The Struggle for Control among the novellatori of the Decameron

and the Reason for Their Return to Florence

Robert Hollander
alla memoria degli amici e veri maestri,
Vittore Branca e Francesco Mazzoni,
dedico questo, l'ultimo mio lavoro boccaccesco
The Decameron has served as Rorschack test ever since it was first read. It is so "reader-
friendly", so "human", that all of us see ourselves reflected in it. Nonetheless, I twice had the
good sense to argue that it was, whether we realized it or not, one of the most difficult works
written in what we call the Middle Ages. (Many years ago I referred to it as «possibly the
most enigmatic text in continental medieval fiction»1 and then as «one of the worst read
masterpieces that the world possesses»2.
This study will consider the reasons behind the decision to return to the plague-infested city, a
decision that has its presence in the text, but is rarely, if ever, discussed, or even mentioned. Thus,
of necessity, we will mainly have to examine the framing elements of the work rather than the
cento novelle themselves3.

During the last two occasions on which I offered seminars on Boccaccio's masterwork, in 1999 and
2002, I noticed some intriguing details in his treatment of the motivations of several narrators4. I
first aired some of these observations in the Palazzo Pretorio at Certaldo on 24 April 2007 in a
lecture entitled "Decameron" I.iv- v: La battaglia per controllo: Dioneo contro Fiammetta5. As is
reflected by its title, my lecture was an attempt to deal with the efforts taken by several members
of the brigata to establish an agenda for the group, beginning with Pampinea in the Introduzione,
and then, and perhaps most dramatically, twice in the course of the Prima Giornata, first in
Dioneo's response to the first three novelle (I.iv.3 – he specifically refers to the last two of these),
and then in Fiammetta's challenge to Dioneo's attitude and purpose (I.v.4). We find in his words
the following observation concerning the brigata's purpose in telling stories: «noi siamo qui per
dovere a noi medesimi novellando piacere» (I.iv.2). These words reflect those of Pampinea, the
first to offer a plan to novellare (I.Intro.111). Nonetheless, it was Dioneo who had first announced
the notion of divertissement as remedy for heavy thoughts of the plague (I.Intro.93).
As part of their first search for that sollazzo, and until Pampinea redefined their central pursuit, the
members of the brigata had turned to games. It was she who introduced the verb novellare to the
work, as we have seen. We may have previously noted that some of the saner survivors of the
plague in Florence are described as listening to an occasional novella (I.Intro.20), thus introducing
this notion to the brigata. Some of the women, on the other hand, hope to overcome the
disparaging view of moral standards displayed by Dioneo's narrative: «Ma venuta di questa la fine,
poi che lui con alquante dolci parolette ebber morso, volendo mostrare che simili novelle non
fosser tra donne da raccontare» (I.v.2). Fiammetta, from her choice of material, certainly seems
intent on initiating a counter-movement, as we shall see.
The starting point of that lecture in Certaldo was the following observation:
 Il Decameron contiene, tra l'altro, una gara d'intelligenza fra due dei più aggressivi tra
i narratori, Dioneo e Panfilo. Ciascuno di loro tenta di controllare il discorso della
brigata nel modo più efficace che riesce ad imporre agli altri novellieri. (Filostrato,
per esempio, vuol gestire il giudizio della brigata sulle forze dell'amore, ma fallisce
perché non sa presentarsi come una persona che sappia superare le proprie esperienze
personali negative.) È anche notevole che Dioneo si sforzi di essere l'ultimo narratore,
saltando l'ordine stabilito dal puro caso (chi si siede prossimo a chi), che funziona per
tutti tranne che per la regina (o il re) della giornata, che gode del privilegio di
concludere il raccontare (I.Conc.12-13). Evidentemente, vuol dirigere la marcia da
dietro. Ma è chiaro, anche se meno ovvio, che anche coloro che narrano la prima
novella di ogni giornata vogliono controllare non solo il contenuto delle novelle, ma
anche l'atteggiamento del gruppo di fronte al tema stabilito dalla regina o dal re. Loro
tutti, sembra, perseguono le proprie particolari strategie con l'intenzione di portare le
presentazioni della giornata a punti determinati. Un solo esempio: è (o sembra) ovvio
che Filostrato vuol insistere sulla desiderabilità di simpatizzare con gli amanti che
(come lui) sono stati respinti. E, per aggiungerne solo un secondo, vedremo al punto
di mezzo della Prima Giornata che Fiammetta s'inserisce, nel ruolo di un anti-Dioneo,
tentando di impadronirsi del novellare.
Whatever purposes we may find behind the behaviors of the members of the brigata, it seems clear
that we are meant to be aware of particular motivations that energize at least several of them6. In
that presentation in Certaldo, I dwelt upon the dramatic conflict between Dioneo and Fiammetta
revealed in the prologues to the fourth and fifth tales of the Prima Giornata. Dioneo begins his tale
(I.iv) without awaiting the already customary formal invitation of the queen (a sign of his
independent nature?)7. His tale is deliberately set against the "religious" and morally upbeat
conclusions of the authors of the first three stories. Consider Panfilo's response to his own tale:
Cepparello may have indeed died a saint – but we probably think not; his story, nonetheless,
allows that, if we pray to such as him for intercession, God will probably grant it. Those told by
Neifile (the conversion of Abraam giudeo to Christianity when he observed the corrupt nature of
the curia romana) and by Filomena (Melchisedech giudeo's escape from the trap set for him by
Saladino) both also demonstrate unusually positive results from situations in which negative ones
would be less surprising. We should remember what Pampinea had declared, during the afternoon
of the first day: «voglio che libero sia a ciascuno di quella materia ragionare che più gli sarà a
grado» (I.Intro.114). The burden of freedom is apparently too much for them: Each tells a tale that
would seem better adapted to a warning about the hazards in human relations but (instinctively?)
concludes with eupeptic sentiments. This is not surprising when we consider the normal tendency
of most humans to believe that literature is a positive moral force (and this seems particularly true
of readers of the Decameron), no matter how realistically these same people respond to the harsh
realities encountered in their actual experience. Literature, for most readers, should contain only
locos amoenos, in which good shepherds assiduously tend their grateful flocks. Such
conventionally happy endings energize Dioneo to speak more realistically about human conduct,
which he would seem to consider always self-seeking and always -- at its best -- amoral. It surely
seems likely that, as teller of this fourth tale of the Giornata, he was attempting to chart a new
course for the narrators who followed. The nervously tittering ladies (I.v.2), who «poi che lui con
alquante dolci parolette ebber morso, volendo mostrare che simili novelle non fosser tra donne da
raccontare», join their queen in better expectations of the subsequent narrators. It is in this
atmosphere that Fiammetta offers her novella, one that restores virtue and morality as the roots of

2
human conduct in the exemplary behavior of the marchesana di Monferrato. Fiammetta cleverly
leaps back over Dioneo's tale to pick up her theme from the first three tales of the Day (I.v.4): «Sì
perché mi piace noi essere entrati a dimostrare con le novelle quanta sia la forza delle belle e
pronte risposte» (and we realize, on a second reading, that «belle e pronte risposte» [i.e., motti],
will become the theme of the Sesta Giornata [see V.Conc.3])8. We further observe that Fiammetta,
in setting her rubric, addresses only the six other women of the brigata («donne mie belle») and
tries to give the rest of the Day an anti-male theme and purpose. Indeed, all the butts of the four
following tales of the Day are men. However, to conclude the Day, Queen Pampinea (I.x.1) tells
how «Maestro Alberto da Bologna onestamente fa vergognare una donna, la quale lui d'esser di lei
innamorato voleva far vergognare». This lady, perhaps identifiable as Malgherida de' Ghisolieri
(I.x.10), plays the role assumed by Cangrande and by the other male protagonists in Novelle vi-ix.
Thus does Pampinea rebel against the "feminist" line introduced by Fiammetta (I.v) and
maintained by Emilia, Filostrato, Lauretta, and Elissa. Her novella reproduces the basic plot of the
five preceding tales and only differs in broad outline in that a woman's attitude and behavior is
made the object of ridicule and correction9.

To summarize the movement of the tales of Day One, they begin with Panfilo's problematic tale,
then proceed to the novelle of Neifile and Filomena about Jews (Filomena adds a Muslim to hers),
decent "outsiders" who survive and even prosper in difficult situations because of their wits. And
then Dioneo, as we have seen, attempts to "hijack" the Day, only to be answered by Fiammetta,
who essentially gains control of the discourse, and is only (intrinsically) partially rebuffed by the
queen, Pampinea, who reverses the sexual roles (from male to female) of those who are the butts of
the gentle satirical nibble (thus pointing to a Horatian rather than a Juvenalian satirical intent). In
the First Day Panfilo's lead is not followed; he must wait awhile before he again tries to command
the enterprise of tale-telling, as we shall see. There has been some investigation of the hidden
motives and desires of the various narrators10. This study will suggest that this is potentially a
promising field for still further investigation.

This sort of concern for formal matters is relatively familiar to us from studies of Dante's
Commedia. However, most of us who concern ourselves with the Decameron tend to pay little
attention to such elements as these in our analyses and evaluations of it; we tend to consider its
author as paying less attention to such details than did Dante – and perhaps understandably (and
even correctly) so. Nonetheless, we ought to be aware that the Decameron is assembled with
extraordinary care for detail, if Boccaccio's desire for formal arrangement seems less
overwhelming than Dante's. Nonetheless, there are enough indications of his interest in such things
to have caused us to reconsider. For instance, I think it is fair to say that we have not paid
sufficient attention to Janet Smarr's discovery of the perfectly balanced thirteen-part chiastic
ordering of some key elements of the Decameron:

Introduction: plague and the city left behind

I. Free topic
II. Topic linked to III
Friday and Saturday
III. New location; Fiammetta and Dioneo sing together
IV. Interruption by half-tale; Filostrato is king, also sings
V. Fiammetta is queen; Dioneo sings

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 VI. Interruption (servants' quarrel); Elissa queen, also sings
VII. New location; Fiammetta and Dioneo sing together
Friday and Saturday
VIII. Topic linked to VII
IX. Free topic
Finale: Fiammetta sings; return to the city11
That Boccaccio desired to create such a fine-grained pattern in the shape of so large a work is one
of its most significant aspects, one that certainly suggests that we ought to be on the lookout for
other signs of his elaboration of details that offer us indications of his inner design and wider
intention.

If the First Day, for all the freedom of narrative choice Pampinea left her nine fellows, each of
whom was to feel «libero […] di quella materia ragionare che più gli sarà a grado» (I.Intro.114),
we find a perhaps surprising adhesion to order and flight from freedom among the rest of the
brigata, excepting of course, Dioneo (and perhaps Panfilo). The pattern of the next Day seems
more regulated, but we face a paradox: Given freedom, the members of the brigata tend to create a
formal structure despite their freedom from having to do so. They are given a common subject
(Filomena's command is to tell tales of a person «chi, da diverse cose infestato, sia oltre alla sua
speranza riuscito a lieto fine» [I.Conc.11]). However, when readers consider the subjects of the
tales told on the Second Day, they may note that, while none of the women narrates tales grounded
in prurient sexuality, the three male narrators demonstrate that boys will be boys: all three offer
such naratives. Filostrato (II.ii) features Rinaldo and a widow; Panfilo (II.vii), Alatiel (or "Panfila",
as she might have been called) and her nine lovers; Dioneo (II.10), Bartolomea and her
ridiculously restrictive ancient husband, Ricciardo di Chinzica. What may seem a digression is
now necessary.

Dioneo tells us that he changed his choice of tale because of Filomena's novella (II.ix) concerning
Zinevra's Bernabò, who, though he doesn't deserve her, does get her back, her "honor" unsullied,
from the despicable Ambrogiuolo. This tale involves the instantaneous assuming of a male sexual
identity on the part of Zinevra (II.ix.42), who then must spend six years (II.ix.62) in a trouser role
until she is able to clarify her truthful and loyal spousal state before Saladin, her husband, and the
villainous Ambrogiuolo (who ends up experiencing a dreadful death [II.ix.75]). Needless to say,
the happily reunited couple lives happily ever after. Why does Dioneo admire Filomena's narrative
so much? His reading of it is striking for its astounding lack of acumen. Listen to his words:

[…] la bestialità di Bernabò, come che bene ne gli avvenisse, e di tutti gli altri che
quello si danno a credere che esso di creder mostrava: cioè che essi, andando per
lo mondo e con questa e con quella ora una volta ora un'altra sollazzandosi,
s'immaginan che le donne a casa rimase si tengan le mani a cintola, quasi noi non
conosciamo, che tra esse nasciamo e cresciamo e stiamo, di che elle sien vaghe
(II.x.3).

The reader who has not recently reread Filomena's novella might wish to do so. It in no way
resembles Dioneo's recapitulation12. Bernabò is undoubtedly meant to be understood as a fool,
indeed a maleficent one, but his unfortunate wife is presented as in fact unwaveringly noble and
true. Dioneo is not merely incorrect as an interpreter of the text; we probably should also

4
understand that he is deliberately misconstruing the narrative because it displaces his own view of
the amoral basis of "normal" human behavior. That would seem to be, in his mind, to seek one's
own pleasure, even at the expense of all normative rules. While in this particular moment his
response involves denying a good woman her decency, it should probably not necessarily be
understood as coming from a misogynist, since Dioneo is an equal-opportunity sensualist. As a son
of Venus13, his purpose in this collection of tales14 is to remind all of the brigata (and, through
them, all of us) that we humans are impelled by a single dominant impulse: to satisfy our own
selfish appetites with little or no regard for the needs or the expectations of others. Indeed, for
Dioneo, social intercourse is only enjoyable when it is shared by those of like mind. His purpose is
to escape the joyless experience of the plague for the joyous experience of a shared human
vivacity, untrammeled by the restrictions of morality. It is not surprising that his tale – the one that
he picked, rejecting his previous choice, in order to "corroborate" Filomena's – features roughly
the same cast of main characters: a foolish husband (Ricciardo di Chinzica), an aggressive, extra-
legal interloper (Paganino – his name tells us a lot about him), and Bartolomea, the wife who is
carried off and who chooses to remain with her vigorous lover (whom she marries after Ricciardo's
death [II.10.42-43]) rather than return to her lawful but less than potent husband. Dioneo is a
champion of sexual pleasure even in marriage (that Paganino marries his mistress may seem
surprising to some readers). What may seem still stranger is that, at the end of the Day, we learn
that the ladies of the brigata endorse Dioneo's incorrect reading (or at least the least offensive part
of it): «tutte le donne dissero che Dioneo diceva vero e che Bernabò era stato una bestia»
(II.Conc.1). It is perhaps still more surprising that none of them defends Zinevra's virtue from his
male-chauvinist attack.

If the conclusion of the Seconda Giornata leaves readers perplexed as to the author's master plan,
the beginning of the next Day fails to alleviate their confusion. Neifile, the new queen, begins her
rule by making the third Day of tales in fact the fifth day of their stay. She ordains that for
religious reasons the group honor the memory of their Lord's self-sacrifice on the original Good
Friday by praying instead of telling stories and, on the next day, by honoring His mother by fasting
and by attention to personal hygiene (II.Conc.5-6). (There will be discussion, below, of the
somewhat different procedures of honoring the Lord on the following Friday.) And then, as a total
surprise (there has been no preparation for it whatsoever), comes her remark that, since they will
have been at this villa for four days, lest someone find them ("che gente nuova non ci sopravenga"
– II.Conc.7), they should move to a second location in the Tuscan countryside (II.Conc.8), which
she has already selected. Then Neifile announces the topic for Sunday's tales: «di chi alcuna cosa
molto disiderata con industria acquistasse o la perduta recuperasse» (II.Conc.9). (Pampinea's song
[II.Conc.12-15], that of a woman who is happily in love with her first lover and who looks forward
to an afterlife in his company, may remind us of the similarly loving and similarly faithful
Zinevra.)

The removal to the new villa eventually is the occasion, after two days of story-telling and then
two days of "vacation" from that activity, for the resumption of the brigata's narratives under
Neifile's command. Her directive is to tell tales of those who either attain or regain a desired result
by means of industria (a term clearly suggesting purposiveness) and thus intrinsically in contrast
with the good luck (fortuna) that accompanies all but one (Dioneo's) of the happy endings in Day
Two15. Indeed, Neifile sets the agenda for the Terza Giornata as follows:

5
 [...] sarà ancora più bello che un poco si ristringa del novellare la licenzia e che
sopra uno de' molti fatti della fortuna si dica, e ho pensato che questo sarà: di chi
alcuna cosa molto disiderata con industria acquistasse o la perduta recuperasse
(II.Conc.8-9).

This seems a neutral enough general topic, one that might encompass almost any number of human
behaviors, but that seems to denigrate or even to exclude sexuality. However, led off by Filostrato
(who is followed in this vein by none other than Pampinea), the members of the group immediately
limit the field of human activity to sexual behaviors, the first six telling tales that involve
cuckoldry in one form or another, with only Neifile herself (the ninth tale, concerning Giletta and
Beltramo) not dealing centrally with "illicit" sexual activity (if Beltramo believes that the woman
he seduces is someone other than his wife). What are we supposed to make of these facts? Do they
constitute an important series of details or not? We seem to be invited to understand that the
brigata, despite its insistence on propriety (at least the outward forms of it), is far more interested
in exploring the nature of sexuality than would seem appropriate from their own previous explicit
statements or, indeed, from all but one of the tales told in the Prima Giornata. This suggests that,
while Dioneo insists on a sexual basis to his own tales either eight or nine times (depending on
whether his Griselda/Gualtieri relationship is thought of as "sexual" or not; his tale concerning Fra
Cipolla [VI.x] is clearly not, although there is a parody of a sexual sub-plot involving Cipolla's
servant, Guccio "Porco", and the slovenly maidservant Nuta [VI.x.20-24]), the others, including
the ladies, are often the ones who introduce sexuality into their narratives. One could argue that, in
Day Three, their turning in this direction reflects the frank sexuality of Filostrato's day-opening
tale of the nine "scores" of Masetto da Lamporecchio in his successful attempts to "cuckold" Jesus
Christ. That the queen herself (in company only with Emilia) chooses not to "descend" to that level
perhaps tells us that she, like Pampinea in Day One, loses control of the dialogue, not this time to
Fiammetta but to Filostrato, who introduces sexuality as the field on which the theme of the Day
will be played out. In Day Two Filomena's theme, fortunate final results resolving difficult
situations, contained only three tales based in sexual situations, each of them, as we have noted,
narrated by one of the three males, the most blatant of whom is Panfilo, with his tale of Alatiel
(II.vii) and her nine lovers, perhaps preparing a path for Filostrato's Masetto (III.i), also nine times
blessed16. Day Three, as we have seen, is quite a different story. If Fiammetta had successfully
turned the tide of the telling back from Dioneo's insertion of sexual concerns in Day One, she does
not enjoy that success for long. In fact, by Day Three, not having beaten the forces of Venus, she
has apparently joined them, as we shall see.

While sexuality runs rampant in most of the tales of the Terza Giornata (unlicensed by its queen
and indulged in neither by Emilia [III.vii] nor Neifile herself [III.ix]), Filostrato is the first king or
queen to introduce sexuality into the topic for the following day's narratives: «di coloro li cui
amori ebbero infelice fine» (III.Conc.6). Fiammetta (IV.Conc.5) is thus the first woman to insist on
a similarly sexual theme: «ragionare di ciò che ad alcuno amante, dopo alcuni fieri o sventurati
accidenti, felicemente avvenisse». Dioneo is the only other king or queen to insist on a sexual
subject (VI.Conc.6): «le beffe le quali […] le donne hanno già fatto a' lor mariti». Panfilo
(IX.Conc.4) allows sex as a possible topic (liberality or magnanimity whether in regard to «fatti
d'amore o d'altra cosa»), but does not insist on it. Thus all three males insist on or allow sexuality
as a topic to be explored under their rulership, while among the women, only Fiammetta does.
Nonetheless, fully thirty-six of the narratives, representing by far the most frequent choice of the

6
narrators, are in the mode of the fabliaux, that is, they concern explicit sexuality. And, as we noted,
it was Fiammetta, in the Prima Giornata, who injected sexuality into the subjects treated in the
novelle. Of course, she does so in response to Dioneo's scabrous fourth novella and she does so
negatively, showing how a clever and loyal wife can turn away the advances of even a king.
Nonetheless, she has entered the field herself, if firmly on the side of chastity. Her subsequent
behavior as narrator is interesting. In her next tale, also the fifth of the Day (II.v [Fiammetta is the
only member of the brigata save Dioneo to occupy the same position as many as four times:
Giornate I, II, VII, IX]), she narrates the tale of the innocent and fortunate Andreuccio and his
intended fleecing by the Neapolitan whore who masquerades as his long-lost sister (II.v.18:
«madama Fiordaliso», as she apparently styles herself [II.v.44]). Once again, while sexuality is
touched on by Fiammetta, she looks upon it as a noblewoman, one who looks down on such
behavior.
Perhaps urged on by the new locus amoenus to which Neifile has led them, the members of the
brigata seem to enjoy a new licentiousness. It was Pampinea who introduced the plan of an escape
to a more rural setting:

e fuggendo come la morte i disonesti essempli degli altri onestamente a' nostri
luoghi in contado, de' quali a ciascuna di noi è gran copia, ce ne andassimo a stare,
e quivi quella festa, quella allegrezza, quello piacere che noi potessimo, senza
trapassare in alcuno atto il segno della ragione, prendessimo (I.Intro.65).

The ladies of the brigata are surely lonely and frightened, but they obviously are not
poor. What chiefly distinguishes the first and second garden from one another is the
amount of space Boccaccio devotes to them. The first garden-space is described generally
and in a single phrase: The villa possesses «giardini maravigliosi» (I.Intro.90). The
description of the second is considerably more detailed (III.Intro.5-13). Its main features
are not unexpected in a work that clearly is meant to be perceived as reflecting other
literary gardens, places of delight, and probably descended from, as Edith Kern argued,
the "jardin de Déduit" in the Roman de la rose: flowers and a fountain17. This is described
in terms that seem traditional, with a single noteworthy exception: it is adorned by «una
figura, la quale sopra una colonna che nel mezzo di quella diritta era, gittava tanta acqua
e sì alta verso il cielo […]» (III.Intro.9). Boccaccio chooses not to inform us of the
identity of this crowning presence – a striking omission. Perhaps the last previous figures
atop a column in a garden of Boccaccio's that readers might remember, from the
Amorosa visione (1342 [?]), representing three kinds of love (Am. vis., XXXVIII.25-88),
offer a clue. It would seem less than unlikely that this single figure is meant to be
understood as representing either Venus or her son, Cupid (represented in the previous
work as seated on two eagles while his feet rest atop the backs of two lion cubs that are
recumbent on the lawn – Am. vis. XV.14-36). We cannot say. Nonetheless, we should
note the striking authorial gesture: he declines to tell us the identity of the surmounting
figure, while at the same time calling our attention to it. Readers may reflect on the
"Boccaccian" nature of such a game, underlined by the total avoidance of it in discussions
of this passage (at least this writer is not aware of any previous discussion of this detail –
one that obviously calls for both notice and response).

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The Third Day itself, as was previously noted, offers the first tale of a sexual nature that is told by
a woman (III.ii) – indeed, by the oldest, most virtue-minded of them all, the first queen, Pampinea.
And we note that her initial response to Filostrato's rubric («Sono alcuni sì poco discreti nel voler
pur mostrare di conoscere e di sentire quello che per lor non fa di sapere, che alcuna volta per
questo riprendendo i disavveduti difetti in altrui, si credono la loro vergogna scemare, dove essi
l'accrescono in infinito» – III.ii.3) in no way necessitates her deployment of sexual material. (She
might, for instance, have told a tale of a king whose groom had given offense in any number of
other ways and who chose not to punish the offender for similar reasons as apply here.)
Nonetheless, it is she who breaks the ice for the female narrators. Filostrato's preceding tale (III.i)
of Masetto da Lamporecchio is not content with a single seduction, but in fact contains nine
instances, eight nuns and an abbess. Filomena, who seemed the second-in-command to Pampinea
in the opening scene in S. Maria Novella, now seconds her in bawdiness; her tale of the merchant's
wife duping a friar into becoming her go-between in order to have relations with a nameless (and
therefore more pointedly sexualized) giovane concludes with a pious prayer:

E dato ordine a' lor fatti, sí fecero, che senza aver più a tornare a messer lo frate,
molte altre notti con pari letizia insieme si ritrovarono: alle quali io priego Idio
per la sua santa misericordia che tosto conduca me e tutte l'anime cristiane che
voglia n'hanno ([italics added], III.iii.55).

This prayer is warmly applauded by Dioneo (III.iv.2). If we remember the quite different subject
and tonality of all the narratives heard in female voices during the first two days, we should
probably be surprised – even astounded. Since Panfilo had already veered into sexuality as his
subject in Day Two, his return to this theme is considerably less noteworthy.

That the subject of the first four tales of Day Three is successful sexual adventure is only
surprising when we consider the relative absence of this subject in the first two Days: sixteen of
the twenty tales do not prominently concern sexuality, while only four do. By the time we reach
Elissa's tale (IV.v), we have already had exactly that many in this Day. And Elissa continues the
trend. That her tale of Zima's winning the affection of the unnamed wife of Francesco Vergellesi is
serious in tone only reinforces our sense of surprise. We remember the Day's rubric, «di chi alcuna
cosa molto disiderata con industria acquistasse o la perduta recuperasse» (II.Conc.9), and consider
how impressed we probably should be by the abundant sexuality found in the first five novelle.
And the sixth is told by Fiammetta, the prude of the first two Days. She is no longer prudish.
Where her first tale (I.v) showcased a virtuous wife who refused to betray her absent husband even
with a king, this tale takes a quite different tack, illustrating, according to the teller herself,

come una di queste santesi, che così d'amore schife si mostrano, fosse dallo
ingegno d'un suo amante prima a sentir d'amore il frutto condotta che i fiori
avesse conosciuti (III.vi.3).

It is amusing to consider that the pejorative term "santese" ("bigot", according to the online
Garzanti, with this occurrence in Boccaccio as exemplary) might apply to the Fiammetta whom we
met as the narrator of tales in the first Day. Indeed, this novella reveals a wife who, like Fiammetta
herself in her previous existence in the Elegia di madonna Fiammetta and unlike the Marchioness
of her first tale, ends up, however unintentionally, cuckolding her husband, Filippello Sighinolfo.

8
That the reader is meant to remember that earlier affair, which supplies the substance of the plot of
the Elegia, is probably guaranteed by Fiammetta's locating this tale, too, in Naples (III.vi.3). Her
lover, Ricciardo Minutolo, has her by an artful stratagem. The prude, Filippello's wife Catella,
becomes a devotée of extra-marital sexual pleasure with Ricciardo. The novella ends as follows:

E conoscendo allora la donna quanto più saporiti fossero i baci dello amante che
quegli del marito, voltata la sua durezza in dolce amore verso Ricciardo,
tenerissimamente da quel giorno innanzi l'amò, e savissimamente operando molte
volte goderono del loro amore. Idio faccia noi goder del nostro (III.vi.50).

Just as the prude within her novella becomes a happy adulteress, so does the prudish narrator of the
Marchioness's fidelity become the enthusiastic teller of Catella's widened sexual horizon. Is the
reader not supposed to notice this dramatically contradictory change of disposition? Boccaccio
himself does not employ the brigata's response to alert us to such thoughts, merely noting that her
tale was praised by all (III.vii.2) and leaving his readers to consider on their own so remarkable a
change of heart18.

Emilia's tale of Tedaldo (III.vii) involves as much unbelievable coincidence as perhaps any tale in
the work. It also involves an "approved" adulterous relationship (between Tedaldo degli Elisei and
Ermellina) that is praised by its narrator and followed by a prayer that clearly echoes Fiammetta's
at the conclusion of her tale, «Dio faccia noi goder del nostro» (III.vii.101), where the adjective
nostro refers to the noun amore, signifying, as it did in Fiammetta's conclusion as well, «our
adulterous love» (III.vi.). The next tale (Lauretta's), regarding Ferondo's wife and the salty abbot of
a Benedictine monastery, concerns a similarly adulterous relationship. And then the queen of the
Day, Neifile, tells its only story that celebrates marital love (even if the unbearably selfish
Beltramo can hardly be said to merit the affection of Giletta or she to have chosen a mate
particularly well). And so it is that we discover, near the end of the Day, that its queen probably
did not intend the successful sexual escapade as the model for novelle illustrating «alcuna cosa
molto disiderata con industria acquistasse o la perduta recuperasse». Her tale offers, as improbable
as it may seem, testimony to the eventual triumph of true love in matrimony. We may wonder
whether the others would have narrated similar tales had she, rather than Filostrato, told the first
tale. On the other hand, Dioneo's tale of Alibech, which follows hers, may indicate that no one else
in the brigata currently harbors such "decent" thoughts about male-female relations as she.

Neifile makes Filostrato king of the Fourth Day (possibily as a result of her desire to get his
kingship over with as quickly as possible, given the frankly sexual nature of his preamble to the
first tale of the Third Day), crowning him with laurel (III.Conc.1). It is then that he informs the
group that he is unhappily in love with one of the seven ladies, because his love is unreciprocated:
«sempre per la bellezza d'alcuna di voi stato sono a Amor subgetto» (III.Conc.5). He goes on to
reflect on the meaning of his name, Filostrato, «per lo quale voi mi chiamate, da tale che seppe ben
che si dire mi fu imposto» (III.Conc.6). Not only do we learn again that the names of the members
of the brigata are not their real names, but that they have deeper meanings that identify some of
their qualities: the author has indeed informed us that he will refer to the seven females «per nomi
alle qualità di ciascuna convenienti o in tutto o in parte intendo di nominarle» (I.Intro.51). The
males bring their coded identies with them: Filostrato, we have learned from the title page of the
work that bears his name, refers to a man who is «vinto e abbattuto d'amore», and refers to the

9
character Troilus (Troiolo), whether in previous literature or in Boccaccio's own Il Filostrato. (The
rubric to the first part of that text begins as follows: «Qui comincia la prima parte del libro
chiamato Filostrato, dell'amorose fatiche di Troiolo, nella quale si pone come Troiolo
s'innamorasse di Criseida […]».) This, in Filostrato's own utterance, is one of the clearest
references to the meaning of a given character's name that we find in the Decameron. And thus he
establishes as the rule for Day Four that they tell tales about «coloro li cui amori ebbero infelice
fine». As is clear from the tales themselves, Filostrato's wish is their command; what they
understand is that they should switch their generic affiliation from comedy (in the form of the
happy endings inherent in the rubrics for the second and third Days) to tragedy, the form inherent
in Filostrato's rubric, «di coloro li cui amori ebbero infelice fine». The tragic mode has a tendency
to elevate diction. With the exceptions of Pampinea's tale of Frate Alberto and Dioneo's of Maestro
Mazzeo, these tales mainly reflect the tragic register. Dioneo is the narrator who gives expression
to the generic games being played in the Quarta Giornata: «[…] le miserie degl'infelici amori
raccontate […] a voi e a me hanno già contristati gli occhi e 'l petto». This last phrase is torn from
Purgatorio I.18, where it refers to the «aura morta» of Inferno, the "tragic" cantica of the
Commedia, seen retrospectively now that the poet has entered the "comic" zone of salvation,
purgatory.

Fiammetta, the Day's first fabulist, willingly yields to Filostrato's tragic inclination. Here are her
words:

Fiera materia di ragionare n'ha oggi il nostro re data, pensando che, dove per
rallegrarci venuti siamo, ci convenga raccontar l'altrui lagrime, le quali dir non si
possono, che chi le dice e chi l'ode non abbia compassione. Forse per temperare
alquanto la letizia avuta li giorni passati l'ha fatto: ma che che se l'abbia mosso,
poi che a me non si conviene di mutare il suo piacere, un pietoso accidente, anzi
sventurato e degno delle nostre lagrime, racconterò (IV.i.2).

Filostrato, the king, is more than delighted with Fiammetta's offering and hopes that the next
narrator he calls on will continue in precisely this sad vein: «voglio che ne' fieri ragionamenti, e a'
miei accidenti in parte simili, Pampinea ragionando seguisca» (IV.ii.3). Pampinea, having listened
to Fiammetta's tragic narrative, is described by the author as responding:

a sé sentendo il comandamento venuto, più per la sua affezione cognobbe l'animo

delle compagne che quello del re per le sue parole: e per ciò, più disposta a dovere
alquanto recrear loro che a dovere, fuori che del comandamento solo, il re
contentare, a dire una novella, senza uscir del proposto, da ridere si dispose
(IV.ii.4).

In fact, her novella has more in common with the fabliaux than with tragic tales of love. Her tale of
Frate Alberto joins the anti-clerical (and specifically anti-fraternal) strain that runs through the
Decameron, beginning with its very first tale. Filostrato apparently admires the tragic ending (we
assume because a lover experiences pain and disgrace as a result of his immodest affections), but
complains about Pampinea's tone: «ma troppo più vi fu innanzi a quella da ridere, il che avrei
voluto che stato non vi fosse» (IV.iii.2). Poor Filostrato! There is, among the members of the
brigata, such reticence about accepting a tragic sensibility. Nonetheless, the others fall into line

10
and tell tragic tales. At the end of the Day, Dioneo has the chance to change the subject, and hopes
to do so for the entirety of the following Day as well:

Ora, lodato sia Iddio, che finite sono (salvo se io non volessi a questa malvagia
derrata fare una mala giunta, di che Idio mi guardi), senza andar più dietro a così
dolorosa materia, da alquanto più lieta e migliore incomincerò, forse buono
indizio dando a ciò che nella seguente giornata si dee raccontare (IV.x.3).

His tale puts on display Maestro Mazzeo who, like Ricciardo di Chinzica (II.x), is old and not
capable of pleasuring the young wife he has (unwisely) chosen; she, of course, seeks sexual
solace from another, Ruggieri d'Aieroli, a thief and a bounder of noble lineage. Unlike all the
other novelle of the Day, this one ends with the hardened criminal enjoying the sexual favors of
the increasingly hardened adulteress and its teller wishing himself the same pleasures (IV.x.).
And then Filostrato, as though realizing that his ability to force the brigata to indulge his
enjoyment of the sadness of love is at its end, crowns Fiammetta queen of Day Five with the
following words:

Io pongo a te questa corona sì come a colei la quale meglio, dell'aspra giornata di

oggi, che alcuna altra, con quella di domane queste nostre compagne racconsolar
saprai (IV.Conc.3).

Fiammetta in turn announces her design for the next Day: «[…] di dovere domane ragionare di ciò
che ad alcuno amante, dopo alcuni fieri o sventurati accidenti, felicemente avvenisse» (IV.Conc.5).
The polemical contrast between that subject and Filostrato's («di coloro li cui amori ebbero infelice
fine» [III.Conc.6]) could not be more plain. The brigata has been asked to move from a tragic
mode to a comic one.

Fiammetta's Day begins with Panfilo's warm embrace of his queen's announced topic, which he
enthusiastically embroiders as follows:

non solamente il felice fine per lo quale a ragionare incominciamo, ma quanto

sien sante, quanto poderose e di quanto ben piene le forze d'Amore, le quali molti,
senza saper che si dicano, dannano e vituperano a gran torto: il che, se io non erro,
per ciò che innamorate credo che siate, molto vi dovrà esser caro (V.i.2 [italics
added]).

His remark easily leads readers to review what we have been told previously concerning the
potential or actual amorous relations among the ten novellatori. About the three men we first
learned that «le lor donne, le quali per ventura tutte e tre erano tralle predette sette, come che
dell'altre alcune ne fossero congiunte parenti d'alcuni di loro» (I.Intro.78). To that information is
added a clarification: Pampinea is among those who «a alcun di loro per consanguinità era
congiunta» (I.Intro.86). We had previously been told that Neifile (I.Intro.81) was one of the
beloved ladies. Later we learn that Filostrato's lady blushed – but that the darkness of the evening
hid her identity (IV.Conc.18). Now, as we have seen, Panfilo refers to the donne innamorate in
such a way as to make it possible that all of them are romantically involved. Having addressed
them all as «dilettose donne», he goes on to observe that «innamorate credo che siate» (V.i.2).

11
Thus, halfway through the text we can say that the status of only two of the donne is known:
Neifile is beloved by one of the three men and Pampinea seems not to be beloved of any of the
males present, but is related to one of them. The rest is up to us.

Beginning with what he tells us about Neifile, the author at first seems intent on rewarding our
curiosity soon after he has invited it: «Neifile allora, tutta nel viso divenuta per vergogna vermiglia
per ciò che l'una era di quelle che dall'un de' giovani era amata» (I.Intro.81). That, however, is all
we ever learn directly from the author about Neifile's romantic attachment19. Despite Neifile's
nervousness about going off in company of the three males, one of whom is her lover, the others
make up her mind for her and off they go (I.Conc.89).

To return to our concern with the Fifth Day, we find that Panfilo's tale of Cimone the Cypriot,
whose name in the language of that island is the rough equivalent of «bestione» (V.i.4), is hardly
an effective advertisement for the merits of courtly lovers. It starts out with the incredible
transformation of the high-born brute, through a course of abundant clichés of this genre, into an
educated and refined courtier. However, once fortune deprives him of his beautiful Efigenia, he
ends up, in cahoots with Lisimaco, making off with their two donne by force at their twin
weddings. Panfilo does not blench at this and we are told that the queen (Fiammetta) «molto
commendata l'ebbe» (V.ii.2). We do not hear of the reactions of the rest of the brigata to this
novella. Is their silence significant? Are we to take it as paralleling our own embarrassment at this
justification of rape? It is probably not possible to say. Nonetheless, we possibly take note that
Fiammetta and Panfilo are in accord about love's power over traditional morality. Is this a signal
that they form one of the brigata's amorous couples? (We will consider that possibility soon.)

Emilia narrates her tale after admitting (V.ii.3) that she is much happier with the rubric set by
Fiammetta than she was with that set by Filostrato for the preceding Day. Her tale of Gostanza and
Martino Gomito (along with its companion, Panfilo's) returns to a "genre" that was introduced to
the Decameron in Day Two (iv, vi, vii, ix, x), the Mediterranean sea-faring adventure (see also
Pampinea's and Lauretta's tales later in this Fifth Day [6 and 7].) Hers, however, unlike Panfilo's, is
morally acceptable. Panfilo's male heroes are murderers, winning their women by killing their
newly-wedded husbands, while Emilia's Martuccio merely gives a king good advice that enables
him to win a great battle and thus gain Gostanza's hand in marriage. We are now told that Emilia's
tale is commended by everyone (V.iii.2). Should that response be considered as answering the
reaction that greeted Panfilo's tale, praised only by Fiammetta (V.iii.2)? (In the Elegia that bears
her name, she played the part of a married woman who gave herself completely to a Florentine
named "Panfilo" in an illicit union.) If the implicit condemnation of silence on the part of the rest
perhaps does not astonish us, given the nature of the tale, Fiammetta's praise is surprising. Are we
to take it as merely polite and "queenly" behavior or, rather, to be surprised and disturbed by it? In
contrast, Elissa's tale of the happiness of Pietro and Agnolella is praised by all the ladies (V.iv.2).
Filostrato, attempting to make up for the pain he has caused these ladies by his insistence on tales
of unhappy love during the previous Day, announces that he next will tell one about «uno amore
[…] a lieto fin pervenuto» (V.iv.3), as indeed he does – describing a mutual seduction and eventual
marriage. Neifile's following tale (V.v) of the happily wedded couple, Agnesa and Minghino, also
pleases the other ladies (V.vi.2) as does (V.vii.2) Pampinea's of Restituta and Gianni di Procida
(V.vi). The responses to the next two tales (Lauretta's and Filomena's) are not recorded, but we are

12
told that Fiammetta's novella of Federigo's falcon and his love for Giovanna (V.ix) had been
pleasing to everyone («tutti» [V.x.2]), and thus the male members of the brigata as well.

Dioneo's tale, the middle tale of the work (either fiftieth of one hundred or fifty-first of one
hundred and one, if we include the meta-novella from the introduction to the Quarta Giornata) is
only the second to visit the topic of homosexuality (Cepparello was described as being as fond of
women as are dogs of being beaten [I.i.14: «Delle femine era così vago come sono i cani de'
bastoni; del contrario più che alcuno altro tristo uomo si dilettava»], a phrase repeated by the wife
of Pietro di Vinciolo in her response to her outraged and barely bisexual husband [V.x.55: «se' così
vago di noi come il can delle mazze»]; during his confession, perhaps the sole truth Cepparello
tells occurs in his denial of having taken carnal pleasure from women [I.i.36-39]). Dioneo's tale
displeases the ladies for obvious reasons and his subsequent introduction of the tags of seven
bawdy verses does so as well (V.Conc.9-13). At first it may seem that these are offered in place of
the ballata that all expect him to sing20. The theme for the Day was to be the happiness of a lover
whose affections survive unhappy circumstances. Dioneo's tale rings the changes on that theme in
aggressively challenging ways; his witty ditties, exulting in low sexual diction, have a similar
effect. His song, to which we will return, is said to have pleased the new queen, Elissa
(V.Conc.20).

The first half of the Decameron moves toward its conclusion on a note of low-comic irresolution
(Dioneo's scabrous redoing of Apuleius's tale; his seven opening lines of bawdy song); its second
half begins with an eruption of the quarrel between two of the servants, Licisca and Tindaro, heard
plainly by the brigata as it emanates from the kitchen. Their quarrel is a sort of low-mimetic
instance of the literary form known as the questioni d'amore, of which the younger Boccaccio had
made such good use in his Filocolo. Just as Dioneo lowered the tone of the conclusion to the
Quinta Giornata, so does he manage to incorporate the tone of the kitchen into the beginning of
the next when the queen, Elissa, asks him to "referee" the servants' dispute. Their questione
d'amore is simple (VI.Intro.6-15): Was Sicofante's wife a virgin when the couple made love on
their wedding night? Licisca is of the firm opinion that the wife of course was not because no
woman waits that long to engage in sexual intercourse, while Tindaro defends the maidenly honor
of his friend's wife. The last thing we hear just before the eruption of this dispute is Dioneo singing
(VI.Intro.3), accompanied by Lauretta (lending her "Petrarchan" bloodline to the mix), a song from
the high-mimetic tragedy experienced by Troilus and Criseyde (certainly also reminding
Boccaccio's ideal reader of his treatment of those two lovers in his Filostrato). Called upon by
Elissa to resolve the question only at the Day's end, he waives the time for judicious consideration
of the problem and resolves it immediately: Licisca is right, he says.

It may not be coincidental that Day Six, marking the beginning of the second half of the
Decameron, is the most Florentine of any Day21. The first six tales and the ninth all take place in
the city and may be described, to appropriate a term first proposed quite some time ago by Vittore
Branca, as «cronache municipali»22. The other two before the tenth (the only one in the work to
take place in Certaldo) likewise do not wander very far afield, to Prato (VI.viii) and to the
Valdarno (VI.ix). The tales of no other giornata are set so close to home23. This sixth Day parallels
the first in unmistakable ways24. In it, too, the brigata tells tales that culminate in a successful
motto. Its rubric, formulated by Elissa, directs the members of the brigata to tell tales about those
«chi, con alcun leggiadro motto tentato, si riscotesse, o con [1] pronta risposta o [2] avvedimento

13
fuggì [a] perdita, [b] pericolo o [c] scorno» (V.Conc.3). Since the ten tales contain permutations of
six possible results, a reader may justifiably have the sense that Boccaccio wrote this complex
rubric only after having chosen or written the ten novelle, a situation that perhaps may pertain
generally. This Day, in still more urgent, if subtle, ways, reconnects with the Introduzione and its
concern with the plague, as will be noted in the discussion of Lauretta's tale, below.

Filomena, with her tale of Madonna Oretta's near-death experience, one that results from having to
listen to a cavaliere's ineptly narrated novella, illustrates a pronta risposta that enables her to
escape perdita, that is, metaphorically, "death by boredom" («come se inferma fosse stata per
terminare» [VI.i.10]). Pampinea's tale, which presents a similar profile, has Cisti the baker
defending his supply of wine from the aggressive desire of Geri Spina's servant (and thus avoiding
a "perdita" of that delicious white wine of his to an insensitive boor)25. This novella adds a second
example to the preceding one by alluding to a curious fact (VI.ii.7): Pampinea's Geri was married
to Filomena's Oretta. (There is indeed some similarity between her cavaliere and Geri's famigliare,
as both have tin ears for courteous discourse.) The third tale, Lauretta's concerning Nonna dei
Pulci, concerns a verbal affront repaid in kind. Lauretta justifies her retailing of a harsh rebuke
after first commending those found in the first two tales:

la natura de' motti cotale, che essi, come la pecora morde, deono così mordere
l'uditore e non come 'l cane: per ciò che, se come il cane mordesse il motto, non
sarebbe motto ma villania (VI.iii.3).

On the other hand, when Nonna found herself suffering a verbal slur from the Bishop of Florence,
inviting her to prostitute herself for the visiting Spaniard, Dego della Ratta, the bishop is the butt of
her biting rejoinder, which afflicts both offending males. With such provocation, it was perfectly
acceptable for her to resort to a similar response.

Lauretta's tale offers two notable moments in the development of this study. The first is an intrinsic
identification of the "genre" of motti with satire. Among the dramatically diverse treatments of the
Decameron during the last two centuries, nearly all treat the work as celebrating a triumph of one
sort or another, in short as comedic, and thus as celebrative of one set or another of positive human
values, sometimes in accord with the standard Christian views of the author's time, more often at
cross purposes with these, but always as a positive declaration, a "human comedy" alongside
Dante's divine one. For the past twenty years I have been trying at least to suggest that it would be
helpful to understand that the major impulse that led Boccaccio to create his own one-hundred-
numbered magnum opus, in understated polemic with his beloved Dante, was ironic and satirical;
that, indeed, the Decameron itself should be primarily understood as a satire26. Lauretta's words
reveal an expectation that the reader will recognize a traditional distinction between two sorts of
satirists, "Horatians" (who nibble, as do sheep) and "Juvenalians" (who bite, as do dogs).

It is somehow not surprising to find that concern for satire is joined here to a return to the subject
of the mortal pestilence that the brigata has decided to leave behind in their tales as well as in their
new life in the country. In a detail that is not at all necessary to the meaning of her tale, Lauretta
tells the brigata that her narrative will concern «una giovane la quale questa pistolenzia presente ci
ha tolta donna, il cui nome fu monna Nonna de' Pulci» (VI.iii.8). This information colors our
eventual response to the witty, complete triumph of Nonna over the procuring bishop. Her victory

14
is tempered in our eyes because she has died (even if when no longer young). And the reader
probably should call back to mind Dioneo's challenge to the group:

io non so quello che de' vostri pensieri voi v'intendete di fare: li miei lasciai io
dentro dalla porta della città allora che io con voi poco fa me ne usci' fuori: e per
ciò o voi a sollazzare e a ridere e a cantare con meco insieme vi disponete (tanto,
dico, quanto alla vostra dignità s'appartiene), o voi mi licenziate che io per li miei
pensier mi ritorni e steami nella città tribolata (I.Intro.93).

It is at least conceivable that Lauretta's inclusion of this detail is meant to ruffle Dioneo's
composure (which it does not seem to have done – Nonna, the protagonist of her tale, «da tutti era
stata sommamente commendata» [VI.iv.2]). The masculine form of the adjectival noun necessarily
includes Dioneo27.

Neifile's tale of Chichibio (VI.4), Panfilo's of Giotto (VI.5), Fiammetta's of Michele Scalza (VI.vi),
and Filostrato's of Madonna Filippa (VI.vii, which moves the venue from Florence -- for the first
time in the Day -- to nearby Prato) offer various examples of pronta risposta and avvedimento and
are all approved by the brigata, with Fiammetta's the only one to gather the mirthful support of all
(VI.vii.2), not only the approval of the ladies.

Let us now turn to Emilia's strange admission that serves as prologue to her tale: «un lungo
pensiero molto di qui m'ha tenuta gran pezza lontana» (VI.viii.4); all that we know of her personal
concerns we learned from her song. Is it mere coincidence that Cesca seems to resemble Emilia?
Rebuked by her uncle, Fresco da Celatico, she does not get the point of his remark:

Ma ella, più che una canna vana e a cui di senno pareva pareggiar Salamone, non
altramenti che un montone avrebbe fatto intese il vero motto di Fresco, anzi disse
che ella si voleva specchiar come l'altre. E così nella sua grossezza si rimase e
ancor vi si sta (VI.viii.10).

Surely this little scene is meant to bring back to mind Emilia's song, in which she is pleased to
gaze on her own mirrored image, «Io son sì vaga della mia bellezza». Her ballata continues (vv. 4-
6): «Io veggio in quella [her own vaghezza], / ognora ch'io mi specchio, / quel ben che fa contento
lo 'ntelletto» (I.Conc.18-19). It perhaps also recalls the brigata's puzzled reaction to the song, «che
alcuni molto alle parole di quella pensar facesse» (I.Conc.22). We do not know exactly who
among the novellatori are puzzled, but at least one of them is male (alcuni).

Elissa's prologue to her novella is itself a bit strange. She says that two stories known to her, one of
which she herself was going to tell, have already been told in this sitting (VI.ix.3)28. On the other
hand, Elissa adds that hers contains «un sì fatto motto, che forse non ci se n'è alcuno di tanto
sentimento contato» (VI.ix.3). If that is true (and her tale is indeed one of the most admired of the
Day -- if we turn to extra-textual judges over the centuries; within the borders of the narrative,
which includes one or more of the males and an unknown number of females [quegli – VI.x.2], the
others either offered no opinion or, if they did, it is not reported), why would she want to tell a
different one? Is this a significant detail, meant for us to puzzle over? If it is, no one has even
attempted to solve the riddle.

15
While the ninth tale has brought us back to Florence, the tenth will take us to Certaldo. The
presence of Guido Cavalcanti in the ninth inevitably brings Dante to mind. Its setting, since it takes
place near the Sasso di Dante across from the rising wall of the newly-initiated skeleton of the
Duomo near the Baptistry, certainly does. This tale is set in "Dante country" just as the next will be
in Boccaccio's (and my own honorary) hometown, Certaldo. It concerns a friar, one gloriously
gifted at lying, whose comic name matches the chief product of the town he and his servant love to
visit, the latter for sex (with the greasy kitchen-maid, Nuta) and the former for money (to be
cozened from those particularly gullible Certaldesi). Unlike Dante's Inferno, which has half its
literary space reserved for the sins of fraud (Cantos XVIII to XXXIV), most of Boccaccio's human
comedy is concerned with the two most common forms of concupiscence, lust and avarice. While
such calculations are not easily made, a review of all one hundred tales suggests (joined by the
hundred-and-first) that more than half of them might be categorized as reflecting what, in Dante's
Inferno, would be classifiable as lust, while another half dozen or so might be considered as
dedicated to beings overcome by avarice. This is not to say that the sins resulting from hardened
will are absent from Boccaccio's pages, only that they are far less present than they are in Dante's.

Dioneo's sixth tale has long been associated with a "counter-text", Dante's poem as record of a
similar incredible journey. It is difficult to take Cipolla's relating of his own otherwordly
experience (VI.x.37-47) as other than Boccaccio's droll response to Dante's narrative, similarly
outrageous in asking its readers to consider it literally true29. Indeed, Boccaccio's reader may find
that an insistence that one has personally visited Truffia, Buffia, and «terra di Menzogna»
(VI.x.39) is no less disturbing than an oath that one has seen Gerione in the depths of hell (Inf.
XVI.124-136) -- which may be precisely Boccaccio's point.

Dioneo begins (VI.x.3) by insisting that he will for once follow the theme of the Day. Indeed, once
we have finished reading his novella, we may realize that Cipolla «con pronta risposta […] fuggì
[…] scorno» (or, in the words of the teller himself, «intendo di mostrarvi quanto cautamente con
subito riparo uno de' frati di santo Antonio fuggisse uno scorno»). His delusive artifact was to be
«una delle penne dell'agnol Gabriello, la quale nella camera della Vergine Maria rimase quando
egli la venne ad annunziare in Nazarette» (VI.x.11). After the less-than-friendly intervention of his
two friends, in place of his penna he finds himself provided only with carboni; he uses these to
make the sacred sign of the Cross on the credulous Certaldesi30. We are perhaps invited to recall a
detail from Pampinea's tale, in which Madonna Lisetta's co-familiars find that Gabriel had left his
wings behind in their relative's bedroom: «l'agnolo Gabriello, quivi avendo lasciate l'ali» (IV.ii.47
– we had previously been told that, during his nocturnal visit to Lisetta, «molte volte la notte volò
senza ali» [IV.ii.32]). Will not readers be pardoned if they believe that Dioneo (or at least his
author) is thinking of these details in Pampinea's narrative? If so, we once again confront
Boccaccio's friendly debunking of Dante's otherworldly preoccupations. His tale is commended by
all (VI.Conc.1) before Elissa makes him their next king.

His initial behaviors as "royalty" are typical of his self-presentation as the odd-man-out jester, one
whose behavior violates the norms of ladies and gentlemen. First, he takes the theme for the next
Day's narratives from Licisca's remarks, not from her opening sally, but from her further corollary:

16
 disse che vicina non avea che pulcella ne fosse andata a marito e sogiunse che ben
sapeva quante e quali beffe le maritate ancora facessero a' mariti. Ma lasciando
stare la prima parte, che è opera fanciullesca, reputo che la seconda debbia essere
piacevole a ragionarne, e per ciò voglio che domane si dica […] delle beffe le
quali o per amore o per salvamento di loro le donne hanno già fatte a' lor mariti,
senza essersene essi o avveduti o no (VI.Conc.5-6).

It is only after a good deal of complaint that the ladies finally yield to Dioneo's kingly prerogative
(VI.Conc.16). Dioneo's skill in persuading them is perhaps most evident in the following bit of
strategic argumentation: «E a dirvi il vero, chi sapesse che voi vi cessaste da queste ciance
ragionare alcuna volta forse suspicherebbe che voi in ciò foste colpevoli, e per ciò ragionare non
ne voleste» (VI.Conc.13). If we remember Fiammetta's disdainful response to Dioneo's tale of
female sexual willingness in accomodating a monk and an abbot in the fifth novella of the Prima
Giornata, we must wonder how she feels on this occasion. Her next tale (VII.v) will concern a
foolishly jealous husband whose exertions to keep his wife out of sight and thus potential
concourse with other men end up having the very effect he most fears. Fiammetta the praiser of
chastity will thus shortly become a champion of justifiable adultery.

Elissa, suddenly emerging from her relatively undifferentiated state as a member of the brigata to
become its queen31, decides to lead the ladies of the brigata to a place in which she doubts that any
of them has likely ever been, the Valle delle Donne (VI.Conc.18). The ladies all, having arrived at
this locus amoenus (hardly more than a mile away – VI.Conc.19), remove their clothing and enter
the cooling waters of the pond situated in a perfectly circular field that is the valle itself
(VI.Conc.20). This moment represents a fairly typical Boccaccian involvement in "soft porn",
looking forward to the classicizing sylvan scenes of Maxfield Parrish, similarly featuring young
ladies in states of undress. The setting is described by Boccaccio, who allows that he heard the
details of the place from one of the seven ladies (VI.Conc.20), as a pleasant place indeed. He
describes its natural attributes (six small hills, each surmounted by a palace; terraced "steps" that
create a sense of being in a theater; fruit trees at its southern edge and hardwoods to the north, in
addition to the firs that adorn the plain itself; a well-kept lawn decorated with flowers; and, in the
midst of this landscape, a perfectly round small lake (laghetto), shallow, clear, with fish swimming
in it (VI.Conc.20-28). Edith Kern has this to say in order to mark the progression represented by
the three gardens that the brigata visits:

[T]he peregrinations of the brigata […] lead away from society with its sufferings
and horrors to a traditional garden of love, from there to a more remote, more
sensuous earthly paradise which, teeming with animals sacred to Venus and
sheltering an ever-blossoming ever-fruit-bearing orange tree, evokes the presence
of Venus; from there to the more remote, more nearly inapproachable, more
nearly perfect Sanctuary of Venus Genetrix where Dioneo reigns, proclaiming the
laws of love and nature32.

The ladies, having posted a servant as their guard lest they be discovered naked, take off their
clothes and enter the pool, where they play tag with the fish, catching a few in their hands
(VI.Conc.29-32). Reclothed, they return to the three men, back at the castle, and tell them of their

17
adventure. The men also visit the place, take off their clothes for a dip, and come back for the
evening's entertainment (VI.Conc.33-39).

Whatever the reader makes of the Valle delle Donne and of the removal to it for the Seventh Day's
narratives, its conjunction with the kingship of Dioneo certainly suggests a greater awareness of
sexual concerns. Dioneo arrives in his kingship, having recently surrounded himself with vulgar
songs of a frankly sexual nature (V.Conc.7-13) before he yields to the less ribald conventions of
the brigata's ballate, and now to the sound of Tindaro's bagpipes (VI.Conc.48), instruments long
associated with the spirit of sexual carnival33.

The Settima Giornata is entirely based in what we might refer to as the tradition of the fabliaux.
Dioneo asks Emilia to tell the first tale. We remember that his rubric for the Day offers little room
for chaste concerns. He requires that the brigata tell tales «delle beffe, le quali, o per amore o per
salvamento di loro [stesse], le donne hanno già fatte a' lor mariti, senza essersene avveduti o no».
One notes that this rubric necessarily presents women as the guilty parties, if allowing them the
possibility of legitimizing excuses (if they happen to be in love or in peril). Emilia, after insisting
that she is the one least capable of rising to the challenge of this topic, tells of Monna Tessa's calm
and deliberate cuckolding of her husband, the devout and stupid Gianni Lotteringhi. The brigata's
response is unanimous and approving (VII.ii.2), and creates a mutual complicity in approval of
adultery (in particular when a woman is saddled with a stupid mate) -- again reminding us of how
far the group has moved in its public willingness to countenance such behavior from Fiammetta's
remonstrances against it during the Prima Giornata. The following stories all reveal similar plots,
with Panfilo relating the Chaucer-pleasing tale of Nicostrato, his wife Lidia, and her lover Pirro
(VII.ix), which concludes with its narrator praying for a similar result (untroubled dalliance with
the permission of the befuddled cuckold) for all the members of the brigata (VII.ix.80). Now, for
only the second time in the work, "rulership" coincides with this other privilege, the king or queen
telling the last tale of the Day (Pampinea did so at the close of the First Day). Dioneo's tale of
Tingoccio and Meuccio, two working-class Sienese, is his second consecutive send-up of Dante's
visit to the afterworld in the last two Days. It is curious that Dioneo now reveals at considerable
length (VII.x.3-7) that he had, for once, secretly pledged himself to follow the rubric chosen for his
own Day. However, he now reveals, totally unnecessarily, that Elissa's tale (VII.iii) was the one he
intended to tell and that, further, as a result of not wanting to compete with so many other effective
novelle, that he has had to go back on his own word to himself. It is a strange business for the
reader to make sense of, especially since it was Dioneo who opened the gates to the flood of tales
about cuckolds, and it is only he who fails to tell one (unless one is of the opinion that Meuccio
only puts horns on Tingoccio posthumously – if in a friendly way). And again one notes, spurred
on by Dioneo's tale of fraternal male relations that continue even though one of the two is
successful in his pursuit of the woman whom both desire, that cuckoldry was not the inevitable
subject for Dioneo's choice of theme. There are many other tricks that wives play on their
husbands. And it is perhaps disconcerting to find that the "contemplative" Emilia is the one who
introduces the theme in the first tale of the Day.

Lauretta sets the rubric for the Ottava Giornata: «dico che ciascun pensi di dire di quelle beffe che
tutto il giorno, o donna ad uomo, o uomo a donna, o l'uno uomo all'altro si fanno» (VII.Conc.4).
Hers is a clear attempt to undermine Dioneo's "sexist" program, presenting only women as
adulterers. Nonetheless, one must insist that both the two male and all the female narrators of the

18
Seventh Day make the women in their tales more admirable than their husbands, none of whom
would seem to deserve better than he gets.

The Ottava Giornata has an interesting pattern of the genders of the ten novellatori/novellatrici,
which may be charted as follows:

Teller butt of derision clever "winner"

1) Neifile Ambruogia Gulfardo

2) Panfilo Monna Belcolore priest of Varlungo
3) Elissa Calandrino Bruno & Buffalmacco
4) Emilia rector of Fiesole Monna Piccarda
5) Filostrato Niccola da San Lepidio Maso del Saggio & two others
6) Filomena Calandrino Bruno & Buffalmacco
7) Pampinea Elena Rinieri
8) Fiammetta Spinelloccio Zeppa
9) Lauretta Simone da Villa Bruno & Buffalmacco
10) Dioneo Madonna Iancofiore Salabaetto

These results are fairly even-handed, at least with regard to a non-predictablity of treatment with
regard to supposed prejudice by gender group. Among the three men, two tell tales in which
women are the objects of derision, while Filostrato presents a man in this role; five of the seven
women present men as the objects of scorn, while Neifile and Pampinea offer up females for our
criticism. This is roughly in keeping with the results of an investigation (see Appendix I) of the
general situation in the Decameron. We find a perhaps less expected result when we consider the
alignment between tellers and "protagonists", the characters in the narrative who present what one
senses is an approved moral view of the situation. While all three male narrators put forward male
protagonists, all of the female narrators but Emilia do so also. In short, while the Decameron
reveals a large presence of an expected "medieval" prejudice in favor of males, it is perhaps
surprising that one finds so little of it.

The opening tale of the Eighth Day is framed by Neifile within the context of marital chastity,
which, according to her, is difficult enough to preserve ordinarily, but must never be sold
(VIII.1.3). There are excusable reasons, she continues, for giving over one's chastity, as Filostrato
demonstrated in his tale of Madonna Filippa of Prato (VI.ix). Once again we sense the "modern"
view of sexuality, far from a churchly idealism, but filled with a pragmatic sense of the way in
which people actually behave. We may consider that the "official medieval view" of sexuality (i.e.,
that promulgated by the Church or found in the pages of Dante's Commedia) is only infrequently
encountered in the pages of the cento novelle, and even then so as to seem idealized, distant from
the actual experiences of all the characters in this book, from Licisca and Tindaro on up, from
servants to ladies and gentlemen. Panfilo's following tale may strike us as establishing a new high
(or perhaps low) in bluntly frank discourse:

Belle donne, a me occorre di dire una novelletta contro a coloro li quali

continuamente n'offendono senza poter da noi del pari essere offesi, cioè contro a'
preti, li quali sopra le nostre mogli hanno bandita la croce, e par loro non

19
 altramenti aver guadagnato il perdono di colpa e di pena, quando una se ne
possono metter sotto, che se d'Allessandria avessero il soldano menato legato a
Vignone (VIII.ii.3).

Sexual predation is presented by Panfilo as the primary calling of the priesthood, even if the laity
may attempt to get even by assailing the virtue of the female relatives of priests. In Panfilo's view
(perhaps unsurprisingy, given his name and predilections), the world is a huge threshing-floor on
which the threshing is practiced by males upon females. In his tale itself, a priest, who by all rights
ought to be the scoundrel of the piece, is presented (at least by comparison with Madonna
Belcolore) as the protagonist. The woman, who is willing to give herself to the Priest of Varlungo
for the price of five lire (VIII.ii.28), ends up being made a fool of, allowing the priest to enjoy his
sexual pleasure in her and to be portrayed (insofar as he gets the better of a schemer) as the more
successful rogue. We learn (VIII.iii.2) that the ladies all roared with laughter. When we remember
the timidity with which they all reacted to the frank sexuality of Dioneo's first tale and Fiammetta's
rebuke (of him and them alike [I.vi.2-3]), we realize once again how far they (and we?) have come
toward a new, more open sensibility.

The third novella of the Day introduces Calandrino (and, of course, Bruno and Buffalmacco [and
re-introduces Maso del Saggio, first encountered at VI.x.42]) to the work. (He, «uom semplice e di
nuovi costumi», will "star" as the butt of three other tales, VIII.6, IX.3, and IX.534.) This first tale,
of the stone, heliotrope, that has the capacity to make its bearer invisible, originates in Bengodi,
Boccaccio's riff on the land of Cockaigne (Americans know of it from the song «The Big Rock
Candy Mountain») referred to obliquely by Dante in the poem Guido, i' vorrei (Rime LII)35. Its
depiction of the low appetites and self-aggrandizing concerns of poor Calandrino sets the tone, not
only for the following treatments of Calandrino, but for the rest of this Day.

To begin the day of her reign, Queen Emilia leads her court into

un boschetto non guari al palagio lontano [...], e per quello entrati, videro gli
animali, sì come cavriuoli, cervi e altri, quasi sicuri da' cacciatori per la
soprastante pistolenzia, non altramenti aspettargli che se senza tema o dimestichi
fossero divenuti (IX.Intro.2).

This moment of harmony amongst that natural setting, its animal inhabitants, and its human
visitors, leads to the following outburst from our author himself:

Essi eran tutti di frondi di quercia inghirlandati, con le mani piene o d'erbe
odorifere o di fiori; e chi scontrati gli avesse, niuna altra cosa avrebbe potuto dire
se non: «O costor non saranno dalla morte vinti o ella gli ucciderà lieti»
(IX.Intro.4).

The paradoxical freedom from mortality allowed the beasts of the forest by the plague, killing off
their hunters and restoring them to a pre-lapsarian Edenic condition, also seems to apply to the
members of the brigata. They, too, seem to enjoy, suspended from time, a freedom from death.
However, after this, what may be described as the happiest interlude in the work, the novelle of the
Ninth Day resume the atmosphere of the preceding one, even if the novellatori enjoy, at Emilia's

20
command, a freedom they had not been allowed since Day One in their choice of subject
(VIII.Conc.3-5). Nonetheless, this Day is similar to its predecessor for what we might characterize
as its "low moral tone". Dioneo rounds out the Day with his tale of the itinerant priest, Donno
Gianni, and Compar Pietro, his frequent companion, whose wife wants to be converted into a mare
(IX.x). While it was essentially foreordained by Lauretta (VII.Conc.3: «io direi che domane si
dovesse ragionare delle beffe che gli uomini fanno alle lor mogli») that all of the novelle of the
Ottava Giornata should have concerned sexual conduct, fully seven of these told on this "free
Day", when any subject is allowed, are of sexual incidents.

The eighth tale, with its roots so obviously in Dante's Inferno (Cantos VI and VIII), serves as a sort
of corrective to our sense of just punishment when we found Ciacco among the gluttons and
Filippo Argenti amongst the wrathful. Here and now we find Ciacco successfully vindicating
himself against Biondello and Filippo (the agent of Ciacco's revenge) not being beaten, as we find
him in Dante, but beating up the man he holds accountable for his feeling insulted. These reversals
do not seem likely to be casual, occurring, as they do, so close together. And they form a part of
the global cynicism of the Ninth Day, a fictive space unredeemed by a single act of generosity –
which is precisely the subject for the tales of the following Day. The reader surely has a right to
feel that, finally, the Decameron is about to right itself, moving toward a traditional comic
resolution, which is exactly what most readers, whether "professional" or amateur, do find.

* * * *

In an article that we wrote some fifteen years ago, Courtney Cahill, then a graduate student at
Princeton, and I proposed that the notion that the Decima Giornata is optimistic in tone and
celebrative in nature -- though widespread -- is misplaced. A careful consideration of the actual
behavior recorded under the name of munificence, of liberality, of magnificence, we argued,
reveals that this behavior is frequently self-conscious, selfish, intended to raise oneself in the eyes
of others and/or of oneself36. Perhaps this is nowhere more apparent than in Filostrato's tale of
Natan and Mitridanes, when we read that the latter decides to murder the former so that he himself
will be recognized as the most generous man alive (X.iii.11). Many years ago I was holding the
final seminar of the semester on Day Ten in a handsome wood-paneled room that bore the name of
its donor – a teachable artifact in the light of all the self-aware generosity found in the Decima
Giornata.

One of the most characteristic aspects of the introductory remarks of the first nine narrators of this
Day meant to celebrate liberality is their emulousness as they present their own tales, each (with,
as we shall see, a single exception) claiming that hers or his will show a greater degree of that
quality or, at least, a comparable amount. In short, even if at times politely, all reveal themselves
aware of participating in a rivalrous exercise, one in which their particular tale will be judged by
its auditors in comparison with others. Here are those passages (bolding and italics added) for the
reader's consideration. Neifile (first tale):

Grandissima grazia, onorabili donne, reputar mi debbo che il nostro re me a tanta

cosa, come è a raccontar della magnificenzia, m'abbia preposta: la quale, come il
sole è di tutto il cielo bellezza e ornamento, è chiarezza e lume di ciascun'altra

21
 virtù. Dironne adunque una novelletta assai leggiadra, al mio parere, la quale
ramemorarsi per certo non potrà esser se non utile (X.i.2);

Elissa (second tale):

Dilicate donne, l'essere stato un re magnifico e l'avere la sua magnificenzia usata

verso colui che servito l'avea non si può dire che laudevole e gran cosa non sia:
ma che direm noi se si racconterà un cherico aver mirabil magnificenzia
usata verso persona che, se inimicato l'avesse, non ne sarebbe stato biasimato da
persona? (X.ii.2);

Filostrato (third tale):

Nobili donne, grande fu la magnificenzia del re di Spagna e forse cosa più non
udita già mai quella dell' abate di Cligní; ma forse non meno maravigliosa cosa
vi parrà l'udire che uno, per liberalità usare a un altro che il suo sangue, anzi il
suo spirito, disiderava, cautamente a dargliele si disponesse: e fatto l'avrebbe se
colui prender l'avesse voluto (X.iii.3);

Lauretta (fourth tale):

una magnificenzia da uno inamorato fatta mi piace di raccontarvi, la quale, ogni

cosa considerata, non vi parrà per avventura minore che alcuna delle
mostrate (X.iv.4);

Emilia (fifth tale):

Morbide donne, niun con ragion dirà messer Gentile non aver magnificamente
operato, ma il voler dire che più non si possa, il più potersi non fia forse
malagevole a mostrarsi: il che io avviso in una mia novelletta di raccontarvi
(X.v.3);

Fiammetta (sixth tale):

Splendide donne, io fui sempre in opinione che nelle brigate, come la nostra è, si
dovesse sí largamente ragionare, che la troppa strettezza della intenzion delle cose
dette non fosse altrui materia di disputare: il che molto più si conviene nelle
scuole tra gli studianti che tra noi, le quali appena alla rocca e al fuso bastiamo. E
per ciò io, che in animo alcuna cosa dubbiosa forse avea, veggendovi per le già
dette alla mischia, quella lascerò stare e una ne dirò, non mica d'uomo di poco
affare ma d'un valoroso re, quello che egli cavallerescamente operasse in nulla
movendo il suo onore (X.vi.3-4);

However, if Fiammetta seems to eschew rivalry in her proem, thus reminding us of a properly
magnanimous attitude, her conclusion voices that by now familiar sense of rivalry:

22
 Saranno forse di quei che diranno piccola cosa essere a un re l'aver
maritate duo giovinette, e io il consentirò; ma molto grande e grandissima la
dirò, se diremo un re innamorato questo abbia fatto, colei maritando cui egli
amava, senza aver preso a pigliare del suo amore fronda o fiore o frutto. Così
adunque il magnifico re operò, il nobile cavaliere altamente premiando, l'amate
giovinette laudevolmente onorando e se medesimo fortemente vincendo (X.vi.36);

Pampinea (seventh tale):

Niun discreto, raguardevoli donne, sarebbe che non dicesse ciò che voi dite del
buon re Carlo, se non costei che gli vuol mal per altro; ma per ciò che a me va
per la memoria una cosa non meno commendevole forse che questa, fatta da
un suo avversario in una nostra giovane fiorentina, quella mi piace di raccontarvi
(X.vii.3);

Filomena (eighth tale):

Magnifiche donne, chi non sa li re poter, quando vogliono, ogni gran cosa fare e
loro altressí spezialissimamente richiedersi l'esser magnifico? Chi adunque,
possedendo, fa quello che a lui s'appartiene, fa bene; ma non se ne dee l'uomo
tanto maravigliare né alto con somme lode levarlo, come un altro si converria che
il facesse, a cui per poca possa meno si richiedesse. E per ciò, se voi con tante
parole l'opere del re essaltate e paionvi belle, io non dubito punto che molto più
non vi debbian piacere e esser da voi commendate quelle de' nostri pari,
quando sono a quelle de' re simiglianti o maggiori; per che una laudevole
opera e magnifica usata tra due cittadini amici ho proposto in una novella di
raccontarvi (X.viii.3-4);

Panfilo (ninth tale):

Vaghe donne, senza alcun fallo Filomena, in ciò che dell'amistà dice, racconta il
vero e con ragione nel fine delle sue parole si dolfe lei oggi così poco da' mortali
esser gradita. E se noi qui per dover correggere i difetti mondani o pur per
riprendergli fossimo, io seguiterei con diffuso sermone le sue parole; ma per ciò
che altro è il nostro fine, a me è caduto nel animo di dimostrarvi, forse con una
istoria assai lunga ma piacevol per tutto, una delle magnificenzie del Saladino
(X.ix.3-4);

Dioneo (tenth tale):

Mansuete mie donne, per quel che mi paia, questo dì d'oggi è stato dato a re e a
soldani e a così fatta gente: e per ciò, acciò che io troppo da voi non mi scosti, vo'
ragionar d'un marchese, non cosa magnifica ma una matta bestialità, come che
ben ne gli seguisse alla fine; la quale io non consiglio alcun che segua, per ciò che
gran peccato fu che a costui ben n'avenisse (X.x.3).

23
It seems clear that all the narrators except, apparently, Fiammetta have entered into emulous
competition: if your x = munificence, then my y = munificence + 1 (or, avec politesse, my y =
munificence -1), if many of them express their sense of rivalry with other narrators with apparent
modesty. Even Fiammetta moves back into emulous comparison when she deploys that superlative
adjective «grandissima» as she concludes her tale. Then, however, Dioneo, makes the whole effort
ludicrous, penetrating the false humility and egotistical munificence of tellers and their heroes
alike. His hero, Gualtieri, is no hero; his actions are not praiseworthy at all, but are dangerous and
not to be imitated, but avoided. Dioneo operates in a mode of retrograde comparison. If all the
other heroes of the Day were measured 100% heroic in their qualities, Gualtieri is rated less than
zero. It has always amazed me that so many of Boccaccio's readers have responded to this last
story as though Petrarch had substituted his Latin version for the one that we actually read. The
world of Gualtieri's court, however, would seem rather to be modeled on the tyranny of the Duke
of Athens than on God's harsh love for his servant Job.

At the conclusion of the introduction to that lecture in Certaldo, I had the following to say: «In fin
dei conti, mi pare che Il Decameron sia, alla fine, sebbene in modi che non sono stati ben
osservati, uno scontro per la supremazia fra due personaggi, Dioneo e Panfilo»37. That is a
judgment that I think needs at least one addition, as we shall see.

* * * *

This study now turns to the final struggle in the work between two members of the brigata,
Panfilo and Fiammetta (once again upset by the behavior of a man); her response, as we shall
see, may be related to Panfilo's decision to return to the city. That passage provides a second
preamble to my central assertion: The Decameron, among its many concerns, recounts
moments in the major struggle for control of the works's significance, a struggle centrally
between Panfilo and Dioneo, but involving, from time to time, some of the female members of
the brigata. (The third male, Filostrato, has been revealed as a non-player, his kingship in the
Quarta Giornata demonstrating both his self-confessed failure as a lover and his failed attempt
to gather either the sympathy or support of the female members of the brigata.) It is surely of
some importance that the first and last dispute among the members of the brigata, involving
first Dioneo and then Panfilo, have Fiammetta as their female protagonist38. While I will
propose, toward the close of this argument, that the Fiammetta whom we meet in the pages of
the Decameron is closely related to the heroine of the Elegia who bears her name, I am leaving
to one side the entire complex question of the relationships between the novellatori and the
possible context established by their (or their namesakes') presence in the earlier fictions39. This
does not mean that what he said of them there pertains here – nor that it does not. For instance,
I will argue that the jealous and hysterical behaviors of Fiammetta in the Elegia are mirrored
by similar behaviors portrayed in her song at the close of Day Ten. However, that earlier
character was a Neapolitan lady, while this one is apparently Florentine -- Boccaccio at any
rate neglects to inform us, if the Decameron's lady is not Florentine, that she is not. In other
words, this study takes no position on the relationship between the "histories" of their
homonymous "ancestors" in the earlier fictions and these characters who take seven roles in the
Decameron. With regard to Dioneo, who will be largely absent from the following discussion,
it is important to realize that he may represent for Boccaccio not so much a portrait of the
author's own youthful behaviors and middle-aged desires as his ever-present sense of the need

24
to remind us, his readers, of our sexual identities. He is indeed "a son of Venus", as the name
"Dioneo" may indicate, in that central sense. Mazzacurati has reminded us that Boccaccio, in
his first epistula, characterized himself as spurcissimus dyoneus [most filthy-minded Dioneo]40.
In that lecture in Certaldo I continued this thought:

E un simile gesto, capriccioso ma significativo, s'incontra quando iniziamo la

nostra lettura del Decameron, «cognominato Prencipe Galeotto». Anche il
giovane Boccaccio si è presentato nel ruolo di, come si dice in inglese, un "dirty
old man". È mia opinione che Dioneo, mentre si presenta come se fosse nel ruolo
di un seduttore di donne, infatti tenta in realtà di far riflettere le sette donne della
brigata sulla natura delle loro vite e delle loro scelte. (Non voglio parlare di
Panfilo oggi, nelle cento novelle l'apparente campione della "moralità standard";
ma direi solo che, alla fine, è possible che scopririamo che Panfilo non sia altro
che un individuo che serve i suoi proprii interessi personali; e che questi
includono delle finalità sessuali dissimulate.) Non è probabilmente un caso,
inoltre, che Panfilo narri la prima novella dell'opera, Dioneo, l'ultima; e neanche
che sia Panfilo il re per l'ultima giornata, supervisionando, o, meglio, di fatto
dichiarando sia il termine del novellare sia la necessità del ritorno a una Firenze
ancora pestilenziale. In altra sede, tenterò di mostrare che Dioneo si associa con le
forze della libertà e dell'intelligenza, Panfilo (come il suo nome ci incorragia a
pensare) con quelle di una sessualità sfrenata e della peste, trattate assieme tanto
visibilmente nel Proemio41, e che Dioneo è da mettere in relazione con la verità,
Panfilo, alla doppiezza.

The proem to the work has alerted us to its author's reliance on our awareness of classical texts,
principally Ovid's Remedia Amoris, that present love as a disease, along with its remedies, with
some key words being amore, soverchio fuoco, appetito, noia (Proemio.3), l'amorose fiamme
nascose (Proemio.10), focoso disio, noia (Proemio.11), noioso pensiero (Proemio.12), nel
pistelenzioso tempo della passata mortalità (Proemio.13) and such countering terms as
compassione, conforto, piacere (Proemio.2), rifrigerio, piacevoli ragionamenti, consolazioni
(Proemio.4), libero (Proemio.7), consolazion (Proemio.12)42. The Proemio concludes with a
presentation of the reader's possible range of reactions:

Nelle quali novelle piacevoli e aspri casi d'amore e altri fortunati avvenimenti si
vederanno così ne' moderni tempi avvenuti come negli antichi; delle quali le già
dette donne, che queste leggeranno, parimente diletto delle sollazzevoli cose in
quelle mostrate e utile consiglio potranno pigliare, in quanto potranno cognoscere
quello che sia da fuggire e che sia similmente da seguitare: le quali cose senza
passamento di noia non credo che possano intervenire (Proemio.14).

From the author's presentation of his book we readily perceive that the Decameron is centrally
about sexual relations. That first elaboration of a conventional morality, evident in the first few
paragraphs, yields to a more complex and "post-medieval" view, one in which safely negotiating
the dangerous seas of sexuality is not a voyage necessarily best undertaken with the advice of the
Church, most of whose officers are seen as even less morally responsible than the meanest
common thief.

25
 * * * *

We shall now turn our attention to the possible amorous relationships among the members of the
brigata themselves. First, however, it is perhaps worth acknowledging that this writer is aware of
the difficulty of any such investigation of Boccaccio's text. He is an author who enjoys setting his
reader up to seek and find patterns in his work, which then may disappear. Are any of these broken
patterns significant? Or are they merely casual? One of the most interesting is found at the
conclusions of each of the first four Giornate when the newly laureated queen or king (crowned by
the former honoree) sends each member of the brigata «alla sua camera» (Filomena, I.Conc.22;
Neifile, II.Conc.16; Filostrato, III.Conc.19; Fiammetta, IV.Conc.18). The Prima Giornata,
occurring on Wednesday, had referred to two "bed-times", the first at the villa, after their morning
walk from Florence and their mid-day meal. The details are as follows: The brigata had assembled
by chance one Tuesday morning («un martedì mattina») in S. Maria Novella (I.Intro.49); the ten
companions left the city on Wednesday morning (I.Intro.89). The first reference to sleeping
arrangements is the longest and most developed of them all:
E in questa maniera stettero tanto che tempo parve alla reina [Pampinea] d'andare
a dormire: per che, data a tutti la licenzia, li tre giovani alle lor camere, da quelle
delle donne separate, se n'andarono, le quali co' letti ben fatti e così di fiori piene
come la sala trovarono, e simigliantemente le donne le loro; per che, spogliatesi,
s'andarono a riposare (I.Intro.108 -- italics added).
Boccaccio goes out of his way to emphasize the separation of the sexes, mentioning first the three
males and their separate rooms, and then the seven ladies, disrobing in their seven separate
bedrooms (only the ladies are specifically referred to as disrobing, in a typically Boccaccian
intervention). And this understanding is doubtless meant to reinforce the separateness of their
sleeping arrangements. However, this pattern is broken when Elissa is queen. Instead of repeating
the by-now formulaic (and expected?) phrase «alla sua camera», Elissa «comandò che ciascuno
infino al dì seguente a suo piacere s'andasse a riposare» (V.Conc.21). It is difficult to ascertain
whether this is a significant change or not. Indeed, one might be forgiven for thinking it is only a
variant on the first formula, which concluded first with Wednesday afternoon's listing of the ten
separate bedrooms and then, for the following four nights (Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, and
Monday) with the phrase «alla sua camera» (I.Conc.22; II.Conc.16; III.Conc.19; IV.Conc.18).
However, once that clear statement of separation is discarded, it is also rephrased by every queen
or king for the rest of the Decameron: Elissa (as we have just seen); Dioneo («a ciascun disse
ch'andasse a dormire», VI.Conc.48); Lauretta («dalla quale licenziati […], tutti s'andarono a
riposare», VII.Conc.18); Emilia («comandò che ciascuno se n'andasse a dormire», VIII.Conc.13);
Panfilo («comandò […] che ciascuno per infino al giorno s'andasse a riposare», IX.Conc.13). All
use some version of Elissa's less explicit command. As a result, the phrase «alla sua camera» is
never uttered again. One might be tempted to observe that something may have occurred either
among the members of the brigata or in the tales that caused Elissa to change her royal bedtime
order to allow, at least tacitly, an awareness among the escapees that the parietal rules have either
been breached in at least one instance or are to be thought of as breachable. While it is perhaps
impossible to draw a sure conclusion from these observations, it does seem clear that either the
repetition of the formula «alla sua camera» and its cessation in favor of less precise phrasing is
there to mark a change in the nocturnal behaviors of at least two members of the brigata or to
remind us of just how playful our author is. This writer, many years ago, when raising this issue

26
with students, likened his experience as reader to that of a detective in a stylized mystery movie of
the nineteen thirties. He sets out in his automobile to follow the kidnapped and resourceful heroine,
who has of course contrived to leave a trail of small personal belongings on the road behind her.
Once, twice, three times and a fourth, the detective finds her clues and follows her trail. In the
Boccaccian version, the trail suddenly stops at this point, and we, as Warner Oland, must tell our
Number One Son to drive us back home, befuddled.

In a similar vein, we might consider the differences between two Sundays, one under queen Neifile
(III.Intro.3), who leads the brigata to «un bellissimo e ricco palagio», while, under Queen
Lauretta's guidance, they visit «una chiesetta lor vicina visitata, in quella il divino officio
ascoltarono» (VIII.Intro.2). What are we to make of the fact that under Neifile's guidance they do
not go to church on Sunday morning, while under Lauretta's they do? Are we meant to remember
that we have learned that Neifile is beloved of one of the three males of the brigata, while it seems
that Lauretta is not amorously involved while on this journey of escape? Might that explain the
different group's different behaviors on these consecutive Sunday mornings? Or are we to
understand that there did not happen to be a little church in the actual locus amoenus in the Tuscan
countryside that Boccaccio had in mind, while there was one in the second such place? Or are we
meant to draw no conclusions from these differing behaviors? If not, why are they here?
In order to prepare the way for the question of who among the members of the brigata is in love
and with whom, let us review the concluding materials of each giornata to see if we can find in the
fairly stylized and similar scenes some useful hints: Each queen or king laureates a successor, who
then invites another to sing a ballata, one that tells of the speaker's condition as a lover.
I: Pampinea crowns Filomena: Emilia (who sings of her self-love, which
preserves her from the fate of those ladies who are discarded by their lovers)43. II:
Filomena crowns Neifile: Pampinea (who sings of a mutually fulfilling love of
some standing). III: Neifile crowns Filostrato: Lauretta (who sings of two lovers,
the first wonderful but now lost; the second a boor [her husband?]; she hopes to
join the first lover in heaven. (The comments of the brigata are again referred to,
if they are enigmatically produced by the author, who reports: «diversamente da
diversi fu intesa: e ebbevi di quegli che intender vollono alla melanese, che fosse
meglio un buon porco che una bella tosa; altri furono di più sublime e migliore e
più vero intelletto, del quale al presente recitar non accade» -- III.Conc.18.) IV:
Filostrato crowns Fiammetta: Filostrato (who sings of the lady [hidden among
the dancers in the darkness, we are told -- IV.Conc.18] who has discarded him for
another lover). V: Fiammetta crowns Elissa: Dioneo (whose song claims that he is
in love with a woman who does not yet return his affection). It is interesting to
find Boccaccio inconsistently present as commentator on the interrelationships
among his characters; he intervenes in this role at the conclusions of Days I, III,
and IV, but not in II and V. As for the second half of the work, the interpretive
interventions after the songs are similarly irregular, but now occur on four of the
five opportunities (only the Nona Giornata is marked by a blank). After Elissa's
song (VI.Conc.47) the author tells us that «[…] niuno per ciò ve n'ebbe che
potesse avvisare chi di così cantare le fosse cagione»; next he tells us
(VII.Conc.15) that Filomena's song made all the others in the group wonder «[…]
che nuovo e piacevole amore Filomena strignesse», which her words seemed to

27
 indicate had gone farther than «la vista sola», for which reason they were envious
of her; Panfilo's song, he tells us (VIII.Conc.13), was attended by the closest
attention of the rest of the brigata, all of whom tried to unriddle his coded
message but «[…] quantunque varii varie cose andassero imaginando, niun per
ciò alla verità del fatto pervenne»; Neifile's song of a blissful love affair, the
author reports (IX.Conc.13), was praised by the ladies and the king (Panfilo), a
fact that may point to Dioneo's romantic linkage to Neifile, since it would be
likely that her lover would not praise her song and we know that Filostrato would
not comment favorably on any happy lovers; and, finally, Boccaccio makes a
fairly typical move when he replaces the expected authorial intervention (found in
six of the nine novelle so far) with that of the ever-self-promoting Dioneo
(X.Conc.15), who, instead of commenting on the reactions of the brigata, advises
Fiammetta as follows: «Madonna, voi fareste una gran cortesia a farlo
cognoscere a tutte, acciò che per ignoranza non vi fosse tolta la possessione, poi
che così ve ne dovete adirare». This is perhaps the most pressing evidence we
have from the text that the songs do (at least occasionally) report, if in covert
ways, on the amorous inclinations of members of the brigata44.

Let us turn, now, to the question of the identity of the lovers among the brigata. It is a rare
experience for boccaccisti to find concerted attention being paid to the "subplot" constituted by
the developing (and changing) relationships among the members of the brigata. It is thus
refreshing to find Martin Marafioti reviving an interest in this subject45. He goes into the history
of debate as to whether the brigata is merely a sort of "chorus"46. Marafioti then considers
whether the better view (beginning with Giosuè Carducci in Certaldo on 21 December 1875, the
500th anniversary of Boccaccio's death) is to believe that each of them has an indivuated
personality that shapes the tales told by each teller. Such may be the case, but given the attempts
to demonstrate its truth, there is little ground for optimism that, if there was such a master plan,
we will ever unravel the skein that constitutes it. In this vein, we might consider the arguments of
Adolfo Albertazzi, who claims that, since Dioneo sits next to Fiammetta and Panfilo next to
Neifile, therefore these four are the two sets of active lovers47. That sort of sloppy and
indemonstrable argument (see Appendix II, which presents the seating plan for each of the Ten
Days for some sense of how complex and tentative any thesis based on these arrangements must
be)48. Marafioti also argues -- with proper tentativeness -- that Lauretta's name may recall that of
Petrarch's Laura, who actually died of the plague in 1348, a view that is fairly widely shared49.

As the Introduzione unfolds, we have a growing sense that amorous affairs will be a principal
concern of the work. In fact, the sexual relationships of the various members of the brigata
become of interest early on, almost always presented in a teasingly incomplete manner, one which
sets readers the task of unriddling the several hints that we receive. In chronological order, we
learn the following facts:

La prima, e quella che di più età era, Pampinea chiameremo e la seconda

Fiammetta, Filomena la terza e la quarta Emilia, e appresso Lauretta diremo alla
quinta e alla sesta Neifile, e l'ultima Elissa non senza cagion nomeremo
(I.Intro.51).

28
The order in which others of the ladies speak after Pampinea opens the conversation among the
seven ladies is Filomena (I.Intro.74), Elissa (76), Neifile (81). As for the servants who are
associated with particular members of the group, these are as follows, as mentioned by Pampinea:

[...] io primieramente constituisco Parmeno, famigliare di Dioneo, mio siniscalco,

[...] al servigio della sala appartiene. Sirisco, famigliar di Panfilo [...], Tindaro al
servigio di Filostrato e degli altri due attenda nelle camere loro [...], Misia, mia
fante, e Licisca, di Filomena [...] nella cucina saranno [...], Chimera, di Lauretta, e
Stratilia, di Fiammetta, al governo delle camere delle donne (I.Intro.98-101).

That there are seven servants, associated with all of the three men and four of the women, may
have some further significance. Do these data offer us any clues to the identities of the lovers
among the group? It would not seem so, since excluded from this list is the only woman positively
identified as a lover, Neifile.

De' quali l'uno era chiamato Panfilo e Filostrato il secondo e l'ultimo Dioneo,
assai piacevole e costumato ciascuno: e andavan cercando per loro somma
consolazione, in tanta turbazione di cose, di vedere le lor donne, le quali per
ventura tutte e tre erano tralle predette sette, come che dell'altre alcune ne
fossero congiunte parenti d'alcuni di loro (I.Intro.79).

That is all clear enough, but if we expect to receive further clarification, we will not be well
served. Indeed, we get nothing but hints, from this point on, as to the identity of those ladies whom
the gentlemen serve as lovers, if we have been told definitively that Neifile is one of them. We
may reasonably assume, given the ages of both men and women and given all of their social status,
that all or most of them are married and that their husbands or wives do not enter into the equation.
Do we ever learn the identity of the three pairs of lovers? It may be that Boccaccio is playing a
game with us, giving us just enough information so that we can establish exactly who belongs with
whom. Since no one has ever done so in a way that has convinced many others, we must
acknowledge that Boccaccio is playing with us, since he invites us to solve these riddles, and his
game is either a dead-end (in that there is, in fact, no answer to the riddle) or we are meant to
know, for instance, that Dioneo is Neifile's lover, that, until she rid herself of him, one of the other
ladies was the beloved of Filostrato50, and that Fiammetta was Panfilo's. To say even that much,
however, is to get ahead of ourselves. In order to discuss these hypothetical identifications, we
need to survey what we know about the amorous relations of each member of the brigata. And it is
the Day-ending songs that clearly seem to be the most helpful possible indicators of this
information. Emilia's song seems to insist that she loves herself (a self-love mirrored in the tale she
tells about Ciesca [VI.viii]), even if the brigata's first response to this first song reveals the instinct
of at least some of them to decipher its meaning («alcuni molto alle parole di quella pensar
facesse» [I.Conc.22]). This at least alerts readers that they may need to consider what these poems
"mean", but does not clarify whether that meaning relates to possible amorous interests within the
brigata or not. The second song, Pampinea's, reveals that she is happily in love with the youth she
met some time ago. She offers thanks to Amor, god of love, for her happiness, and prays that it
will continue in the next life (II.Conc.15). Since she is speaking of a youthful ardor that has been
with her for some time, she would seem to be ruled out as one of the participants in a current love
affair in situ, but rather would seem to be a happily married twenty-eight-year-old woman
(I.Intro.49); while there is no sure support for this hypothesis, it seems the most likely one.

29
Lauretta's song hardly reflects such contentment. It begins «Niuna sconsolata / da dolersi ha
quant'io» (III.Conc.12), and tells that she fell deeply in love with a young man who either left her
or died; she then was beloved by a churlish lover; her only hope now is to be reunited in Heaven
with her first lover (her husband? [III.Conc.17])51. Once again (after Pampinea's song had no
reported reactions) the author's voice intervenes to tell us of the brigata's responses (III.Conc.18),
which were of two sorts, one grossly material, the other a better, more sublime, and truer
understanding -- but then reveals no more. None of the first three songs is thus definitively related
to amorous relations among members of the brigata. The fourth song, Filostrato's, however, tells a
different story. For the first time, we are told (and not once, but twice) that Filostrato had been in
love with one of the seven women and had subsequently been rejected by the lady: «sempre per la
bellezza d'alcuna di voi stato sono a Amor subgetto […] io prima per altro abbandonato e poi […]
sempre di male in peggio andato» (III.Conc.5)52. Branca is assuredly correct in giving short shrift
to those who think that all of Boccaccio's fictive amours mirror his own love affairs; on the other
hand, it is in Filostrato's prologue to his ballata that the text for the first time offers support to the
reader who believes that that these riddles may be solved. Lest we fail to take note of this fact,
Boccaccio then underlines it at the end of Filostrato's song of unrequited love:

Dimostrarono […] assai chiaro qual fosse l'animo di Filostrato, e la cagione: e

forse più dichiarato l'avrebbe l'aspetto di tal donna nella danza era, se le tenebre
della sopravvenuta notte il rossore nel viso di lei venuto non avesser nascoso
(IV.Conc.18).

Whose visage reddens? Are we supposed to be able to know this? Or is Boccaccio merely
intriguing us without any intention whatsoever that we should discover the identity of the blusher?
From Filostrato's song we learn not only that his beloved (one of the three ladies, as we were told
at the outset, whose lover joined the brigata in S. Maria Novella) did not love him any more, but
has taken a new lover. And is that new lover among the brigata? That may not be a reasonable
hypothesis, since the use of the passato remoto (in the verbs accorsi, connobi, nacque
[IV.Conc.13-14]) is perhaps better understood as indicating that the betrayal of Filostrato had
already occurred back in Florence, that is, the woman associated with Filostrato is his ex-lover. If
that is true (and I realize how tentative this entire discussion is and must be), then the first four
days have yielded clues that confirm nothing more than that three of the men are to be identified
with three of the ladies, that is, our understanding has not apparently been increased by anything
we have learned – except negatively. We may be able to cross off the names of Emilia, Pampinea,
and Lauretta from our list of possible suspects. If we can do that, our task has become easier. And,
from his poem at the conclusion of Day Five, we have reason to believe that Dioneo is in fact, and
as Boccaccio told us at the outset (I.Intro.79), in love, since he prays to Amor, hoping that he will
direct this lady's affection to him. At the conclusion of Day Six, Elissa's song insists that she longs
to be free of the yoke of love for a young man that she has borne since she was very young («io
entrai giovinetta en la tua guerra» -- VI.Conc.42), information that may indicate that her
infatuation predates her acquaintance with the men of the brigata or, if not, may point to Dioneo,
who, possibly in response, «in buona tempera era» (VI.Conc.47). While members of the brigata
have interpretive responses, as we have seen, to the songs of Emilia (I.Conc.22: her ballata «alcuni
molto alle parole di quella pensar facesse»), Lauretta (III.Conc.18: her song was understood by
some «alla melanese, che fosse meglio un buon porco che una bella tosa»; others understood it

30
better as being: «di più sublime e migliore e più vero intelletto, del quale al presente recitar non
accade»), Filostrato (IV.Conc.18: «Dimostrarono le parole di questa canzone assai chiaro qual
fosse l'animo di Filostrato»), and Elissa (VI.Conc.47: There was no one «che potesse avvisare chi
di così cantare le fosse cagione»), there is no report of response either to those of Pampinea
(II.Conc.16) or Dioneo (V.Conc.20). At least the reader has grounds to believe that Elissa is a first
possible "candidate" as the target of either Dioneo's or Panfilo's amorous attention.

However, I would like now to propose that the last four songs, those heard at the end of Days VII,
VIII, IX, and X, offer the surest evidence we receive of the status of four individuals' affectional
dispositions. From the matching songs of Filomena and Panfilo we learn that they are a newly
amorous couple, from Neifile that she is happy in her love (perhaps with Dioneo), and from
Fiammetta, that she is jealous of her beloved53. If one examines the final sequence of ballate sung
by these last four members of the brigata, we find a certain amount of evidence that may help
identify not only those who are in love, but those whom they love.

The third stanza of Filomena's ballata repays study:

Io non so ben ridir qual fu 'l piacere / che sì m'ha infiammata, / ché io non trovo
dì né notte loco. / Per che l'udire e 'l sentire e 'l vedere / con forza non usata /
ciascun per sé accese novo foco, / nel qual tutta mi coco (VII.Conc.12 -- italics
added).

The evident dantismi in the first two verses did not escape Vittore Branca54. What may be of even
greater interest is the last word of the passage, coco.

Once the ballata is ended, the author breaks in to give the reader some interpretive help by telling
us that all the other members of the brigata had drawn two conclusions from Filomena's song:

Estimar fece questa canzone a tutta la brigata che nuovo e piacevole amore
Filomena strignesse; e per ciò che per le parole di quella pareva che ella più
avanti che la vista sola n'avesse sentito, tenendonela più felice, invidia per tali vi
furono le ne fu avuta (VII.Conc.15).

It certainly seems as though we are more than encouraged to understand that a new love has been
born out here in the country. Filomena is indicated as (1) having fallen in love with a new man
(does this imply that she had discarded the man who is now her former lover? if so, that may
indicate Filostrato); (2) the new lovers have exchanged more than words – and Filomena does
refer, in the third verse of her next stanza (VII.Conc.13), to having kissed the eyes of her new love
(«basciai quegli occhi che m'han morta»).

When we turn, at the end of the next Day, to Panfilo's song (VIII.Conc.9-12), its first stanza
reveals that he, too, is in love:

Tanto è, Amore, il bene / ch'io per te sento, e l'allegrezza e 'l gioco, / ch'io son
felice ardendo nel tuo foco. / L'abondante allegrezza ch'è nel core, / dell'alta gioia
e cara / nella qual m'hai recato, / non potendo capervi esce di fore, / e nella faccia

31
 chiara / mostra 'l mio lieto stato; / ch'essendo innamorato / in così alto e
raguardevol loco / lieve mi fa lo star dov'io mi coco.

The word coco occurs, in the linguistic universe of the Decameron only twice, as does the phrase
mi coco55. In my opinion, it is used here to mark the fact that we are hearing a lover's confirming
response to his beloved. She says she is on fire for him and he replies affirmatively with exactly
the same words. The word itself may be seen as emblematic of identity, as in two-in-one, since it is
made up of two identical syllables. Further, we may note that these are mirrored perfectly in his
response: co-co/co-co. (If the reader finds all this a bit too rococo in its sensibility, the writer
confesses that he is being playful56.)

After Panfilo finishes singing his ballata, the author's voice again intervenes, telling us that the
listeners tried to unriddle the identity of Panfilo's beloved but that none of them succeeded in doing
so («e quantunque varii varie cose andassero imaginando, niun per ciò alla verità del fatto
pervenne» (VIII.Conc.13). Are we supposed to be able to solve this riddle? As the reader is aware,
I think we are supposed to put the evidence together and understand that Panfilo and Filomena
have recently become a couple. Who else is in love? The only man left unmatched is Dioneo (we
know that Filostrato's love is not returned) and Neifile's song is clear: she is passionately in love
with a man. It is perhaps a significant detail that Pampinea, Dioneo, and Neifile are the only three
singers whose song receives no commentary from other members of the brigata (if there was such,
it is not reported by the author). This both makes a symmetrical pattern (second, fifth, and ninth
[second from either end of the sequence and at its center]) and possibly suggests that Dioneo and
Neifile (not Elissa) are the second identified couple, that if we were to have such a commentary, it
would suggest exactly that57. Consideration of the last song, Fiammetta's, awaits us in a
consideration of the last tale in it and the brigata's discussion that follows at the conclusion of the
Decima Giornata.

* * * *

When we reach the concluding moments of this long and complex text, we find the following
reaction to Dioneo's extraordinarily provocative tale:

La novella di Dioneo era finita, e assai le donne, chi d'una parte e chi d'altra
tirando, chi biasimando una cosa e chi un'altra intorno ad essa lodandone,
n'avevan favellato […] (X.Conc.1).

The female members of the brigata, the primary audience for all the stories, were obviously as
upset and diverse in their responses to Gualtieri's extraordinary, surely unacceptable behavior, as
are some readers today. Might not their unsettled responses represent a clue to us as well? If we are
looking for a harmonious conclusion, one that resolves difficulties rather than insisting on them,
the last novella of the work is disconcerting. Some have argued, for instance, that Griselda should
be understood as representing, Job-like, an admirable patience with her importunate spouse.
(However, others may consider that a mother who consents to the murder of her own children by
their own father is less than a model of maternity; to be fair, one must admit that Dioneo, either as
narrator or as commentator, never charges her with any character flaw58.)

32
One must wonder at the way some readers of this novella pay small attention to the commentary
on Gualtieri given by its very teller59. Here are the opening words of Dioneo's exegesis:

Mansuete mie donne, per quel che mi paia, questo dì d'oggi è stato dato a re e a
soldani e a così fatta gente: e per ciò, acciò che io troppo da voi non mi scosti, vo'
ragionar d'un marchese, non cosa magnifica ma una matta bestialità, come che
ben ne gli seguisse alla fine; la quale io non consiglio alcun che segua, per ciò
che gran peccato fu che a costui ben n'avenisse (X.x.3; italics added).

Dioneo could not have been more clear, especially in light of Panfilo's directive to the group in his
charge at the close of the previous Day:

Queste cose e dicendo e udendo senza dubbio gli animi vostri ben disposti a
valorosamente adoperare accenderà: ché la vita nostra, che altro che brieve esser
non puote nel mortal corpo, si perpetuerà nella laudevole fama; il che ciascuno
che al ventre solamente, a guisa che le bestie fanno, non serve, dee non solamente
desiderare ma con ogni studio cercare e operare (IX.Conc.5).

Dioneo, after a Day of nine tales more or less faithful to Panfilo's charge, makes his usual
declaration of independence60. And his last words live up to his opening salvo:

Che si potrà dir qui? se non che anche nelle povere case piovono dal cielo de'
divini spiriti, come nelle reali di quegli che sarien più degni di guardar porci che
d'avere sopra uomini signoria (X.x.68).

The Decameron has its eye, at its conclusion, on an historical figure, the Duke of Athens, Gualtieri
di Brienne, who, chosen as podestà of Florence in 1342, was soon considered a tyrant. Much
hated, he was finally overthrown by the magnati in July of 1343 in the fourteenth month of his
rule. It seems improbable to believe that Boccaccio chose the name of his tyrannical Gualtieri
without his historical analogue very much in mind61. This observation is lent further support by the
only other Gualtieri found in the pages of the cento novelle, Gualtieri d'Anversa (II.viii). If we
knew that Boccaccio knew that he would be concluding with Dioneo's Walter when he wrote the
tales of the Second Day, we might be certain that he presented that first Walter as an antithetical
figure to this last. The first was called to govern in another's place (II.viii.4) and tried to do so
justly. When the queen of the lord whose role he has assumed, like Potiphar's wife, tries to win his
physical affection, he resists her and goes into exile with his two children, a model of paternal
devotion. As Cahill and I argued, that earlier novella might offer «a far better exemplum of
liberalità in a Gualtieri» than does this one62. The evidence offered by their antithetical behaviors
may, perhaps, be coincidental, but it is nonetheless powerful. And Dioneo's final words on this
Gualtieri seem completely in accord with Boccaccio's own view of the historical one:

Che si potrà dir qui? se non che anche nelle povere case piovono dal cielo de'
divini spiriti, come nelle reali di quegli che sarien più degni di guardar porci che
d'avere sopra uomini signoria (X.x.68).

33
Those who propose a happy ending, a comic resolution for the Decameron, have at least this major
obstacle to overcome.

If the final tale leaves the reader at the very least puzzled over the generic identity of the
Decameron, what of the Conclusione of the Decima Giornata? Panfilo, the brigata's tenth and
final "king", reviewing their situation after two weeks away from the city, steers matters toward a
final disposition (X.Conc.4). The ending of the Decameron has mainly escaped careful attention.
Its details have never been analyzed as clear-headedly as seems called for, but have instead been
mainly ignored or passed over lightly. According to Panfilo, all ten members of the brigata have
been onesti in their behavior, no matter «quantunque liete novelle e forse attrattive a
concupiscenzia dette ci sieno». They may have been eating, drinking, playing instruments, and
singing («cose tutte da incitare le deboli menti a cose meno oneste»), but «niuno atto, niuna parola,
niuna cosa né dalla vostra parte né dalla nostra ci ho conosciuta da biasimare» (Panfilo injects a
distinction based on gendered identity). How seriously should we take this declaration of
abstention from sexual interests during the brigata's two weeks in the country?63 Whether or not
some of the novellatori are to be perceived as actively involved in extra-conjugal sex while they
are away from their homes is not something that we can know, if there are a number of hints that
life in the country has offered time and place for at least a certain amount of dalliance.
Interestingly enough, Panfilo's remarks repeat, nearly word-for-word, the earlier highly similar
testimony of Dioneo. In order to convince the ladies of the brigata that they should obey his
request to tell racy stories, he offers the following appraisal of the moral conduct of the seven
women while they were seeking refuge from the plague:

[…] la nostra brigata, dal primo dì infino a questa ora stata onestissima, per cosa
che detta ci si sia non mi pare che in atto alcuno si sia maculata né si maculerà
con l'aiuto di Dio. Appresso, chi è colui che non conosca la vostra onestà? La
quale non che i ragionamenti sollazzevoli ma il terrore della morte non credo che
potesse smagare (VI.Conc.11-12).

These two combine to make a strong statement attesting to the virtue of the seven women of the
brigata. That it is offered both by Dioneo, that imp of the perverse, and by Panfilo, the other alpha
male of the group, makes it difficult to overlook or to deny. Nonetheless, and as we have seen,
Neifile is worried about the possibility that outsiders suspect the presence of certain sexual
liberties among the group. She voices her concern both in Day One («assai manifesta cosa è loro
essere d'alcune che qui ne sono innamorati, temo che infamia e riprensione, senza nostra colpa o di
loro, non ce ne segua se gli meniamo» – I.Conc.83) and in Day Two («Appresso, per ciò che noi
qui quatro dì dimorate saremo, se noi vogliam tor via che gente nuova non ci sopravenga, reputo
oportuno di mutarci di qui e andarne altrove» – II.Conc.7) that «per ciò che assai manifesta cosa è
loro essere d'alcune che qui ne sono innamorati, temo che infamia e riprensione, senza nostra colpa
o di loro, non ce ne segua se gli meniamo» (I.Intro.83). Filomena answers that concern (I.Intro.84)
and off they go.

What perhaps became clear in the Conclusione of the Tenth Day is that the former lovers
Fiammetta and Panfilo are at odds, with Fiammetta enraged at Panfilo and jealous of his new
"flame", Filomena. Let us now turn to the reasons he puts forward for giving over this vacation
from the cares of plague-bound Florence. Panfilo, as we understand from his gloss to his own first

34
tale, knows how to turn disaster into something less terrible than it is. If you pray to San
Ciappelletto, a false saint if ever there were one, your prayers will nonetheless be heard (I.1.90).
That is probably in accord with Christian doctrine, but seems difficult to accept at face value
because it is so unseemly. What is the situation among the brigata now? According to him,
«continua onestà, continua concordia, continua fraternal dimestichezza» (X.Conc.5). That sounds
delightful. Why leave such delights behind to go back into the stricken city? Here are some
reasons, according to Panfilo:

E per ciò, acciò che per troppa lunga consuetudine alcuna cosa che in fastidio si
convertisse nascer non ne potesse, e perché alcuno la nostra troppo lunga
dimoranza gavillar non potesse, e avendo ciascun di noi, la sua giornata, avuta la
sua parte dell'onore che in me ancora dimora, giudicherei, quando piacer fosse di
voi, che convenevole cosa fosse omai il tornarci là onde ci partimmo. Senza che,
se voi ben riguardate, la nostra brigata, già da più altre saputa da torno, per
maniera potrebbe multiplicare che ogni nostra consolazion ci torrebbe (X.Conc.6-
7).

Panfilo suggests that (1) if they extend their stay, engaging in another round of activities, they
might become bored with these; (2) were they to stay away longer, some others might misconstrue
the innocent time spent together in mixed company; (3) they've each had their day as king or
queen; (4) some others, hearing of their presence, might join them and ruin everything64. We are
not told who wants to stay, who is in favor of returning to the city, only that «I ragionamenti furon
molti tra le donne e tra' giovani» (X.Conc.8). We also probably wonder what Panfilo finds so
attractive about returning to the plague. Perhaps we remember that the proemio invited us to see
some similarities between lust and plague65. Are we invited to think such thoughts again?

Thus, Panfilo says, it seems to him the appropriate time to return to their city. However, he
continues, if the others want to stay, he has someone in mind who will wear the crown tomorrow.
Panfilo plays the role of just ruler well. Having loaded the dice in favor of the decision to return
home, he, as beneficent monarch, leaves the possibility for disagreement not only open but, if it
should fall out that the vote were to go against him, announces that he has already made the
necessary choice of the next ruler. On the other hand, it is clear that he is eager to leave this
pleasant rural setting to return to the city and that he has engaged skillfully to bring about that
result66. There is, apparently, a lengthy discussion among the brigata : «I ragionamenti furon molti
tra le donne e tra' giovani» (X.Conc.8). Eventually, they agree with Panfilo's recommendations: It
is indeed time to go home. Except for Panfilo, no one offers a reason for leaving. It is instructive to
study Panfilo's proposal both for what it says and for what it fails to say.

While the author's remarks about the plague in the opening pages of the book speak of the plague
as past, e.g., «nel pistelenzioso tempo della passata mortalità» (Proemio.14), «la dolorosa
ricordazione della pestifera mortalità trapassata» (I.Intro.2), «già erano gli anni della fruttifera
incarnazione […] al numero pervenuti di milletrecentoquarantotto» (I.Intro.8). The work is set,
then, in 1348. There is no further indication that establishes how much time has passed before the
brigata meets in S. Maria Novella one Tuesday morning (I.Intro. 49) and leaves the next day,
Wednesday, at dawn (I.Intro.89). We do not know when in 1348 the action transpires or whether it
occurs weeks, months, or even a year after the plague first strikes. We do know, however, from

35
various remarks made in the course of the two weeks, that the plague is still rampant. For instance,
we remember Lauretta's remark about Nonna de' Pulci, discussed above, in which she refers to the
plague, which took Nonna's life, as current («questa pistolenzia presente» -- VI.iii.8). More
recently, the members of the brigata, in the fields at dawn,

videro gli animali, sì come cavriuoli, cervi e altri, quasi sicuri da' cacciatori per la
soprastante pistolenzia, non altramenti aspettargli che se senza tema o dimestichi
fossero divenuti (IX.Intro.3).

If the plague is still operative (and thus paradoxically making life among the hunted more secure)
on Monday morning of the second week, have we any license to believe that the exiles believe that
it has subsided by Tuesday evening? We probably ought to remember more acutely that nothing
we have learned allows us to believe that the brigata returns to a Florence free of the plague. In the
words of Giorgio Barberi Squarotti: «Il ritorno a Firenze non risponde affatto alla fine della
pestilenza»67. Nonetheless, there is a lingering view, perhaps not among "professional" readers of
the Decameron, who of course know better, that when the exiles return to the city, the plague is
over. It is not. And the text makes that even more specifically evident in its final reference, issuing
from Panfilo in his peroration, calling for an immediate departure and referring, as we have seen,
to «questo pistolenzioso tempo» (X.Conc.3) as being very much present. Even on the very day
they are heading back into the city, according to Panfilo, the painful experiences from which they
fled are still present before the eyes of those who are there to see them. Two weeks ago, they leave
to escape the plague; they now go back into it. Why? Apparently because Panfilo wants to. And
why does he desire to leave?

It is Fiammetta who serves as stimulus to one possible understanding of Panfilo's special reason
for wanting to go home. After the usual free time before supper, and the usual supper, and the
usual singing, playing, and dancing, Panfilo the king turns to the last one of the brigata who has
yet to sing a song and instructs her to do so (X.Conc.9). Fiammetta's ballata (X.Conc.10-14)
begins as follows: «S'amor venisse senza gelosia, / io non so donna nata / lieta com'io sarei e qual
vuol sia»68. In her fourth stanza, she expresses her plight as follows: «Se io sentissi fede / nel mio
signor, quant'io sento valore, / gelosa non sarei: / ma tanto se ne vede, / pur che sia chi inviti
l'amadore, / ch'io gli ho tutti per rei» (italicized once again are words shared with the ninth chapter
of the Elegia)69. Her ballata concludes with a warning: «Per Dio, dunque, ciascuna / donna pregata
sia che non s'attenti / di farmi in ciò oltraggio; / ché, se ne fia nessuna / che con parole o cenni o
blandimenti / in questo in mio dannaggio / cerchi o procuri, s'io il risapraggio, / se io non sia
svisata, / piagner farolle amara tal follia»70.

Of what lover is this lady complaining? If one examines the ending of the Elegia di madonna
Fiammetta, written as either the author's most recent or second most recent opus (depending on the
dating of the Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine), one finds this lady lamenting her jealous state. All
the italicized words in the ballata, above, appear in the last section of the Elegia, in which the
Neapolitan Fiammetta gives vent to her jealous displeasure with her fickle lover, a man who
happens to be named Panfilo, a Florentine. It is no surprise to find that Boccaccio still had the
Elegia much on his mind as he was writing the Decameron. I would like to argue that it presents us
the crucial details that we need to know in order to understand what is transpiring in the
Decameron's final scene: Fiammetta is having another jealous fit. In the Elegia her explosion of

36
anger is caused by her lover Panfilo, who has spent nearly the entire work (he leaves his beloved to
return to his dying father in II.14) "offstage", betraying her with other women71. Much of the
subject and tone of Fiammetta's ballata is shared with the envoy of the "author" of the Elegia, not
Giovanni Boccaccio, but «la nobile donna madonna Fiammetta» in this first post-classical fiction
written in a woman's voice. Has all this sounded familiar to readers of the Decameron? For some
reason, it has not. And yet here are the two main characters of the Elegia resuming their
conspicuously self-centered behaviors, as Fiammetta's song probably should have reminded us72.
Panfilo wants to leave the locus amoenus to go back to the still plague-besieged city for two
reasons: to be with Filomena and to be without Fiammetta. Victoria Kirkham poses a pertinent
question: «How can fickle, self-serving Panfilo, partner to adultery in Elegia di madonna
Fiammetta, qualify for a comeback in the Decameron as a figure who always speaks with the voice
of reason?73» Perhaps Panfilo only appears to be governed by reason, while, as in the Elegia, he
hides behind the sign of reason in order the better to promote his libidinal desires.

The Introduzione of the Prima Giornata tells us that Filomena crowned Pampinea, the newly and
unanimously elected queen, with a crown of leaves she had plucked and formed from a nearby
laurel. This crown, we immediately learn, «fu poi mentre durò la lor compagnia manifesto segno a
ciascuno altro della real signoria e maggioranza» (I.Intro.97). Given the setting, a surrounding
world beset by plague, that laurel crown is surely meant to remind the reader of triumph over
death. The early sense of optimism among the members of the brigata (excepting perhaps
Filostrato) lasts for perhaps the first half of the work, and then gradually begins to fade, as a sense
of reality, of impending return to the world of mortality, which can never be wholly overcome in
this world, overmasters the members of the brigata and the reader. The abandoned laurel is not
referred to at the end of the work, but that does not prevent our awareness of its abandonment
when the group disintegrates and returns to inhabit the world of the dead and dying.
A few years ago, trying to formulate a general view of this richly enigmatic collection of tales and
of their frame, I gave the following trial explanation of Boccaccio's purpose in the Decameron.
The book, I suggested, was exploring
humankind's inability to be governed by, or to govern itself in accord with,
traditional morality or to find a harmonious way of living within nature; yet the
work does envision a human capacity to develop an aesthetic expression which is
fully capable of examining [our] corrupt and unameliorable being74.
Close consideration of some of the less conspicuous details of the work may have advanced the
cause of such a view. This examination of details more usually disregarded surely seems to
undermine any eupeptic reading of the work. Indeed, some (few) of us read the ending as
representing exactly the dissolution of human bonds and the return of loneliness (none of the
novellatori is apparently returning to a family group, as the opening laments of Pampinea
[I.Intro.59 & 69] and Elissa [I.Intro.77] should perhaps have made clear). Nonetheless, these
enthusiastic encomia of triumphant humanity at the conclusion of the Decameron will undoubtedly
continue to make themselves heard from the already advancing columns of centennial celebrants,
no matter how this text itself resists such optimistic postulations of the generosity of the human
spirit that it, as later would Voltaire's Candide, set out to destroy.

37
 Appendix I: heroes and butts in the Decameron

heroes or protagonists butts or villains

DAY ONE
7) Filostrato Bergamino Cane della Scala
4) Dioneo monk, girl abbot
1) Panfilo --- Cepparello

9) Elissa donna di Guascogna King of Cyprus

6) Emilia wealthy Florentine Inquisitor
5) Fiammetta Marchesana King of France
3) Filomena Saladin, Melchisedich ---
8) Lauretta Guglielmo Borsiere Ermino de' Grimaldi
2) Neifile Abraam, Giannotto Roman curia
10) Pampinea Alberto da Bologna Malgherida de' Ghisolieri

DAY TWO
2) Filostrato Rinaldo Asti, widow ---
10) Dioneo Bartolomea, Paganino Ricciardo di Chinzica
7) Panfilo Alatiel ---

8) Elissa Gualtieri wife of dauphin

6) Emilia Beritola, Currado ---
5) Fiammetta Andreuccio "Madonna Fiordaliso"
9) Filomena Zinevra, Bernabò Ambrogiuolo
4) Lauretta Landolfo Rufolo ---
1) Neifile Martellino ---
3) Pampinea Alessandro, d. of King of England ---

DAY THREE
1) Filostrato Masetto da Lamporecchio ---
10) Dioneo Rustico, Alibech ---
4) Panfilo Don Felice Puccio di Rinieri

5) Elissa Zima, Vergellesi's wife Vergellesi

7) Emilia Tedaldo, Ermellina Aldobrandino Pallermini
6) Fiammetta Ricciardo Minutolo Catella & Filippo Sighinulfi
3) Filomena merchant's wife, gentleman friar
8) Lauretta Ferondo's wife, an abbot Ferondo
9) Neifile Giletta di Narbona, Beltramo ---
2) Pampinea Teodolinda King Agilulf

39
 DAY FOUR
9) Filostrato G. Guardastagno, wife of G.R. Guiglielmo Rossiglione
10) Dioneo Ruggieri d'Aieroli, wife of Mazzeo Mazzeo della Montagna
6) Panfilo Andreuola, Gabriotto magistrate

4) Elissa --- Gerbino, d. of King of Tunis

7) Emilia Simona, Pasquino a toad
1) Fiammetta Ghismonda, Guiscardo Tancredi
5) Filomena Isabetta, Lorenzo three brothers
3) Lauretta --- Ninetta, Magdalena, Bertella
8) Neifile Girolamo Sighieri, Salvestra Girolamo's mother
2) Pampinea --- Frate Alberto, Lisetta

DAY FIVE
4) FilostratoRicciardo, Caterina ---
10) Dioneo Pietro di Vinciolo, wife, boy ---
1) Panfilo Cimone & Efigenia; Lisimaco ---
& Cassandrea
3) Elissa Pietro Boccamazza & Agnolella ---
2) Emilia Gostanza & Martuccio Gomito ---
9) Fiammetta Federigo & Giovanna ---
8) Filomena Nastagio degli Onesti & d. of Paolo ---
7) Lauretta Teodoro & Violante ---
5) Neifile Minghino di Mingale & Agnesa ---
6) Pampinea Gianni di Procida & Restituta ---

DAY SIX
7) Filostrato Madonna Filippa Rinaldo de' Pugliesi
10) Dioneo Fra Cipolla his two "friends"
5) Panfilo Giotto Forese da Rabatta

9) Elissa Guido Cavalcanti Betto Brunelleschi

8) Emilia Fresco da Celatico his niece Cesca
6) Fiammetta Michele Scalza Neri Vannini
1) Filomena Madonna Oretta knight
3) Lauretta Nonna de' Pulci Bishop of Fir. & Dego della Ratta
4) Neifile Chichibio Currado Gianfigliazzi
2) Pampinea Cisti fornaio Geri Spina

DAY SEVEN
2) Filostrato Peronella & Gianello her husband
10) Dioneo monna Mita, Tingoccio, Minuccio ---
9) Panfilo Pirro & Lidia her husband Nicostrato

3) Elissa Agnesa & Fra Rinaldo her husband

1) Emilia Monna Tessa & Federigo Gianni Lotteringhi

40
5) Fiammetta wife & Filippo husband
7) Filomena Beatrice & Lodovico husband: Egano de' Galluzzi
4) Lauretta Ghita & her lover Tofano
8) Neifile Monna Sismonda & Ruberto Arriguccio Berlinghieri
6) Pampinea wife & Leonetto husband: Messer Lambertuccio

DAY EIGHT
5) Filostrato Maso del Saggio, Ribi, Matteuzzo Judge Niccola da San Lepidio
10) Dioneo Salabaetto Iancofiore
2) Panfilo prete di Varlungo & Belcolore Bentivegna del Mazzo (husband)

3) Elissa Bruno, Buffalmaco Calandrino

4) Emilia monna Piccarda proposto di Fiesole & Ciutazza
8) Fiammetta Zeppa & Spinelloccio's wife Spinelloccio & Zeppa's wife
6) Filomena Bruno, Buffalmaco Calandrino
9) Lauretta Bruno, Buffalmaco Simone da Villa
1) Neifile Gulfardo & Ambruogia Guasparruolo Cagastruccio
7) Pampinea Rinieri Elena

DAY NINE
3) Filostrato Simone, Bruno, Buffalmaco, Nello Calandrino
10) Dioneo donno Gianni compar Pietro, Gemmata
6) Panfilo Adriano, Pinuccio innkeeper

2) Elissa nun (Isabella) abbess (Usimbalda)

9) Emilia Melisso, Giosefo Giosefo's wife
5) Fiammetta Bruno, Buffalmaco, Nello, Tessa Calandrino
1) Filomena Francesca da' Lazzari Rinuccio & Alessandro
8) Lauretta Ciacco Biondello
4) Neifile Cecco di Fortarrigo Cecco di Angiulieri
7) Pampinea Talano d'Imolese wife Margarita

DAY TEN
3) Filostrato Natan ---
10) Dioneo Griselda Gualtieri
9) Panfilo Saladino ---

2) Elissa Abbate di Clignì ---

5) Emilia Andsaldo Gradense ---
6) Fiammetta King Carlo ---
8) Filomena Tito ---
4) Lauretta Gentil de' Carisendi ---
1) Neifile King of Spain ---
7) Pampinea Pietro di Raona ---

41
 Appendix II: The "Seating Plan" for Each Day of the Decameron:

DAY ONE Elissa Neifile

Panfilo Filomena Panfilo
Neifile Panfilo Dioneo
Filomena Emilia
Dioneo Neifile DAY EIGHT
Fiammetta Filostrato Neifile
Emilia Dioneo Panfilo
Filostrato Elissa
Lauretta DAY FIVE Emilia
Elissa Panfilo Filostrato
Pampinea Emilia Filomena
Elissa Pampinea
DAY TWO Filostrato Fiammetta
Neifile Neifile Lauretta
Filostrato Pampinea Dioneo
Pampinea Lauretta
Lauretta Filomena DAY NINE
Fiammetta Fiammetta Filomena
Emilia Dioneo Elissa
Panfilo Filostrato
Elissa DAY SIX Neifile
Filomena Filomena Fiammetta
Dioneo Pampinea Panfilo
Lauretta Pampinea
DAY THREE Neifile Lauretta
Filostrato Panfilo Emilia
Pampinea Fiammetta Dioneo
Filomena Filostrato
Panfilo Emilia DAY TEN
Elissa Elissa Neifile
Fiammetta Dioneo Elissa
Emilia Filostrato
Lauretta DAY SEVEN Lauretta
Neifile Emilia Emilia
Dioneo Filostrato Fiammetta
Elissa Pampinea
DAY FOUR Lauretta Filomena
Fiammetta Fiammetta Panfilo
Pampinea Pampinea Dioneo
Lauretta Filomena

42
43
1
R. HOLLANDER, Boccaccio's Two Venuses, New York, Columbia University Press, 1977, p. 6.
2

R. HOLLANDER, The Proem of the "Decameron", in Boccaccio's Dante and the Shaping Force of
Satire, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1997 [1993], pp. 89-107: 90.}
3

G. MAZZOTTA, in The World at Play in Boccaccio's "Decameron", Princeton, Princeton University Press,
1986, while calling for a renewal in studies of the Decemeron, which he characterizes as being
predominantly uninspired («the bulk of the scholarship consists in partial, isolated accounts of sundry
thematic motifs or clusters of tales or in perspectives which rarely move beyond the overt, surface
significations of the text» [p. xv]), does not attempt to deal centrally with the framing elements. In fairness,
one must admit that he is hardly alone. This is not to tax my colleague from Yale except for being in the
company of most boccaccisti, by whom neither the motives nor the amorous relations of the narrators of the
tales are more than rarely and spasmodically considered. Those who are aware both of the importance and
the difficult nature of the framing elements include A.S. BERNARDO, The Plague as Key to Meaning in
Boccaccio's "Decameron", in The Black Death: The Impact of the Fourteenth-Century Plague, ed. D.
Williman, Binghamton, MRTS, 1982, pp. 39-64: 39, who states the problem as follows: «[F]ew critics have
done more than consider the [frame stories] embarrassing but necessary intrusions that constitute one of the
work's imperfections. The stories, for such critics, are all that really matter». In a similar vein, see D.S.
CERVIGNI, From Divine to Human: Dante's Circle vs. Boccaccio's Parodic Centers, Binghamton, NY,
CEMERS, 2009, n. 26: «Another element in the text that has confounded the critics, who by and large have
given it only scant attention, is the series of the ten canzoni, each sung at the end of each day, almost as a
secular and profane compline, the last canonical hour, recited by ten irreverent young people. Suffice it to
point out that the last canzone, which follows the ten tales of generosity, liberality and patience of Day Ten,
proclaims the burning jealousy of Fiammetta […]». It was perhaps A. DURANTI, Le novelle di Dioneo, in
Studi di filologia e critica offerti dagli allievi a Lanfranco Caretti, Roma, Salerno, 1985, p. 1, who best
expressed a desire to coordinate more of the details of the work than we have been able to isolate and then
relate: «Nella critica decameroniana è spesso affiorata una tentazione quasi sempre frustrata e delusa, ma non
per questo messa da parte una volta per tutte: individuare la chiave che permette di penetrare nel sistema dei
novellatori, ovvero scoprire il segreto -- strutturale, psicologico, ideologico, narratologico che sia -- che lega
ciascun componente la brigata alle sue dieci invenzioni […]». While so bold a hope probably will never be
fulfilled, it surely indicates a concern lacking in most studies of the work.
4

See the similar concerns, if they are limited to a single occurrence, of P. GROSSI, Per una rivalutazione dei
narratori del "Decameron": Filomena e la novella di Lisabetta (IV, 5), in «Critica letteraria», XIX, 1991, pp.
145-157.
5
For a different view of this relationship, see M. MIGIEL, Fiammetta v. Dioneo, in A Rhetoric of the
"Decameron", Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2003 [1999], pp. 29-63.
6
For a more limited effort to make sense of these interrelations among tellers and tales, see H.C. COLE,
Dramatic Interplay in the "Decameron": Boccaccio, Neifile, and Giletta di Nerbona, «MLN», XC, 1975.
Still another approach has been to "allegorize" the ten members of the brigata. Two such efforts are those of
J.M. FERRANTE, The Frame Characters of the "Decameron": A Progression of Virtues, in «Romance
Philology», XIX, 1965, pp. 212-226 (acknowledging a precursor in A. LIPARI, The Structure and Real
Significance of the "Decameron" in Essays in Honor of Albert Feuillerat, ed. H.M. Peyre, New Haven, Yale
University Press, 1943, pp. 72-82) and S. GALLETTI, Patologia al "Decameron", Palermo, Flaccovio, 1969.
Their findings may be represented, in tabular form, as follows:

Ferrante, p. 214: Galletti, pp. 218-9:

 Pampinea = Faith intelletto
Fiammetta = Love temperanza
Filomena = Hope speranza
Emilia = Prudence or Wisdom giustizia
Lauretta = Temperance povertà
Neifile = Perseverance or Fortitude fede
Elissa = Justice umiltà
Filostrato = Despair or Dread fortezza
Dioneo = Sensuality timor di Dio
Panfilo = all virtues carità

While such schemes have a certain interest, few of Boccaccio's readers have found them convincing, since they
do not seem to be consistently relatable to what the narrators say or do.
7
Dioneo is the first to commence narrating without specific permission, but Filostrato (I.vii), Lauretta (I.viii),
and Elissa (I.ix) all do likewise (as does Pampinea -- however, since she is queen, we do not expect her to call
on herself to speak); the Seconda Giornata has a similar pattern: Dioneo is preceded by Lauretta (II.iv) and
Fiammetta (II.v) who, like him, do not await their queen's command. However, during the next eight Days
Dioneo alone will speak unprompted except on Day IV, when Filostrato commands him to speak.
8
Dioneo's tale, however, is in fact associated with this theme, since its turning point is the monk's ready
response to the abbot (his behavior is described as follows: «prontissamamente rispose» [I.iv.21]).
9
See M. MIGIEL, A Rhetoric …, cit., p. 82, on «the centrality of sexual difference […] emphasized through
the gendering of the narrators in Boccaccio's masterpiece, which depicts how social and discursive power is
divided between sexes. The fictional storytellers of the Decameron are marked by their gender and by their
express views on sexuality and sexual difference». Pampinea's attack on Malgherida, on the other hand,
serves to loosen the gendered categorization of the aggressors in the ongoing debate. In fact, a survey of the
number of women who tell tales that castigate women (and praise men) and of men who tell tales that
castigate men (and praise women) shows interesting results, revealing that the representatives of both sexes
are remarkably free from a gender-based form of prejudice. See Appendix I, Heroes and Butts in the
"Decameron". It reveals that there are roughly 228 major characters in the 100 novelle; the three male
narrators treat some 65 of these, while the seven females treat some 163. If we categorize broadly, putting all
these characters into one of two categories, either "heroes" or "butts", that is, either as enjoying success or
being looked on favorably by the narrator or as failing or being looked at negatively by the narrator, we get
the following totals: male narrators, for their male characters as distinguished from their female characters,
show a positive ratio of 31:13, while female narrators show a positive ratio of 69:33 in favor of the male
characters in their tales. If we consider "negative characters" in the same way, male narrators vs. female, we
get the following figures: male narrators show a negative ratio for males of 19:2, while female narrators
show a negative ratio for males of 43:18. While the first pairings ("positive" ratios for males) might show
something like a narrow gender-based bias (48% to 42%), the second ones ("negative" ratings for females)
reveal a surprising reversal of our expectation: Of the negative characters referred to by male narrators, more
than 90% of them are male (19 to 2), while females narrators are surprisingly less (43 to 18) negative about
them than we might expect.

For the most recent example, Elissa's identity as a second Dido in her own narratives, see C.
10

LIVANOS, Elissa as a New Dido: Greece, the East, and the Westward Movement of Culture in the
"Decameron", in «Heliotropia», VII.1-2, 2010, pp. 133-144. However, there is a history of
investigations into the roles and motives of the various narrators; one must add that there is nothing like
an emerging consensus from these studies, which probably should be seen as beginning roughly with
the twentieth century: E. ROSSI, Dalla mente e dal cuore di Giovanni Boccaccio (per la storia del
"Decameron"), Bologna, Zanichelli, 1900, sp. 179-86 (on the brigata); L. MANICARDI and A.F.
MASSÈRA, Le dieci ballate del "Decamerone", in «Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa», IX, 1901, pp.
102-114; H. HAUVETTE, Les ballades du "Décameron", in «Journal des Savants», III (n.s.), 1905, pp.
489-500; G. GETTO, La cornice e le componenti espressive del "Decameron", in Vita di forme e forme
di vita nel "Decameron", Torino, Petrini, 1958, pp. 1-33; P.L. CERISOLA, La questione della cornice del
"Decameron", in Aevum 49, 1975, pp. 137-156; M. JANSSENS, The Internal Reception of the Stories
within the "Decameron", in Boccaccio in Europe: Proceedings of the Boccaccio Conference, Louvain,
December 1975, ed. G. Tournoy et al., Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1977, pp. 135-148; L.
MARINO, The "Decameron" Cornice: Allusion, Allegory, and Iconology, Ravenna, Longo, 1979; J.H.
POTTER, Five Frames for the "Decameron": Communication and Social Systems in the "Cornice",
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1982; R. RUSSELL, Schemi di vita e vita di schemi nelle ballate
del "Decameron", in Generi poetici medievali: Modelli e funzioni letterarie, Napoli, Società editrice
napoletana, 1982, pp. 85-103; J. MARKULIN, Emilia and the Case for Openness in the "Decameron", in
«Stanford Italian Review», III, 1983, pp. 183-199; M. SHERBERG, The Patriarch's Pleasure and the
Frametale Crisis: "Decameron" IV-V, in «Romance Quarterly», XXXVIII, 1991, pp. 227-238.

See, for this chart, J.L. SMARR, Symmetry and Balance in the "Decameron", in «Mediaevalia», II,
11

1976, pp. 159-187: 176.

12
For a similar reading of this tale, see M.-M. DECOSTE, Filomena, Dioneo, and an Ass, in
«Heliotropia», II.1, 2004, no pagination, which links Dioneo's response to it in his tale, which
immediately follows (II.x), but also in his narrative of the Apuleian excesses of V.x. My remarks do
not depend on those of Prof. DeCoste, but welcome them.
13
See discussion at n. 40.
14
For the view that it is unproductive to treat the Decameron as an anthology of individual tales rather
than as a complex unit, see P.M. FORNI, Forme complesse nel "Decameron", Firenze, Olschki, 1992,
pp. 17-18.

See the discussion of the importance of industria as prominently featured in the Introduzione to the
15

Terza Giornata in R. MOROSINI, "Utilitas", "Civanza", and "Recreantise" in Boccaccio's Allegory of

Good and Bad Government: "Decameron" III, 4, in Lectura Boccacci Day III, ed. F. Ciabattoni and P.
M. Forni, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, in process.

That there are nine ladies in these two narratives may remind us of Boccaccio's close attention to
16

Dante, in whose Vita nuova Beatrice is a nine.

17
On the importance of gardens to Boccaccio's larger plan, see also at least the discussions found in E. KERN,
The Gardens in the "Decameron" Cornice, in «PMLA», LVI, 1951, pp. 505-523; M. BEVILACQUA, Il
"giardino" come struttura ideologico-formale nel "Decameron", in «La Rassegna», LXXX, 1976, pp. 70-79;
L. BATTAGLIA RICCI, Nel giardino di Boccaccio: tradizione e innovazione, in Giardini celesti, giardini
terrestri. Atti del Convegno Certaldo Alto, ed. P. Santagati, Firenze, Nuova Grafica Fiorentina, 2006, pp. 15-
22; S. MARCHESI, Intertextuality and Interdiscoursivity in the "Decameron", in «Heliotropia», VII.1-2, 2010,
pp. 31-50; and C. CAZALÉ BÉRARD, Il giardino di Fiammetta. Una "quête" amorosa sulle sponde del
Mediterraneo, in Boccaccio geografo, ed. R. Morosini, Firenze, Mauro Pagliai, 2010, pp. 53-65.
18
For a different view of the reasons behind this volte-face, see D. DELLA TERZA, The Tale of the
Marchioness of Monferrato, in The "Decameron" First Day in Perspective, ed. E.B. Weaver, Toronto,
University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp. 135-147: 143.
19
Worth considering in this connection is the remark of Lina Insana: «The ties that bind their stories are
usually much stronger than those that bind the characters themselves. As such, the author never explicitly
reveals the specific nature of the relationships that he alludes to in the Introduction to the First Day; rather, the
reader is left to extrapolate this information from the stories and songs that the brigata narrate and sing and
from the themes that they propose during their reigns as king or queen» (L. INSANA, Redefining "Dulce et
utile": Boccaccio's Organization of Literature on Economic Terms, in «Heliotropia», II, 1, 2004, pp. 1-19: 11).
20
For Boccaccio's actual terminology, see E.M. BECK, Mirrors and Music in the "Decameron", in
«Heliotropia», VII.1-2, 2010, pp. 81-98: 93: «While Boccaccio scholars routinely describe the Decameron
poems as "ballatas", Boccaccio described the poems more amorphously: the song in Day 1 is called a
"canzone" [I.Conc.17] and later a "ballatetta" [I.Conc.22]; Day 2 is a "canzone" [II.Conc.11]; Day 3 is a
"canzone" [III.Conc.18]; Day 4 another "canzone" [IV.Conc.18], the longest song thus far and within its own
stanzas Boccaccio [i.e., Filostrato] calls it a "ballata" [IV.Conc.17]» (the newly crowned queen, Fiammetta,
also twice refers to it as a "canzone" [IV.Conc.9]). «Dioneo sings a "canzone" at the end of Day 5 [V.Conc.7 &
20]; Elissa performs another "canzone" at the conclusion of Day 6 [VI.Conc.40 & 47]; Filomena sings a
"canzone" in the conclusion of Day 7 [VII.Conc.9 & 15]; there is a "canzone" for Panfilo at the end of Day 8
[VIII.Conc.13]; Day 9 ends with Neifile's "canzonetta" [IX.Conc.6 & 13]; and Fiammetta concludes with a
"canzone" in Day 10» [X.Conc.9 & 15]. And see P.G. BELTRAMI, La metrica italiana, Bologna, il Mulino,
1991, p. 337, for the equivalence of the terms "ballata" and "canzone a ballo".
21
For the "Florentinity" of the tales of Day Three, see R. MOROSINI, "Utilitas", "Civanza" …, cit. And see G.
PADOAN, Sulla genesi e la pubblicazione del "Decameron", in Il Boccaccio, le muse il Parnaso e l’Arno,
Firenze, Olschki, 1978, pp. 93-121, a pp. 99-102.
22
See V. BRANCA, ed., Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio: Il "Decameron", vol. IV, Milano, Mondadori,
1976, pp. 1322-23, 538, n. 2. I have used this text of the Decameron for the following reasons: It contains my
marginal annotations, gathered over some thirty years; all occurrences of hapax legomenon are marked in it by
yellow highlighting; key information from other sources is copied into the text itself; from what I have
observed, the texts of the passages I cite are identical (or nearly so) with those found in later editions; further,
the flyleaf bears the autograph of the editor, signed on October 23, 1983, during one of his visits to Princeton.
It should also be said that my labor on this project was substantially assisted by all those colleagues who have
worked to make available the Decameron Web, the site located at Brown University, principally Professors
Massimo Riva and Michael Papio.
23
Days III and VIII are the closest competitors, each presenting five tales that take place entirely or in part in
the city. Day Ten, announced as being devoted to liberalità or magnanimità (IX.Conc.4), is the only Day to
contain no single tale set in Firenze. Given the subject, magnanimity, this may be a significant absence.

For a convincing presentation of this understanding, see P. STEWART, La novella di madonna Oretta e le due
24

parti del "Decameron", in Retorica e mimica …, cit., pp. 19-38.

The words liberale, liberalità, liberalissimo, liberalmente, are used 41 times in all within the work, and only
25

14 of these occur in the first nine Days, with most or all of the rest probably reflecting the subject of Day Ten,
magnanimità. One of these earlier appearances is in the brigata's response to Cisti's munificence (VI.iii.2).
26
For previous discussion, with some bibliography on the fairly rare earlier discussions of Boccaccio as
satirist (and of the generic location of the Decameron in satire), see R. HOLLANDER and C. CAHILL,
Day Ten of the "Decameron": The Myth of Order, in Boccaccio's Dante …, cit., pp. 159-163, and R.
HOLLANDER, Boccaccio, Ovid's "Ibis", and the Satirical Tradition, in Atti del Seminario internazionale
(Firenze-Certaldo 26-28 aprile 1996): Gli Zibaldoni di Boccaccio: Memoria, scrittura, riscrittura, ed.
M. Picone and C. Cazalé Bérard, Firenze, Cesati, 1998, pp. 385-99; see also S. MARCHESI, Satira e
commedia nell'"Introduzione alla quarta giornata", in Stratigrafie decameroniane, Firenze, Olschki,
2004, pp. 31-66.
27
For the view that Lauretta «anticipates [Dioneo's] reference to the plague in the Conclusione of Day
VI by being the first to mention it, in VI.3», see T. BAROLINI, The Wheel of the "Decameron", in
«Romance Phililogy», XXXVI, 1983, pp. 521-539: 536. (Her observation neglects notice of Dioneo's
first remark about not referring to the plague in the Introduzione [I.Intro.93].) However, there is indeed
a sense of circularity suggested by the parallels to Day One in Day Six. Not only does the brigata
return to the de facto subject of the Prima Giornata, motti, but to Florence, most present in their minds
at three points, the departure from the city prior to Day One, in the settings of seven of the ten novelle
of Day Six, and immediately after the conclusion of the tale-telling in Day Ten. The "wheel" of the
Decameron, in this accountancy, is better described as two "wheels", the first formed by Giornate I-V,
the second by VI-X, each one running an identical week: Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday. See discussion in R. HOLLANDER, Imitative Distance, ("Decameron" I.i and VI.x), in
Boccaccio's Dante …, cit., pp. 21-52: 39-41.
28
At least once in every Day a teller adverts to a previous tale in formulating his or her own (some forty
times in all, with three-quarters of these referring to the tale immediately preceding). Far rarer are the
admissions that a teller has decided to cancel a chosen novella because another narrator has already told
it. Twice Dioneo tells us this: in II.x.3 he changes his tale because he wants to respond to Filomena's
presentation of Bernabo's bestialità for believing his wife chaste (II.ix -- a view, as we have seen, that
severely distorts the details of that tale); then, in VII.x.5, he tells the group not only that the tale he had
selected (in a rare acceptance of the Day's rubric) has already been told, but that the others were so
good that he has had to return to taking advantage of his privilege. Emilia remarks that she would have
contributed a much longer tale except for the fact that «un lungo pensiero molto di qui m'ha tenuta gran
pezza lontana» (VI.viii.4). What is the reader to make of this admission? Branca's note to the passage
(V. BRANCA, Decameron, 1976, cit., p. 1339, 560, n. 5) cites Momigliano: «Particolare insolito: Emilia
è assorta in un pensiero lontano e, la novella settima ce lo dice, ardente». Nonetheless, the context of
Emilia's remark seems located in her own previous thoughts rather than in Filostrato's tale. And then,
immediately after (VI.ix.3), Elissa explains that two of the ladies have told tales she considered telling
herself, but that she fortunately has in mind a third – a detail the point of which remains mysterious.
29
For some of this novella's Dantean connections, see J. USHER, Pieces of Dante among Cipolla's
Relics, in «Lectura Dantis [virginiana]», XIII, fall 1993, pp. 22-31: 24, who mentions, among other
details, Guccio's foul-looking doublet, described as follows: «con più macchie e di più colori che mai
drappi fossero tartereschi o indiani» (VI.x.23). Can this fail to bring to mind the appearance of Geryon
as described in Inferno XVII.16-17: «Con più color, sommesse e sovraposte / non fer mai drappi
Tartari né Turchi»? Awareness of this playful reference is at least as old, as Usher notes, as Branca's
reference to this passage in the Mondadori edition (Decameron, 1976, cit., p. 1349, 569, n. 4). And see
R. HOLLANDER, Imitative Distance …, cit., p. 45.
30
For penna and carbone as Dantean words connoting artistic success or failure, see R. HOLLANDER,
Imitative Distance … , cit., pp. 45-52. In Inferno XX.102, the protagonist consents to the implausible
rifacimento of his own Aeneid proposed by his guide; he agrees to consider any other version of the
text (including Virgil's own, we are forced to conclude) as carboni spenti, a phrase that Boccaccio may
well have had particularly in mind.
31
In fact, before she suddenly becomes a more individuated character at this juncture (sixteen of the
fifty-five specific references to her in the text occur in the Conclusione of the Quinta Giornata and the
Introduzione of the next Day), the only detail we learn about her occurred in the first two appearences
of her name in the text [I.Intro.76-77], in the second of which it is she who insists on the Pauline [and
in this context mysoginist?] dictum that man is a woman's head, thus seconding Filomena's notion
[I.Intro.74-75] that, in order to proceed on the "pilgrimage" that Pampinea has just suggested, the seven
women really must have male guidance to oversee their situation.
32
E. KERN, The Gardens … , cit., p. 522.
33
See V. KIRKHAM, An Allegorically Tempered "Decameron", in The Sign of Reason in Boccaccio's Fiction,
Firenze, Olschki, 1993 [1985], pp. 131-71: 140: «It is appropriate that only Dioneo's Day evokes the
bagpipe». Clearly, Dioneo's summons to Tindaro is a part of his masculine mystique. On the other hand, one
probably should also note that Tindaro's bagpipe is again sounded under the newly coronated Lauretta
(VII.Conc.8).

For a recent study of the "Calandrino group", see S. MARCHESI, Stratigrafie decameroniane … , cit.,
34

pp. 105-136.

For a review of past work and meditations about Boccaccio's heliotrope, see R.L. MARTINEZ,
35

Calandrino and the Powers of the Stone: Rhetoric, Belief, and the Progress of "Ingegno" in
"Decameron" VIII.3, in «Heliotropia», I, 2003, pp. 1-24. Martinez links the scene of the stoning of
Calandrino to the lapidation of St. Stephen in Acta 7.58.
36
See R. HOLLANDER and C. CAHILL, Day Ten … , cit.
37
For related observations, see P.M. FORNI, Appunti sull'intrattenimento decameroniano, in Passare il
tempo. La letteratura del gioco e dell'intrattenimento dal XI al XVI secolo. Atti del Convegno di
Pienza, 10-14 settembre 1991, Roma, Salerno, 1993, pp. 529-540: 529-533.

See J.L. SMARR, Boccaccio and Fiammetta: The Narrator as Lover, Urbana, University of Illinois
38

Press, 1986, pp. 231-233, nn. 5-6, for a convincing dismissal of the many arguments of those who read
Boccaccio's early fictions as autobiographical (and thus Fiammetta as a "real person").
39
The Elegia presents the only case of a pair (Fiammetta and Panfilo) of major characters in an earlier
fiction that figure -- at least nominally -- in the Decameron. Among the five others who also appear in
an earlier fiction (Filomena, Emilia, Pampinea, Dioneo, and Filostrato), each has at least a nominal
presence (but not necessarily as representative of the character whom we meet in the frame of the cento
novelle) in one of the eight opere minori, fictions that Boccaccio composed between ca. 1334 and ca.
1346 in Naples and then Florence. Fiammetta's name occurs as dedicatee in three of them and as
character in two of these and at least two others. See discussion in R. HOLLANDER, Boccaccio's Two
Venuses … , cit., pp. 94-96. For a considerably different approach to this question, see T.C.
STILLINGER, The Place of the Title ("Decameron", Day One, Introduction), in The "Decameron" First
Day in Perspective, ed. E.B. Weaver, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp. 28-56. With
related concerns, LIVANOS, p. 136, had cited BRANCA (1976, p. 1226, 386, n. 4): "La fanciulla del
nome della regina cartaginese narra l'unica novella nordafricana" of the Decameron.
40
See G. MAZZACURATI, La regina e il buffone: "ordo" e "varietas" nella costruzione del
"Decameron", in All'ombra di Dioneo: tipologie e percorsi della novella da Boccaccio a Bandello,
Scandicci, La Nuova Italia, 1996 [1984], pp. 37-43: 39, and A. DURANTI, Le novelle … , cit., p. 3. For
the most recent discussion, see A. ITO, Perché si vestì come Venere? Adiona nella "Comedia delle
ninfe fiorentine", in «Studi sul Boccccio», XXXIII, 2005, pp. 117-126: 123-125.

See R. HOLLANDER, The Proem, in Boccaccio's Dante ... , cit., and J. LEVENSTEIN, Out of Bounds:
41

Passion and the Plague in Boccaccio's "Decameron", in «Italica», LXXIII, 1996, pp. 313-335.

See R. HOLLANDER, The Proem, in Boccaccio's Dante … , cit., pp. 98-100, and J.L. SMARR,
42

Symmetry and Balance … , cit., pp. 176-177; ID., Boccaccio and Fiammetta, … , cit., p. 166; and ID.,
Ovid and Boccaccio: A Note on Self-Defense, in «Medievalia», XIII, 1987, pp. 247-255: 252.

If the reader finds that message puzzling, Boccaccio records exactly such a reaction from some
43

among the brigata (I.Conc.22): «ancor che alcuni molto alle parole di quella pensar facesse».
44
POTTER, p. 33, is one of the very few to offer a list of the lovers (in the order of their songs) among the
brigata, if one might disagree with some of its particulars:

I. Emilia: is self-sufficient
II. Pampinea: her love is joyous and reciprocated
III. Lauretta: love returned, but jealousy makes relations problematic
IV. Filostrato: his beloved has abandoned him for another
V. Dioneo: loves without knowing if he is loved in return
VI. Elissa: her love is not returned
VII. Filomena: her beloved is absent on a journey
VIII. Panfilo: his secret love is secretly returned
IX. Neifile: her love is a happy one and is reciprocated
X. Fiammetta: loves and is loved, but is tormented by jealousy.

M. MARAFIOTI, Boccaccio's Lauretta: The Brigata's Bearer of Bad News, in «Italian Culture», XIX,
45

2001, pp. 7-18.

46
For this view, see, for example, A. STÄUBLE, La brigata del "Decameron" come pubblico teatrale, in
«Studi sul Boccaccio», IX, 1975-76, pp. 103-117: 106: «La brigata è quindi presa nel suo insieme,
come "pubblico", o, se vogliamo, come "coro"», with neither the identity nor the behavior of its
individual members a topic of interest.
47
A. ALBERTAZZI, I novellatori e le novellatrici del "Decamerone", in Parvenze e sembianze, Bologna,
Zanichelli, 1892, pp. 163-199: 167. Albertazzi is correct: Dioneo does sit next to Fiammetta, indeed he
does so three times, while Panfilo does so only once; and Panfilo does sit next to Neifile four times – as
do also Dioneo and Filostrato. Filostrato, we are told, is no longer loved by his lady, who is nonetheless
present among the brigata [IV.Conc.18]).
48
After careful and tedious study we learn the following facts, which may simply be useless: Elissa,
Lauretta, Pampinea, and Dioneo (the last for evident reason) never tell the first tale of any Day, while
Fiammetta tells tales from the same position (the fifth) more than any other narrator (four times) and is
tied on three occasions (at position six) with Pampinea (at positions two and six), with Lauretta (at
positions four and eight), and with Elissa (at position three). No other teller ever occupies the same slot
more than twice – except, of course, Dioneo.
49
A. MARAFIOTI, Boccaccio's Lauretta … , cit., pp. 10-12.

Forni is of the opinion that it is Neifile who has rejected Filostrato: see P.M. FORNI, Forme
50

complesse … , cit., pp. 50-51.

51
A graduate student at Princeton, Gayle Roof, noted in 1984 that all three of the first three ballate --
and only they -- end with reference to later developments (in the last two cases, in the afterlife). Is that
a clue to the reader that none of these three songs is concerned with current amours among the brigata?
52
Branca's note to this passage is worth considering: «Si è pensato – sempre per la suggestione di
scorgere cenni autobiografici ovunque – a Fiammetta (Rossi, Lipparini), o a Filomena (Albertazzi,
Bosco); ma in realtà l'accenno rimane enigmatico, come tutte le allusioni che il B. fa alle tre coppie di
innamorati della brigata» (V. BRANCA, Decameron, 1976, cit., p. 1193, 340, n. 2.)
53
This is to disagree with an earlier view of Panfilo's song: J.M. FERRANTE, The Frame Characters … ,
cit., p. 225: «The song he [Panfilo] sings, at the end of the eighth day, tells of a love so strong it burns
him with joy […] the joy of all-encompassing virtue and goodness.» For a more recent and even more
enthusiastic reading of the ending of the work, see F. CARDINI, Una novella mai scritta e una catarsi
cavalleresca, in «Studi sul Boccaccio», XXXIII, 2005, pp. 17-54: 53 (now in Le cento novelle contro
la morte. Giovanni Boccaccio e la rifondazione cavalleresca del mondo, Roma, Salerno editrice,
2007): «I dieci novellatori sono i grandi protagonisti dell'opera; e sono, egli stessi, protagonisti della
loro salvezza personale e comunitaria. Non si salvano solo della peste, fuggendo la città condannata.
Salvano le loro anime raccontandosi a vicenda novelle disposte su un cammino che del loro iniziale
disorientamento ascende fino alla loro recuperata sicurezza, alla ritrovata Verità»; and, in a similar
eupeptic vein, T.F. GITTES, Boccaccio's Naked Muse: Eros, Culture, and the Mythopoeic Imagination,
Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2008, p. 242: «Even though Florence and the circumstances of
the plague have not changed, the members of the brigata have».
54
V. BRANCA, Decameron, 1976, cit., p. 1401, 664, nn. 1 & 3): «Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai» (Inf.
I.10) and «Li nostri affetti, che solo infiammati / son nel piacer de lo Spirito Santo» (Par. III.52). If
Branca is right in his assignment of Dantean texts to this passage (and the first citation seems certain),
we would confront still another case of Boccaccio's witty recasting of Dante's solemn original.
55
This repetition did not escape Branca: see V. BRANCA, Decameron, 1976, cit., p. 1401, 664, n. 4. See
also, for «felice ardendo nel tuo foco», Par. VII.18: «che nel foco faria l'uom felice».

56
The third stanza of Panfilo's poem also contains a less-than-serious citation of a solemn moment in Dante,
Paradiso XXIII.121: «ma io son sì contento, / ch'ogni parlar sarebbe corto e fioco»: «Oh quanto è corto il
dire e come fioco / al mio concetto!» See, once again, Branca (V. BRANCA, Decameron, 1976, cit., p. 1465,
779, n. 3.
57
That Elissa and Dioneo are likely to have been an amorous pair in the past is suggested in her
lamenting ballata both by their "Virgilian" names, hers a coded reference to Dido (see previous
discussion) and his to Aeneas (by virtue of his name suggesting that, like the Roman hero, he is the son
of Venus) as well as by the fact that their back-to-back songs are the only two to begin as a prayer to
Amore, the first word in both their songs and in no other. Whether their affection is currently mutual is
difficult to know, but the joy of love, in Elissa's song, seems completely bound by the past, while
currently all she prays for is release from Love's thrall. If that is what we are meant to conclude, we are
then looking at the following situations: one of the males (Filostrato) loved one of the seven ladies
(Filomena?) who no longer returns his affection, while each of the other males is in the presence of a
new love (Neifile's for Dioneo, Filomena's for Panfilo) and of a rejected one (Elissa's for Dioneo,
Fiammetta's for Panfilo, each, like Filostrato, having to endure the presence of a being who no longer
loves her).
58
From Petrarch until the present day, readers of this last of the cento novelle have been perhaps too positive
in their assessment of its female protagonist, most recently my friend Michelangelo Picone, whose death
deprived us of our usual cordial conversations, even in disagreement; see M. PICONE, L'exemplum sublime di
Griselda, in Boccaccio e la codificazione della novella: Letture del "Decameron", ed. N. Coderey, C.
Genswein, e R. Pittorino, Ravenna, Longo, 2008, pp. 335-360.

See, for instance, I. RUTTER, The Function of Dioneo's Perspective in the Griselda Story, in
59

«Comitatus», V, 1975, pp. 33-42: 38; according to her, «the exemplary purpose of Gualtieri's
explanation [X.x.61-63] escapes Dioneo, who here operates only on the human level and is clearly not
Boccaccio's mouthpiece».

For a previous understanding that the positive presentation of virtues in the first nine tales is not
60

continued by Dioneo, see L. SURDICH, Il "Decameron": la cornice e altri luoghi dell'ideologia del
Boccaccio, in La cornice di amore: Studi sul Boccaccio, Pisa, ETS, 1987, pp. 276-283.
61
See R. HOLLANDER and C. CAHILL, Day Ten, in Boccaccio's Dante … , cit., pp. 149-150. For a much
different view of the name's resonance, see B. BARBIELLINI AMIDEI, La novella di Gualtieri e Griselda
("Dec." x 10) e il "Libro di Gualtieri", in «Filologia e critica», XXX, 2005, pp. 3-33, arguing that
Boccaccio is aware that De amore was also referred to as "il Gualtieri".
62
See R. HOLLANDER and C. CAHILL, Day Ten, in Boccaccio's Dante … , cit., p. 157.
63
According to Bruno Maier, we can accept this judgment at face value: «Tuttavia i novellatori e le
novellatrici del Decameron potrebbero ripetere, riferendole a loro stessi, le note parole di Marziale:
lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba». See Boccaccio Opere, ed. B. MAIER, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1967,
p. 41.
64
This precise concern had been raised once before, by Neifile (II.Conc.7), as we have just seen.
65
And see R. HOLLANDER, The Proem, in Boccaccio's Dante … , cit., pp. 96-97.

C. DE MICHELIS, Contraddizioni nel "Decameron", Milano, Guanda, 1983, p.14, notices that
66

Panfilo's desire to return would seem to contradict his earlier desire to flee the city, since the plague has
not yet abated.
 See G. BARBERI SQUAROTTI, La "cornice" del "Decameron" o il mito di Robinson, in Il potere della
67

parola. Studi sul "Decameron", Napoli, Federico & Ardia, 1983 [1970], pp. 5-63: 59.

The four italicized words in the first three lines of the ballata are all found in the brief ninth and final
68

chapter of the Elegia, as indeed are some twenty-two words in the entire poem. See Tutte le opere di
Giovanni Boccaccio: "Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta", vol. V, t. II, ed. C. DELCORNO, Milano,
Mondadori, 1976, pp. 186-189.
69
It is interesting to note that, in the second stanza, celebrating her beloved's charms, which include
«senno, costumi o ornato parlare», Fiammetta may be alluding to Inferno XVIII.91, the parole ornate
with which Jason seduced his earlier love, Hypsipyle. What makes this hypothesis particularly
attractive is that Medea, his current flame, is the female classical figure (after Venus, her goddess) that
the Fiammetta of the Elegia refers to most often (eight times in all, at II.vi.13; VI.xi.15; VI.xv.10 & 17;
VIII.xvii.1, 3, 4, & 6). Casting Panfilo as Jason is apparently a habit in both versions of the story of
Fiammetta's difficulties with her lover.
70
Once again, the italicized words are shared with the Elegia's final chapter. See, again, L. MANICARDI and
A.F. MASSÈRA, Le dieci ballate … , cit., p. 113: to them, Fiammetta's lyric offering «sembra quasi un
capitolo in verso dell'Elegia di madonna Fiammetta».

See W. PABST, Venus als Heilige und Furie in Boccaccios Fiammetta-Dichtung, Krefeld, Scherpe,
71

1958, and R. HOLLANDER, Boccaccio's Two Venuses … , cit., pp. 40-49 and 160-174.

G. BILLANOVICH, Restauri boccacceschi, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1945, p. 110, may
72

have misspoken when he locates the object of Fiammetta's jealous behavior elsewhere: «La situazione
dell'Elegia di madonna Fiammetta e che nel Decameron anche fa che Fiammetta peni gelosamente per
Dioneo». There is better reason to believe that Fiammetta's jealousy now, as in the Elegia, is directed at
Panfilo.
73
See V. KIRKHAM, An Allegorically Tempered "Decameron", in The Sign of Reason …, cit., p. 131.
The brigata may indeed seem to begin its activity under the sign of reason, as Pampinea asserts:
«Donne mie care, voi potete, così come io, molte volte avere udito che a niuna persona fa ingiuria chi
onestamente usa la sua ragione. Natural ragione è, di ciascuno che ci nasce, la sua vita quanto può
aiutare e conservare e difendere» (I.Intro.53). And then she asserts that, in the country, they will amuse
themselves: «senza trapassare in alcuno atto il segno della ragione» (I.Intro.65 – italics added in both
citations). However, if one examines the nearly fifty appearances of ragione in the cento novelle, it is
almost never used with this sense again; later uses nearly always seem to have another sense, either as
in the phrase «avere ragione» or as having the meaning "the reason or cause of something" (that is,
having the sense of cagione), with only three exceptions (VII.ix.3; X.viii.14 & 61). Pampinea's
assurance that the brigata will be governed by the rule of reason – Kirkham's view, as well -- may be
overturned fairly quickly (in Day One), as I have argued.
74
R. HOLLANDER, The Proem, in Boccaccio's Dante … , cit., p. 92.