“You are to look upon this grim opening as travelers on foot confront a steep, rugged mountain: beyond it lies a most enchanting plain which they appreciate all the more for having toiled up and down the mountain first,” (Boccaccio, pg. 7). The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio embodies this verse. Until this time period, religion guided society like an invisible hand pushing everyone along. Throughout many generation religion evolved. From polytheism to monotheism, form idols to churches, people…

In the community that Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron is set in, females are held at a lower social ranking than males. As with most communities up till relatively recently in the past, women were not permitted to have a significant role in the community, other than that of a wife and matriarch. In The Decameron, Boccaccio shows that while they may not have notable social ranking, females do have an advantage in most aspects of the male-female relationship. Even though the tales deal with a range…

HIS 538 History and Literature in Renaissance Italy Liberty and Gender in Boccaccio Justin Chmiel October 2, 2014 In his tales of the Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio created a comedic image of early Renaissance urban life. It would be easy to dismiss these tales entirely from the historical record, but, even though they may be fiction, these tales were fabricated from the world that Boccaccio knew. If the author drew the details of his stories from the reality around him, should it not be possible…

The Decameron, by Boccaccio, is a frame story written in the mid fourteenth century. There are a hundred stories told over a span of ten days. On the second day, a man tells a story about a princess, Alatiel, who was sent away to marry a king. Before Alatiel reaches her destination, she has sexual experiences with a lot of different men. Alatiel is treated like an object and allows this objectification to happen because she is so fickle and does nothing to stop the men. The fickleness of Alatiel…

Throughout the various novelle of the Decameron there lies a rather conflicting role of women in relation to the society that Boccaccio 's Decameron was set in. From novella to novella the theme of women 's gender role fluctuates between misogynistic to feminist. It can be argued that Boccaccio was a feminist ahead of his time or that he shared the traditional views towards women of 14th century Italy. Overall, it is fair to say that Boccaccio does depict women as transcending men in many respects…

Boccaccio's the Decameron, written in the Early Renaissance, is a sharp social commentary that reflected the ideas and themes of the Renaissance and of Renaissance Humanism. His tales of nuns and priests caught in compromising situations, corrupt clergy selling chances to see religious artifacts, and of wives cheating on their husbands show the changing ideals of the time and the corruption that was running rampant within the church and in the lives of the general populace. The Decameron speaks against…

Reaction paper: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio is not a singular, enclosed text but rather a series of texts that unfold as a result of a 'frame' tale. The Decameron is set during the plague in Italy, and at the beginning of the story, various people have fled the city and are hiding away in the countryside. They tell tales to pass the time and to amuse themselves and these tales make up The Decameron. The conceit is very similar to that of The Canterbury…

The Decameron: A Feminist or Misogynist text? Giovanni Boccaccio is one of the leading Italian writers in the 1300s and has been considered as the father of Italian writing style through his composition of one hundred novelle. The Decameron continuously pictures women not as the objects of discussion but as the active producers and interpreters of their actions. Women are portrayed as they are or as they should be; they are shown to be as aggressive as men are while at the same time they can be…

Comparing Cantebury Tales and The Decameron There are many different roles for women shown in “The Canterbury Tales” and “The Decameron”. Both books take place around the same time frame, 1300AD. “The Canterbury Tales”, takes place in London, England and “The Decameron” takes place in Florence, Italy. It would be just to think that since both books take place in a western civilization, both books would reflect the same morals and daily life styles. This is not the case at all. Throughout this…

In the book, The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio, there is many tales but I am only going to speak of two.The first tale, Fabricio Goes to Naples, was told by Fiammetta. Fiammetta’s story differs from the rest of the stories by, his has many dangers that occur in one night rather than over a period of years. The second tale, Bernardo di Rossini and His Wife, was told by Dioneo. This story was different than the others by, it was a comedy story, showing to laugh over bad things than over virtuous…