The ten days

Decameron

I. “That which most pleases each one of us”

In day one of the Decameron the theme to be chosen is free, as decided by the ‘queen’ of the day Pampinea. The first and long novella to be told is Ser Ciappelleto’s that, in the form of a parody of the hagiographic legend, tells the story of the sanctification of an evil and corrupt man, thanks to the certification of a false confession. The ideological contraposition that associates the first to the last novella of the Decameron, where the protagonist is a virtuous woman, has led to the idea that the work might have been structured in an ascending way, building upon the affirmation of moral and religious values. The soteriological tension sparked off by Ciappelletto-Judas’ depravation is mellowed by Griselda-Maria’s patience, the final point of a narrative evolution that conforms to the eschatological model of Dante’s Commedia[1]. The importance given to the scene of the confession, which takes up the central part of the initial novella, draws the reader’s attention to the great power of words:

possiamo pertanto asserire che la progressione narrativa della prima giornata tende verso l’affermazione dell’homo loquens, verso l’esaltazione di un ideale di humanitas raggiungibile soltanto attraverso l’arte retorica[2].

Verbal communication, which animates the narrative mouvance, qualifying itself as a trait d’union of the novelistic decury for the first day, assumes in many cases the quality of a motto, such as in the episode of the young monk who escapes his abbot’s fair punishment (4), of the Marchioness of Monferrato who decorously escapes the King of France’s attentions (5), and the woman from Gascony who represses the treacherous behaviour of the king of Cyprus (9). In two cases (3; 7) it is the metadiegesis of a novella inserted within another principle novella that is the expedient that allows Melchisedec and Bergamino to have the better over their antagonists who are hierarchically superior, such as the Saladin and Cangrande della Scala.

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[1]V. Branca, Boccaccio medievale e nuovi studi sul Decameron, Florence 1990⁷.

[2]M. Picone, Il principio del novellare: la prima giornata, in Introduzione al Decameron, a c. di M. Picone-M. Mesirca, Florence 2004, pp. 57-78, cit. p. 66.