Decameron

A “new” narrative genre: the novella

In the history of the genre that is the novella the Decameron acts as an undisputed model for western literary tradition. It is however difficult to establish whether the genesis of the novella is indissolubly tied to Boccaccio’s tales, as for example said by H.-J. Neuschäfer[1], or if in the Decameron what we find is a varied exemplification of this short narrative form and its successful literary codification.

Antecedents in the vernacular can be found in the Novellino, the oldest collection of novellas known, composed sometime in the last twenty years of the XIII century, whilst we have information on a lost Flos novellarum, written by Francesco da Barberino, a contemporary of Boccaccio, and it is only thanks to indirect information through the Accademia delle Crusca (codice Riccardiano 2197) that we know the book Libro di motti di Messer Vanni Giudice (Master Vanni Giudice’s book of mottos), of the end of the XIII century. The vidas and razos of Provence, as indeed the French fabliaux, were no doubt points of reference for Boccaccio, but these were at most points of departure from which the Decameron developed quite autonomously.

As to Latin tradition, Boccaccio would seem to have decidedly severed ties with the religious forms of the exemplum and legenda, which, albeit echoed in various ways in the Decameron, incarnate a narrative style by then superseded by the experience of the brigade. This new narrative style well fitted the sense of performance sought by young contemporary authors, who felt, as the author states in his conclusion, “né tra cherici né tra filosofi/neither among clerics nor philosophers” (Decameron: Conclusions, 7[2]). A new ludic dimension, tied to the pleasure of the text, is the autonomous justification for literary composition, which at this stage appeared freed of those impediments imposed by gnoseological or moral aims.

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[1]H.-J. Neuschäfer, Boccaccio und der Beginn der Novelle. Strukturen der Kurzerzählung auf der Schwelle zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit, München 1969.

[2]Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. V. Branca, Turin 1999, vol. II, p. 1256.