IL DECAMERON

SCHEDA DELL’OPERA
IL LIBRO
Giovanni Boccaccio began to write his masterpiece around 1349 with the aim of creating a
book of short stories. By giving his work the form of the book, Boccaccio wanted to make
the reader aware of his own specific nature and prerogatives. It is for this reason that the
title is associated with a subtitle ("Comincia il libro chiamato Decameron, cognominato
prencipe Galeotto "), in which there is a clear allusion to the V canto delli’Inferno, where
Francesca – after telling Dante-character that the love between her and Paolo began while
reading a chivalrous novel - exclaims " Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse”.
Boccaccio's admiration for Dante's Comedy is well known, but it seems strange that he
wanted to pay homage to the Alighieri alluding in the title of his work, to an event that
ended with a double murder and the condemnation for the eternity of all protagonists. With
the various references, he aimed to ennoble the Florentine cultural world, referring to the
undisputed champion of the new literature and at the same time urging the reader to be
open to dialogue, so as to establish a hermeneutic relationship with the work he had in his
hands.
After the book-title pairing, the second strategic consists of exhibiting a precise instance of
control over the writing and directing of the narrative. The author reserves some places to
talk to the Reader and direct the search for meaning.
1. The first of these is the Proemio, in which the Reader is identified as female, identified in
those "donne" in love who " dimorano nel piccolo circuito delle loro camere".
2. The second place is the Introduction of the 4th Day in which it defends itself against five
attacks that it claims to have suffered immediately after the spread of the first three Days.
3. The third place is the Author's Conclusion, dedicated to preventive defense from some
understated questions that malicious readers could ask him.
The author had to defend himself against accusations of immorality for excessive
indulgence in the treatment of the erotic theme. He also refers to the "rubriche" placed
before each novella, saying that the rubriche and novele themselves respond to two
opposing narrative principles. The first are oriented towards the conclusion of the narrated
event, the second latter focus instead on the causes and motivations that lead to that
conclusion. The existence of the rubrics, strategically placed in the spaces that separate
the novels and the Days between them, strengthens the identity of the Decameron as a
book, that is, as a unitary and structured artifact within it.
In the Introduction to the Fourth Day, the Author states that his novels are written without
title. With this formula, he alluded to the Amores of Ovid who, because of the multiple
matter that is faced with it, in the Middle Ages was also known as Sine titulo. Boccaccio
therefore addressed the question by proposing a similarity: as in the Ovidian opera there is
not the unified story of a single love, but many different tales of so many different loves, so
in the Decameron you do not read the story of a single character. This does not detract
from the fact that the Work is unitary, closed in its unalterable forma-libro.

LA DINAMICA DELLA BRIGATA

At the origin of the story there is the meeting of young women in the church of Santa Maria
Novella with the arrival of their three guys and the consequent decision to leave Florence
to escape the contamination of the plague and above all to escape the social crisis and the
negatives moral behaviours produced by the plague.

LE NOVELLE