Decameron

Actors and narrators in the Decameron: the levels of narrative diegesis

A complex stratification of voices characterises the narrative of the Decameron[1]. If at an extra-diegetic level it is the narrator that speaks, who relegates the paratext, constituted of the proem, introduction to the IV day and conclusions, the discussion of metatextual issues, concerned with the composition of the work, with the framework, or macrotext, there comes a change to the intra-diegetic level of narrative. The tale is divided into three main parts, which include the scenario of death by plague, the flight of the brigade to the country and the description of the new modus vivendi adopted by the young Florentines in their stately homes in the countryside. It is only with the novellas that the true narrative diegesis (or fictional part of the story) starts. The voice of the narrator, the protagonist of the extra-diegetic level, and that of the storytellers, masters of the intra-diegetic, are now substituted by those if the characters of the novellas, in other words the actors who move on the diegetic plane of narrative action. The process of progressive focalisation of the narrative instance, which seems to project the reader into an ever more intimate dimension of literary fiction, recalls in its hierarchical construction  the mechanism of Chinese boxes. With the insertion of a secondary novella within a principle novella, such is the example of the Melchisedec e Bergamino (I, 3, 7), we see a further deepening of the narrative plane, which can in this case be defined as meta-diegetic. The narrator’s voice therefore becomes that of the characters-narrators. 

---

[1]M. Picone, La prima giornata, in Introduzione al Decameron, a c. di M. Picone-M. Mesirca, Firenze 2004, pp. 57-78, in part. pp. 59-60.