IX. A macabre and sanguinary taste

If a good part of the ninth day’s novellas again propose the theme of the hoax, these being 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 10, it is nevertheless difficult to accept the hypothesis that this decury is the collection of leftovers, bits and pieces from preceding days, dedicated to the theme of the hoax, the relics of a comical  superfetation, of difficult contention. In effect if there is no single theme in terms of content, there is nevertheless a stylistic uniformity which links some of the novellas of the day,  which is a taste for the macabre and sanguinary. The demonstration of love asked by madonna Francesca to Rinuccio Palermini and Alessandro Chiarmontesi (1) is that they should open the tomb of Scannadio, a terrible and corrupt man, and replace the corpse with that of one of the two lovers, then taking the fake corpse to Francesca’s house. With this request she would seem to want to liberate herself from the undesired attentions of her two would be lovers; however, the novella’s central theme, which describes the would be lovers’ nocturnal action, is coloured in dark and fearsome tones, rather than exalting the comic aspect of the gag. The coming true of Talano d’Imola’s dream (7), in which he foresees that his wife will be attacked by a voracious wolf, stigmatises the anthropological theme of the dangers of the forest, dear to fairy tales and popular tradition in general (suffice it to recall Little Red Riding Hood). The novella is the expression of a misogynous sentiment that, inaugurated with the story of the widow and the scholar (VIII, 7), becomes ever more significant in the final days of the Decameron.