The Decameron

The vitality of Boccaccio's The Decameron and the work's worldism lavatory be viewed as the author's reaction to the impartiality of the Black shoemaker's last and the tumultuous record of this period of medieval Italian society. Boccaccio suggests as much in the introduction to The Decameron which describes the pestilence-stricken urban center of Florence.

The onslaught of the plague brought chaos to Florence's social order and eventu anyy stripped the city of nearly half its population and most traces of normal quotidian sprightliness. Law and the vast majority of normal social traffic broke down under the widespread devastation and, in the midst of these conditions, Boccaccio composed his greatest work. Most of the anchors that had held society in place throughout history, including the church and its adherence to a tight moral code, could not protect the city or its mess against the ravages of war, disease, famine or economic crisis.

The nearness and indiscriminate nature of death shocked the city and Boccaccio's characters into an awareness of and appreciation for life on this earth that may not have been contingent otherwise. These characters are brought together under unusual circumstances and, on with the readers, come to some unusual conclusions about man's goal on earth. The Decameron, then, is a book that is representative of gentleism because it accepts and embraces all of human life, excluding nothin

In the Renaissance, laughter in its most radical, universal, and at the same time gay form, emerged from the depths of fellowship tillage; it emerged over a period of some cubic decimetre or sixty years and entered with its popular (vulgar) language the electron orbit of great literature...It appeared to play an necessity role in the mental hospital of such masterpieces of world literature as Boccaccio's Decameron . . . The walls between functionary and nonofficial literature were inevitably to crumble (72).

The first ninety stories thus conclude with an account of a humanity struggling with its baser instincts.

It is Copernican to remember, however, that Boccaccio never indicates that the all-too-human qualities illustrated by Dom Gianni and his victims do not have their congruous place in the picture of the human condition that he has painted for his readers. By thoroughly investigating every look of human existence and never shrinking from its truths, Boccaccio seems to be type us throughout the book not to forget that human nature is an intricate and mysterious blend of saintliness and sin. In The Decameron Boccaccio never expects man to rise above his nature through a religious conversion or through the denial of his essential character. Instead, he seems only to hope that man's inherent blend of sin, saintliness, laughter, sensuality, love, and discussion can be channeled into some praiseworthy direction, which he hints at in the final day of storytelling.

. . . laughter in the optic Ages remained outside all official strict forms of social relations. jape was eliminated from religious cult, from feudal and state ceremonials, etiquette, and from all the genres of high speculation. An intolerant, slanted tone of seriousness is characteristic of official medieval culture . . . Early Christianity had already condemned laughter. . ." (73).

The capacity for communicating such silent meaning to readers is not immediately evident in all of Boccaccio's tales but, upon clo
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