microcosmic utopian project; a new (social) order
that values the well-being of individuals but is not
individualistic (like and unlike Lucretius)
• This utopian imagination is not religious but completely
secular or laic
(=non-clerical; related to laymen, ordinary people)
The Garden as the Possibility of a new Order
-- The plague destroys the (old) order, wipes everything out
-- Social bonds and institutions completely defunct
-- Collective values broken down
-- No sense of security given by political power or religion,
the church
-- Corruption is total; physical and moral
-- The plague creates a blank slate (the garden is that slate)
Imagining an Administrative Structure (a different State)
Pampinea:
“A merry life should be our aim…. However, nothing will last
for very long unless it possesses a definite form…. I have given
some thought to the continuance of our happiness, and
consider it necessary for us to choose a leader, drawn from
our own ranks…. But so that none of us will complain that he
or she has had no opportunity to experience the burden of
responsibility and the pleasure of command associated with
sovereign power, I propose that the burden and the honor
should be assigned to each of us in turn for a single day…. [For]
our company [to] live an ordered life and agreeable existence …
I first of all appoint Dioneo’s manservant Parmeno, as my steward,
and to him I commit the management and care of our household….”
(pp. 20-21)
Imagining an Administrative Structure
The form of interaction of the Brigata members,
the form of their interaction with the servants,
and the group’s general codes of conduct are:
-- Created by Pampinea (with the support of the others) with no
reference to religion or some such transcendent principle.
-- The reference is to the well-being and happiness of the group
and its individual members. Morality originates in the group.
-- Ensuring an “ordered and agreeable existence” and not
monopolizing power in a single sovereign figure seem to be
presented as the main virtues of any future political order
(sharing the burden and the delight of sovereignty).
An “Ordered and Agreeable Existence”
Forces that rule in the Decameron:
1) FORTUNA (fortune, fate)
2) INGENGO (reason, cleverness, ingenuity)
3) AMORE (love)
Boccaccio’s universe stages a complex relationship between
these forces. An “ordered and agreeable” existence,
well-being and contentment can be achieved if they are
understood and kept in a kind of balance.
Fortuna, Ingegno, Amore
Wheel of Fortune (Çarkıfelek)
FORTUNA (Principle of Passivity):
-- Moves cyclically and arbitrarily
-- Christian notion of fate or destiny signifies a plan, a prewritten
divine scenario
-- In Boccaccio, fate is blind chance (good or bad luck) or simply
hazard (not religious destiny) one is exposed to
INGEGNO (Principle of Agency):
-- Can or must react to the hazards or seize the opportunities
Fortuna presents
-- Cleverness, cunning, quick-wit as values of the mercantile,
bourgeois society
AMORE (Pleasure Principle):
-- Good or bad luck may equally befall on you; life and death,
success and failure swing between Fortuna and Ingegno;
in this picture one must not ignore Amore (love, sensual pleasures)
Fortuna
Secular Fortuna and
the Four States of Life
(Cycle of Success and Failure)
From top, clockwise:
REGNO – I reign (I’m the king)
REGNAVI – I have reigned (I was…)
SUM SINE REGNO – I have no Kingdom
REGNABO – I shall reign (I will be…)
(Carmina Burana – poems in Latin
and Medieval German from
the 12th C.)
Carl Orff (1936)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icHUh-9qqQ8&feature=player_embedded
Ingegno and Amore: The Story of Friar Alberto
-- Religion can no longer
serve as the moral basis or
framework of social life
-- Its representatives
are debased frauds,
they manipulate people
for their own interests
(money-making,
adultery, etc.)
Frate Alberto according
to Pampinea / Boccaccio?
Monna Lisetta: Victim (but also not quite so)
Pampinea:
“…it happened that a frivolous
and scatterbrained young woman
whose name was Monna Lisetta
… the wife of a great merchant
who sailed away to Flanders
aboard one of his galleys, came to
be confessed by this holy friar of
ours accompanied by a number of
other ladies.”
(p. 304)
Monna Lisetta: half-wit, somewhat feeble on the upper storey,
Lady Bighead, Lady Noodle, Lady Birdbrain, a prize blockhead
“[Angel Gabriel] would be
welcome to visit her
whenever he pleased, but
only if he promised not to
desert her for the Virgin
Mary, of whom it was said
he was a great admirer …
In all the paintings she had
seen of him, he was
invariably shown kneeling
in front of the Virgin.”
(p. 306)
Fra Filippo Lippi, The Annunciation (c. 1450)
-- Frivolity and stupidity are the OPPOSITE
of Ingegno (reason, wit, ingenuity)
-- NOT all instances of seizing-the-opportunity are
examples of Ingegno
-- Deception, fraudulence, and bad cunning
are NOT Ingegno
-- What Friar Alberto aims to experience and what
Monna Lisetta has with him are NOT the real
pleasures of Amore
But, is this an Instance of Ingegno? Both yes and no?
The Brigata leaves
Florence primarily for safety
and establishes a utopia
away from the plague
– the reality (escapism?)
Is this utopia reasonable?
(based on pleasures of
nature, art, story-telling
and hearing stories)
How feasible or beneficial is this utopian
mode of existence?
How long can they stay
disconnected from the
ongoing catastrophe?