The innovativeness of the prosimetric assortment of the Decameron linked with the eccentricity of Boccaccio’s choice of meters may act as an excuse  for the lack of scholarly attention towards the ballads in the Decameron.

Apart from studies conducted in 1900-05, by Manicardi and Massera, Crescini and Hauvette, and through to Carducci’s edition of 1912, without, among other things, any kind of comment, there is no record of any monographic work[1]. Only Rinaldina Russel was, in 1982, to dedicate some attention to the narrative style of the “schemes of life and life of schemes” of Boccaccio’s ballads, addressing an area that however was left largely untouched. Of little use was the entirely positive judgement issued by Vittore Branca in his Boccaccio medievale, where he underlines the supreme mannerist elegance of the meters used in the framework[2].

Obligatorily involved in an evaluation of Boccaccio’s other rhymes and thus treated in common for their prosaicness, syntactic asperity and daring enjambements, almost as if the author were unable to free himself of the habitus of the narrator that was the most congenial to him and make his own the concise graphicness of the lyrical poet, Boccaccio’s ballads have hardly benefited from an interest outside the evaluation of their meter and style (for which one should remember the fundamental contribution of Gianluca D’Agostino)[3].

A recent intertextual analysis by Raffaella Zanni[4] concentrated on the reassignment of meanings and an innovative new utilisation of the antecedents drawn from lyrical tradition, highlighting how the meter used by Boccaccio owes much to Dante, Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia and Petrarch. According to this scholar, far from characterising itself as a tired repetition of amorous poetry, a theme already addressed in the early poetic attempts of the Neapolitan period, the ballads of the Decameron would seem to project the erotic repertoire of the tradition of the stilnovo within a lay and earthly dimension, without the exclusion of the effect of parody  and some comic-realistic notes.

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[1]Cantilene e ballate, strambotti e madrigali nei seioli XIII e XIV, a c. di G. Carducci, Sesto San Giovanni 1912; V. Crescini, Di due recenti saggi sulle liriche del Boccaccio, “Atti e Memorie della R. Accademia di Scienze, lettere ed Arti”, n.s., XVII (1901-2), pp. 59-85; H. Hauvette, Les ballades du Décaméron, “Journal des savants”, n.s., IX (1905), pp. 489-500; L. Manicardi-A.F. Massera, Le dieci ballate del Decameron, “Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa”, IX (1901), pp. 102-114.

[2] V. Branca, Tradizione, rinnovamento e manierismo nel linguaggio delle rime, in Id., Boccaccio medievale e nuovi studi sul Decameron, Firenze 1998 (2 ed.); R. Russel, Schemi di vita e vita di schemi nelle ballate del Decameron, in Generi poetici medioevali: modelli e funzioni letterarie, Napoli 1982, pp. 85-103.

[3] G. D’Agostino, Le ballate del Decameron: note integrative di analisi metrica e stilistica, “Studi sul Boccaccio”, XXIV (1006), pp. 123-180.

[4] R. Zanni, La “poesia” del Decameron: le ballate e l’intertesto lirico, “Linguistica e letteratura”, XXX (2005), fasc. 1-2, pp. 59-142