The ten days

Decameron

IV. Fractures to the theme

Within the solidly cohesive structure of the fourth day friar Alberto’s novella (2) would seem to escape the tragic theme, looking rather at the subject of the hoax. Prototype of the hypocrisy of men of religion, the friar takes advantage of  Lisetta’s simplicity so as to have her and makes her believe she has made love with the Archangel Gabriel. In this desecrating parody of the annunciation  there is an added folkloristic theme, that of the “mysterious guest”[1], very common in the western tradition. In particular the intertext in the case of the Decameron would seem to be Maria di Francia’s lai Yonec, in which the young wife of a jealous old man is segregated into a tower and yet manages to be loved by a charming knight, who reaches her in the guise of an elegant bird, probably a hawk or a falcon.

Exploiting the privilege which allows him not to use the theme of the day, Dioneo concludes the fourth decury with a tale based on a hoax. The amorous triangle has at its centre the wife of a doctor from Salerno, who, to save her dignity, hides her lover Ruggieri d’Aieroli in a coffin because she thinks him dead. In a comedy based on misunderstandings, which ends with the young man awakening and the impunity of the mischievous couple, some of the typical motifs of amorous tragedy, a theme considerably exploited in the fourth day, would seem to be here parodied. We should for example consider the sacredness of the burial of the lovers (1, 7, 8, 9), which in 10 is upturned to become an expedient with which the unfaithful wife saves herself from ignominy, or to the appearance of ghost of the beloved, who in Dioneo’s novella becomes a grotesque episode, when Ruggieri d’Aieroli, thought to be dead, wakes up in the house of two usurers who take him for a thief.

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[1]D’A.S. Avalle, Fra mito e fiaba. L’ospite misterioso, in Id., Dal mito alla letteratura e ritorno, Milan 1990, pp. 161-173.