the decameron essay

The Decameron: Day four story two “Here ends the third day of the Decameron and the fourth day begins: under the reign of Philostrato, the stories are about people whose love has ended in tears” (249). In the second story of the fourth day, our story teller Pampinea is more inclined to delight rather than dispirit her audience. While staying within the days brief, she challenges the blind obedience to the kings hand by using her wit to forge a tragic comic relief tale. Before beginning her story

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

The theme of lying and deception reoccur frequently throughout Dante's, The Inferno and Boccaccio's, The Decameron. In Dante's, The Inferno we meet Geryon, a monster who leads Dante and Virgil into the eighth circle of hell. Dante believes that committing fraud and deception are the worst sin's and he illustrates that through Geryons physical traits, and where Geryon leads them, Malebolge. In Malebolge, the eighth circle of hell, Dante further illustrates the themes of lies and deception by the

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

also infused The Decameron with his opinions on the Catholic church, which even at that time was Italy’s primary religious institution. Catholicism may have been popular, but Boccaccio was very blatant in showing that he did not approve of the Church’s conduct. In The Decameron, religion was practiced by fools, the church was a breeding ground for mischief, and “marriage” was a transaction devoid of meaning. Perhaps the most foolish characters readers could come across in The Decameron were Friar Alberto

Nasty Women in The Decameron In The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio one of the book's main focuses is on the portrayal of women of the Middle Ages. Boccaccio portrays women as overtly sexual, outspoken and highly self motivated characters, while women of the time often knew their place in society and often performed the tasks left undone by their lords. Two of the women Boccaccio portrays are Elissa and Pampinea. Elissa and Pampinea are two women Boccaccio portrays as different, complex women characters

Autonomy Boccaccio’s Decameron is a revolutionary text not only because of its irreverent attitude toward courtly love, but also due to its portrayal of female autonomy, not something that was necessarily common in the fourteenth century. Not only did women in The Decameron initiate their own relationships and seek out sexual pleasure, many of them also refused to submit to men, and some even went as far as to commit suicide rather than lose control of their own bodies. The female characters in the

Set in Florence during the Black Death (late 1340’s), Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron started his reputation as a writer. The story revolves around ten young Florentines who escape the plague by leaving the city for the clean country air. However, time seems to go by slowly when nothing is happening, so to pass the time they agree to each tell one story every day. And each day one person is chosen to decide the topic for the day’s set of tales. This brings in multiple genres of stories, ranging from

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

Boccaccio, through the stories in The Decameron, often makes fun of the Italy’s false perfection and immortality. Through each story he picks a specific aspect of the Italian imperfect to poke fun at and highlight the ridiculousness or hypocrisy of. One topic he often highlights is religion and how arbitrary it was at this time in Italy, especially during the time of the black plague. Two of these stories that discuss religion are the First Day First story and the Third Day First Story. These two