Decameron

Towards a “dramatisation” of the story

The initial letters in yellow in the Hamilton manuscript highlight portions of text that are semantically concluded, similar to the paragraphs of modern prose[1]. They are employed with a certain amount of regularity, probably in respect of certain scholastic norms, in the presence of the anaphoric sense, in the majority of cases pronominal; equally constant is the use made of the same capitals with which to introduce the periods that begin with a conjunction, be it copulative, causal, or adversative, and also to mark the presence of direct discourse or an exclamatory proposition.

Another characteristic to be found in the way Boccaccio divides the text is the tendency to have begin the narrative partition, marked by the simple capital touched up in yellow, with the mention of the character that, in the sequence singled out, is the protagonist of the action. It is in this way that are connected the narrative events to the single storytellers, who are thus made the true motors of action.

With a reading of the novella according to the partitions of the manuscript, the tale thus takes on a new dynamism, of a type I would call of “dramatisation”, in the theatrical sense. The formal use of the capital letter indeed recalls the reader’s attention to the names of the characters, thus highlighting the play on the various characters at the root of the plot, with the result that the tale is made theatrical. This fragmentation of the novella, in its precise logic, may have also been thought of as a suggestion for how to read it.  Were the text to be read aloud or were it rather destined to be read in silence, in either case the graphic highlighting of the semantic elements would have in any case served as an indication for the way the narrative was to be performed. How much importance Boccaccio gave to the execution of the novella, so much so that he considered it a key characteristic of this genre, emerges clearly from the example of Madonna Oretta (VI, 1).

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[1]T. Nocita, Per una nuova paragrafatura del testo del Decameron. Appunti sulle maiuscole del cod. Hamilton 90 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz), “Critica del Testo”, II/3 (1999), pp. 925-934; Ead., La redazione hamiltoniana di Decameron I 5. Sceneggiatura di una novella, in Il racconto nel Medioevo romanzo. Atti del Convegno, Bologna, 23-24 ottobre 2000, Con altri contributi di Filologia romanza, Bologna 2002, pp. 351-366 [“Quaderni di Filologia Romanza”, 15 (2001)]; Ead. in collaborazione con T. Crivelli, Teatralità del dettato, stratificazioni strutturali, plurivocità degli esiti: il Decameron fra testo, ipertesto e generi letterari, in Autori e lettori di Boccaccio. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Certaldo, Certaldo, 20-22 settembre 2001, a c. di M. Picone, Firenze 2002, pp. 209-233.