The end of each day in the Decameron is marked by the intonation of a ballad, sung in turn by each member of the brigade. This innovation of Boccaccio’s of linking the novella and the ballad proved to be a great success, if we consider that important collections of XIV century novellas, from Franco Sacchetti to the Pecorone by ser Giovanni, repropose this uncommon conjunction, whilst echoes of this successful prosimetric coupling can also be found in the novellas by Matteo Bandello, perhaps not by chance one of the most prolific authors of ballads if the XVI century. However the metric choices favoured by Boccaccio are quite uncommon, there being no equivalent in contemporary lyrics and not unless aligning oneself with the general revisiting of the metric form of the ballad, adopted more decisively by the poets of the second half of the century.

The ballads of the Decameron oppose stubborn resistance to the sober and essential nature of the couplet, as was more common in the XIV century[1]. The poetry of the Decameron instead shows a marked inclination for the ternary module, which the author would seem to prefer indifferently as much in the articulation of the reprise (in nine cases out of ten) as in the confection of the mutation (three ballads out of ten). A similar option in favour of a more distended approach to expression would seem to govern Boccaccio’s marked polistrophic style, it too in contrast with the monostrophic style typical of the XIV century ballad.

To the ten ballads[2] of the framework one needs to add that sung by Mico da Siena in the seventh novella of the tenth day, Muoviti, Amore, e vattene a Messere. In this insertion, which makes the number of metres present in the work equal to ten plus one, one can recognise a parallelism with the so called novelletta of the ducks in the introduction to the fourth day, a narrative unit which raises the total number of novellas to the sum of one hundred plus one. 

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[1]G. Capovilla, Note sulla tecnica della ballata trecentesca, in L’ars nova italiana del Trecento. Atti del III Congresso internazionale sul tema: «La musica al tempo del Boccaccio e i suoi rapporti con la letteratura» (Siena-Certaldo, 19-22 luglio 1975), a c. di A. Ziino, Certaldo 1987, pp. 107-147; L. Pagnotta, Repertorio metrico della ballata italiana. Secoli XII e XIV, Milano-Napoli 1995.

[2]Io mi son giovinetta, da Sigismondo d’India, Il terzo libro dei madrigali, La Venexiana, 1998.