The Decameron #4/10

Not having read all that much Decameron criticism before, one of the more interesting things to come out of my time spent with Guido Almansi's The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the "Decameron" (Routledge, 1975) so far is Almansi's assertion that earlier critics were prone to look for a faithful representation of "reality" in Boccaccio's magnum opus--as if the work were designed to replicate something historically accurate about 14th-century Florentine life.  Almansi, on the other hand, convincingly argues that the lie is the work's real star attraction--that The Decameron is more about Boccaccio drawing attention to his storytelling virtuosity than anything else.  Almost as if on cue, the Fourth Day's session begins with an unexpected interruption to the narrative flow in the form of a direct address from the author to his readers.  A snippet:

"Judicious ladies, there are those who have said, after reading these tales, that I am altogether too fond of you, that it is unseemly for me to take so much delight in entertaining and consoling you, and, what is apparently worse, in singing your praises as I do.  Others, laying claim to greater profundity, have said that it is not good for a man of my age to engage in such pursuits as discussing the ways of women and providing for their pleasure.  And others, showing deep concern for my renown, say that I would be better advised to remain with the Muses in Parnassus, than to fritter away my time in your company.

Moreover, there are those who, prompted more by spitefulness than common sense, have said that I would be better employed in earning myself a good meal than in going hungry for the sake of producing nonsense of this sort.  And finally there are those who, in order to belittle my efforts, endeavour to prove that my versions of the stories I have told are not consistent with the facts." (The Decameron, 284)

While I'll rather lazily avoid discussing this passage in any detail (time is a stern taskmaster today), translator G.H. McWilliam's footnotes inform me that there's no reason to believe that Boccaccio was responding to any real attacks here.  In any event, Boccaccio's arch and preemptive self-defense of what are probably only imagined potential critiques of his artistic creation soon evolves into an incomplete story intended to justify the Decameron's celebration of women and its rejection of poetry in favor of prose.  In other words, yes, a story about stories in the medium we all now take for granted!  Although our author goes out of his way to apologize for the incompleteness of said story ("for otherwise it might appear that I was attempting to equate my own tales with those of that select company I have been telling you about" he laments in a mega meta moment on page 285),  McWilliam notes that the tale "is in fact sufficiently complete for commentators to refer to it as the 101st story of the Decameron" (826).  For my part, reading this mini-story and the self-conscious arguments about form that precede it make it very difficult to argue with Almansi's basic premise.  Calling attention to the artifice of fiction does indeed seem to be Boccaccio's game.

In this light (and apologizing in advance for the lack of the customary amount of sleaze in this week's Decameron update), I probably shouldn't have been as surprised by the detour Boccaccio was about to make as I actually was.  But even if I haven't left myself enough time to do justice to the rest of the Fourth Day's stories, suffice it to say that they provide as clear a break from the 30 (or 31) previous ones as Boccaccio's own direct address to his readers.  To wit--and to show my paranormal romance reading friends that the lack of time for the Fourth Day's stories doesn't stem from any passive aggressiveness on my part--here's a road map to the romantic gore in store for you during the course of this particular session: one story in which a lady joins her lover in the afterlife by drinking poison served to her in a chalice with her ex-lover's heart; another story in which a woman disinters the body of her murdered lover, beheads it, and then stores the decomposing head in a pot full of basil, watering it with her tears; one story in which a jealous husband feeds his wife the heart of her ex-lover, an act she repays by jumping out an open window to her death on the ground below.  Although I lost count of how many beheadings and spectral visitations (real or imagined) were mentioned in the chapter, the theme for the day--"those whose love ended unhappily" (284)--unfolded with all the variety and gruesome artistry you might suspect: just not quite as much gleeful lubricity as previously.  Next up: an all-Almansi post or Decameron Day Five, who can tell?

The Decameron #3/10: Christian Fiction or Pre-Porn Porn?

While it's probably been far too long since my last Decameron post here, rest assured that Boccaccio continues to push the envelope of good taste! The Third Day's set of stories, ostensibly a series of tales on the theme of "people who by dint of their own efforts have achieved an object they greatly desired, or recovered a thing previously lost" (189), is actually primarily concerned with lampooning the sexual misdeeds and hypocrisy of the clerical class.  The ten storytellers go into attack mode from the outset, launching the satiric barrage with a story about an enterprising young man who pretends he's a deaf-mute to gain employment as a gardener at a nunnery.  Once installed in the new position, he immediately begins to receive non-stop sexual attention from eight nuns and eventually even the abbess herself, all nine of whom feel that their secret is safe with the hunky gardener on account of his feigned disability.  In a later story, the amusing tone of the gardener piece gives way to a spirited dissertation on the friars' dissolute ways in a speech that runs a full six or seven paragraphs in duration.  Although the speaker who chides the friars for desiring "riches and women" (243) is actually a fake "pilgrim" who derides the clergy as part of an elaborate scheme to win his ex-lover back, it's quite a hoot to see his laundry list of anticlerical sentiments aired out with such gleeful proficiency.

Naturally, this is all just a set up to the closing story in the sequence, a raunchy episode in which a desert hermit teaches a naive, non-Christian girl that the proper way to serve God according to the Christian faith is by helping the hermit put the devil back into hell.  Since the girl, Alibech, doesn't know what the hermit, Rustico, means by all this, the formerly ascetic Rustico decides that this is a concept perhaps best explained while both are naked!

" 'Rustico, what is that thing I see sticking out in front of you, which I do not possess?'

'Oh, my daughter,' said Rustico, 'this is the devil I was telling you about.  Do you see what he's doing?  He's hurting me so much that I can hardly endure it.'

'Oh, praise be to God,' said the girl, 'I can see that I am better off than you are, for I have no such devil to contend with.'

'You're right there,' said Rustico.  'But you have something else instead, that I haven't.

'Oh?' said Alibech.  'And what's that?'

'You have Hell,' said Rustico.  'And I honestly believe that God has sent you here for the salvation of my soul, because if this devil continues to plague the life out of me, and if you are prepared to take sufficient pity upon me to let me put him back into Hell, you will be giving me marvelous relief, as well as rendering incalculable service and pleasure to God, which is what you say you came here for in the first place.' (277)"

If you'll forgive the lack of exegesis here, suffice it to say that the two characters spend much of their time thereafter in bed--practicing "the art of incarcerating that accursed fiend" (277) until Alibech becomes so fond of punishing the devil that the hermit has to send her away to get any rest.

Laugh out loud as I did throughout this latest batch of stories (I have to say that the last one had me in tears!), I should note that translator G.H. McWilliam actually brings up a serious point about The Decameron's morally casual prose in a footnote.  Referring to Boccaccio's use of "the resurrection of the flesh" as a euphemism for an erection (277), McWilliam notes that this "profane sexual metaphor," first used by Apuleius in The Golden Ass, led to a situation in which English translators of The Decameron either "omitted this story altogether or resorted at this point to either the original Italian or one of the French versions" until the end of the 19th century.  "Pornography, it seemed, was permissible provided it appeared in a language that only a minority of one's readers could understand" (825).  Say what you will about these translators' ethics, I'd love to know what the typical medieval readers must have thought of Boccaccio's combination of religious and sexual imagery.  Were there "typical" readers, in fact? And would they have laughed like me at the union or would they have given it the Florentine equivalent of an NC-17 rating?  For one possible answer, I'll soon be turning to Guido Almansi, whose 1975 The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the "Decameron" includes a promising chapter on the novel's "erotic episodes."  And for a Spanish parallel, we can always turn to Juan Ruiz' Libro de Buen Amor [Book of Good Love] (c. 1343), a long narrative poem from Castile that sports some religious verses comparing "adoring the cross" to oral sex (LBA 121c).  Ok, so maybe you're not ready for that kind of medieval verbal wordplay just yet--but extra points if you are!

The Decameron #2/10

"The Sultan of Babylon sends his daughter off to marry the King of Algarve.  Owing to a series of mishaps, she passes through the hands of nine men in various places within the space of four years.  Finally, having been restored to her father as a virgin, she sets off, as before, to become the King of Algarve's wife."  (Introduction to the Second Day, Seventh Story of The Decameron, p. 125)

Although I'd planned on posting something about Manuel Puig's lurid Pop Art detective story The Buenos Aires Affair (Argentina, 1973) today, I decided a few words on The Decameron might be more in order given my obvious need for a palate cleanser after three months spent with Sigrid Undset and her wooden, faux-medieval prose.  Man, was Boccaccio a nice change of pace!  After finishing up the last few stories at the end of the Second Day's set of tales, I went back and reread one of my favorites in The Decameron so far, the story about the Saracen princess Alatiel whose "ill-starred beauty" causes her "to be newly married on nine separate occasions" before she's eventually united with her betrothed (126).  Suffice it to say that Boccaccio's concerns with purity and sexuality are far different from Undset's, as is quickly apparent when Alatiel loses her virginity: "She had no conception of the kind of horn men do their butting with, and when she felt what was happening, it was almost as though she regretted having turned a deaf ear to Pericone's flattery, and could not see why she had waited for an invitation before spending her nights so agreeably" (130).  The story that follows is one of the funniest in the book thus far, with suitor after suitor either killing or disabling their romantic predecessor in order to enjoy Alatiel's favors.  With Undset's obsession with sexuality-as-sin so fresh in my mind, it's impossible to ignore the differences in Boccaccio's authentically medieval approach.  He's not above a bawdy phallic joke or two if that gives you any idea of where he's coming from (Saint Stiffen-in-the-Hand and Saint Stiffen-in-the-Hollows make their appearances on pages 131 and 145), and he even ends his riotous story about Alatiel with a priceless double entendre of a proverb that manages to sum up the character's romantic escapades without moralizing: "A kissed mouth doesn't lose its freshness: like the moon it comes up fresh again" (147-148).  I can't expect to top that ending, so I will exit with a question instead: why in the hell would you want to read any fake historical fiction set in medieval times when you could just read real medieval fiction instead?  It boggles the mind!

Previous posts on The Decameron

Dante, Boccaccio...Burckhardt?

The Decameron #1/10

The Decameron #1.5/10: Boccaccio for Dummies