In the proem or preface to the Decameron we find the dedication of the book to the “vaghe donne” or fair women, which are the public elect for the collection of  novellas. The feminine subject and the key theme of “compassion”, addressed to those who are “afflicted” by the pains of love, link the opening of the Decameron to the preceding literary work that was the Fiammetta, whilst open allusion to Ovid’s Heroides, in which Eros answers Leander, brings in a classical precedent of importance for the whole of the tradition of courtly poetry[1]. Structural preoccupations lead the author to incisively schematise the textual architecture of the work, here indicated as:

 

intendo di raccontare cento novelle, o favole o parabole o istorie che dire le vogliamo, raccontate in diece giorni da una onesta brigata di sette donne e di tre giovani nel pistelenzioso tempo della passata mortalità fatta, e alcune canzonette dalle predette donne cantate al lor diletto (Decameron: Proemio, 13[2]).

 

The Decameron is formally a prosimetre, which belongs to the vernacular tradition traced by the Vita Nova. In the Centonovelle by Boccaccio the biographical element however seems to be dissimulated, when he decuples the narrative voice, and this occurs in net contrast to Dantean tradition, which, as much in his early works as in the Divine Comedy, likes to narrate in the first person. The parable in two stages, in which the moment of sin is followed by the regeneration of ‘pentiment’, used by Dante and which is at the basis of the narrative structure of Petrarch’s Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, in the Decameron appears to be relegated to the role of private antecedent. Boccaccio’s sinful past, cleric “in love” who has known the pains of love, is allusively echoed in the preface (Decameron: Proem, 2-5[3]), but its evocation appears to be confined to here alone, at the start to narration, and does not project itself either onto the presentation of the life of the brigade or upon the various episodes told in the novellas.

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[1]L. Rossi, Il paratesto, in Introduzione al Decameron, ed. M. Picone – M. Mesirca, Florence 2004, pp. 35-55.

[2]Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. V. Branca, Turin 1999, vol. I, 9.

[3]Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. V. Branca, Turin 1999, vol. I, 5-6

Decameron, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, ms. Hamilton 90, c. 103v. Boccaccio visualizzato: narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, a c. di V. Branca, Turin 1999, vol. II, p. 64.