Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio is not a singular, enclosed text but rather a series of texts that unfold as a result of a 'frame' tale. The Decameron is set during the plague in Italy, and at the beginning of the story, various people have fled the city and are hiding away in the countryside. They tell tales to pass the time and to amuse themselves and these tales make up The Decameron. The conceit is very similar to that of The Canterbury Tales, although unlike Chaucer, Boccaccio was able to finish his work, and the tales are much more extensive in number and somewhat shorter. One striking aspect of the work is the degree to which the tales exhibit feminist themes. Boccaccio addresses his reader as "dearest ladies," and most of the narrators are women. Many of the tales are of women triumphing over men, such as the story of Gillette of Narbonne (3.9). In this story, the Comte de Roussillon's life...
Gillette is in love with the Comte's son Bertrand. Comte compels his son to marry Gillette as a result of a promise he made to her for her services. Bertrand is unhappy with the match, flees from his new wife's presence, and vows that he will never live with her until she has the ring he wears on his finger and has begotten a son by him. Gillette cleverly orchestrates a trick whereby she secretly takes the place of a servant girl whom Bertrand is enamored with, bears him twin boys, and is finally accepted as his wife, despite her low birth.
Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron The Black Death of 1348 forms the background to Boccaccio's Decameron; a group of ten young high-born citizens of Florence -- seven women and three men -- flee the city to escape the disease and take refuge in the villas outside the city walls. The idea of refuge lies behind the form of the text, and the place of refuge is not only an escape but a
In The Inferno, Beatrice is more the goal to which the poet aspires as he passes through Hades, and later through Purgatorio before reaching Beatrice in the ideal Paradise. Many of the elements of courtly love, which Dante expresses elsewhere with reference to his beloved Beatrice, are evident in this epic work as well. For example, Beatrice and the Virgin Mary are the two women who send Virgil to guide
Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron in the century before Geoffrey Chaucer undertook a similar project in Britain, with both The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales involving a number of stories told by members of the group, with the group in each case gathered with a common purpose, and with the stories connected by links which describe the actions of the company (Root 1). Chaucer also took some of the stories
Per cio che, secondo che egli le mostrava, niun d' era che non-solamente una festa ma molte non-ne fossero, a reverenza delle quali per diverse cagioni mostrava l'uomo e la donna doversi abstenere da cos' fatti congiugnimenti, sopra questi aggiugnendo digiuni e quattro tempora e vigilie d'apostoli e di mille altri santi e venerd' e sabati e la domenica del Signore e la quaresima tutta, e certi punti della
In her discourse, "The Treasure of the City of Ladies," De Pizan contemplated how human society had developed the psyche and perception that females are inherently inferior to males. This issue was borne out of the author's observation how literary and scholarly works portray a common stereotype of women as subversive to men, depicted as uneducated and not able to create decisions for themselves. In the words of Pizan,
Ovid, Giovanni Boccaccio, and the authors of One Thousand and One Nights use frame narratives to add continuity and structure to the literary composition. Framing serves several literary functions. For one, framing establishes an independent narrator. The reader comes to trust and relate to this narrator, who is fictional and yet not quite a character of any of the internal narratives. This also allows the authors of their respective stories
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