Tales From the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio

  2. Capece… Caracciolo Two leading families of the Neapolitan aristocracy. History records no Arrighetto Capece, but Corrado Capece was Manfred’s governor-general in the island of Sicily up to the time of Manfred’s death in 1266. He afterwards led an uprising in Sicily against the Angevin rule, and was captured, defenestrated and hanged in Catania. Contemporary records indicate that his wife was named Biancofiore or Beritola, a lady from a branch of the Caracciolo family, also opposed to Angevin rule.

  3. Lipari… Ponza Both Lipari and Ponza are the chief islands of a group, the first some twenty-five miles north of the Sicilian coast, the second about seventy-five miles west of the Bay of Naples. In describing Ponza as uninhabited at the time of his narrative, B. is engaging in poetic licence.

  4. Currado Conrad II Malaspina, Marquis of Villafranca, who died in 1294, is celebrated by Dante (Purgatorio, VIII, 109–39) for his chivalric virtues of liberality and military valour. The Malaspina rulers of the Lunigiana, being supporters of the Ghibelline cause, would naturally have offered refuge to a fugitive from the Angevins, which is why B. weaves them into his charming but unhistorical fiction.

  5. Cavriuola i.e. doe, or female deer.

  6. Guasparrino d’Oria The d’Oria or Doria family, prominent in Genoese political, military and economic life from the twelfth century onwards was, like the Malaspina family, Ghibelline in its political sympathies. There is no record of a Guasparrino d’Oria during the period in which the events of the novella are supposed to have occurred. Piracy and slave-trading were common practices among Genoese seafarers.

  7. Dismayed… by what he saw The motif of a father discovering his daughter in flagrante with a young lover is one that B. exploits elsewhere in the Decameron, for instance in the tragic tale of Tancred and Ghismonda (IV, 1) and in the richly humorous account of Caterina’s capture of the nightingale (V, 4).

  8. a rebellion in Sicily Clearly a reference to the Sicilian Vespers, the uprising of March 1282, led by Giovanni da Procida and supported by Peter III of Aragon, that forced the Angevins out of Sicily. The ‘fourteen long years’ of which Giannotto later speaks to his gaoler should in fact have been sixteen if (as implied earlier in the story) his misfortunes began with Manfred’s defeat at Benevento in 1266. But historical accuracy is not one of the tale’s strong points.

  9. When the chaste and joyful greetings had been repeated three or four times A direct quotation from the opening lines of canto VII of Dante’s Purgatorio (‘Poscia che l’accoglienze oneste e liete/furo iterate tre e quattro volte’). The text of the Decameron contains many such examples of the insertion of familiar quotations from earlier poets, especially Dante, a practice later commended by the stylistic theorists of the Renaissance.

  10. Lerici A port in Lunigiana near the mouth of the River Magra, where travellers from Genoa and other ‘distant’ parts were accustomed to disem bark en route to Tuscany and Emilia.

  Seventh Story

  1. Beminedab Thought to be based on the biblical Amminadab fleetingly mentioned in the Book of Numbers and in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, this fictitious name is used by other medieval writers to indicate an oriental ruler of an indeterminate epoch. The name has mildly humorous associations.

  2. Alatiel Like Beminedab, the name is fictitious, but it happens to be an anagram of La Lieta (‘The Happy Woman’), offering a possible clue to the way in which the story is intended to be read.

  3. the King of Algarve Algarve, from the Arabic al-Gharb, meaning ‘the West’, was a much more extensive region than the area of that name in modern Portugal. It corresponded roughly to northern Morocco, including a long stretch of the African Mediterranean coast, and the south-western part of the Iberian peninsula. Its wool was greatly prized in European markets. B.’s employers, the Compagnia dei Bardi, imported wool from Algarve via a trading post on the island of Majorca, where Alatiel’s sexual odyssey begins.

  4. neither he nor they could understand what the other party was saying A recurrent feature of Alatiel’s sexual encounters is her inability to communicate verbally with her various abductors. In an absorbing analysis of this particular novella, Guido Almansi argues that ‘Alatiel is not “a beautiful woman”. She is a superhuman figure; mythic, or at least closely related to a myth. Even her linguistic isolation can be read as an ambivalent sign… On the one hand, her complete ignorance of West European languages is convincing from a narrative standpoint, and serves to give special emphasis to the gesticulations of the characters… Yet her non-communication is also… a sign standing for Alatiel’s isolation, which is due to her superhuman features. Any mating with a mythic character must take place in silence, because there can exist no dialogue, no normative vocabulary, for the relationship between man and myth.’ (The Writer as Liar, p. 124.)

  5. Alexandrian fashion Presumably the Egyptian danse du ventre, which would explain the boosting of Pericone’s expectations.

  6. Corinth in the Pelopponese The Italian text reads ‘Chiarenza in Romania’. It was customary to refer to the whole of the Eastern Roman Empire as Romania. Chiarenza is an italianized form of Corinth.

  7. Saint Stiffen-in-the-Hand The Italian text reads ‘santo Cresa in Mari (‘Saint Grow-in-Hand’), an equivocal phallic metaphor of which the variant ‘san Cresa in Val Cava’ (‘Saint-Grow-in-Hollow-Vale’) turns up towards the end of the story (p. 145) in the false account that Alatiel gives to her father of her wanderings. The latter phrase, in common use among humorous poets, was not invented by them, but was the actual name of a sanctuary in the Mugello, a mountainous region to the north-east of Florence.

  8. Prince of Morea Morea, the name given in the fourteenth century to the Peloponnese (that part of the Greek mainland lying south of the Gulf of Corinth), had dynastic ties with the Angevin rulers of Naples. B.’s friend, Niccola Acciaiuoli, spent three years there (1338–41) assisting Catherine of Valois-Courtenay (a descendant of Baldwin II, the last Latin emperor of Constantinople) to establish her claim to the province of Achaca on the north coast of the Peloponnese.

  9. Duke of Athens The title, like that of the Prince of Morea, has encouraged one or two commentators to speculate that the story carries allegorical overtones, Alatiel representing the desirability and impermanence of political power. Walter of Brienne, Duke of Athens, was set up as ruler of Florence in 1342 by the Bardi and Peruzzi banking companies in an attempt to restore their fortunes after making huge losses on loans to Edward III of England and Robert of Naples. He was deposed by the popolo minuto (lesser guilds and merchants) in 1343. B. had made Walter’s personal acquaintance in Naples when the latter was preparing an expedition to assert his territorial claims in Greece.

  10. Aegina The island in the Saronic Gulf, some thirty miles south-west of Athens.

  11. Chios Island in the eastern Aegean, five miles from the west coast of Turkey.

  12. Uzbek Not, as B. claims, the King of the Turks, but the Khan of the Golden Horde of southern Russia. He reigned from 1313 to 1341, establishing friendly relations with both Islam and Christendom. He encouraged the growth of trade between the Crimea and the Italian maritime republics. Naturally there is no connection, except for the name, between the Russian ruler and the character in the story.

  13. the King of Cappadocia, Basano Both the name, Basano, and his title are fictitious. B. probably chose Cappadocia, a strategically important province in Asia Minor, because of its remoteness and its classical literary associations. The name Basano may conceivably reflect that of a chamberlain to King Robert of Naples, Baldon Bassano, who was active at one time on behalf of the Angevins in the eastern Mediterranean.

  14. Aiguesmortes A port on the Provençal coast some twenty miles east of Montpelier, Aiguesmortes was a popular trading centre for Italian merchants from Florence and Genoa. The name (literally ‘dead waters’) stands in marked and significant contrast with the stormy waters over which Alatiel has travelled in her sexual odyssey.

  15. ’A kissed mouth… new again’ Though the saying (‘Bocca b
asciata non perde ventura, anzi rinnuova come fa la luna’) may indeed have become proverbial in Italy, this is its first recorded appearance in literature.

  Eighth Story

  1. Roman imperial authority The title of Holy Roman Emperor passed from French into German hands in 962, with the coronation in Rome of Otto I of Saxony. The historical setting of the tale is imprecise, however. There are numerous antecedents in both classical and medieval literature for B.’s account of the vindictiveness of a woman spurned. It is possible, however, that the initial inspiration for his tale came from Dante’s reference in Purgatorio (VI, 19–24) to the fate of Pierre de la Brosse, whose soul was ‘severed from its body’ by the ‘hatred and envy’ of the Lady of Brabant. According to popular tradition, Mary of Brabant, the second wife of Philip III of France, wrongly accused Pierre de la Brosse, the king’s surgeon, of attempting to rape her. Pierre was charged with treason and hanged in 1278.

  2. Violante The name is one that B. gave to one of his own children, born around 1349, whose death at the age of six or seven is tenderly commemorated by the poet in one of his Latin eclogues.

  3. Strangford Strangford Lough, a sheltered inlet of the Irish Sea on the coast of Ulster, was well known in the Middle Ages as a point of entry into Ireland.

  4. returned to England More precisely to Wales, but for B., as for most Italians of the present day, Wales (like Scotland and Northern Ireland) forms part of Inghilterra. Even Branca describes Wales as ‘the western region of England’ (‘la regione occidentale dell’Inghilterra’).

  5. the new King reopened hostilities The imprecision of the tale’s historical framework is further underlined by the fact that none of the happenings recorded in this paragraph corresponds with any identifiable historical event.

  Ninth Story

  1. they drew up a form of contract Wagers concerning a wife’s fidelity, a commonplace topic in medieval and Renaissance literature, formed what is nowadays known as the ‘cycle de la gageure’ (‘wager cycle’). The similarities between B.’s story and the sub-plot of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline are so obvious as to suggest a direct connection between the two. In Shakespeare’s play, Posthumus, exiled in Rome, wagers Imogen’s chastity against Iachimo’s boast that he will seduce her. Iachimo, having hidden in a trunk in Imogen’s bedroom, emerges as she sleeps and observes a mole on her breast, memorizes details of the room’s furnishings and steals a bracelet. Posthumus, incensed by the apparent evidence of his wife’s infidelity, sails for England with the intention of killing her. But it is almost certain that the source of the wager-plot in Cymbeline was Frederyke of jennen, a translation from a fifteenth-century German version of B.’s story.

  2. a mole, surrounded by a few strands of fine, golden hair Shakespeare transforms this prosaic anatomical detail into ‘A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops/I’ the bottom of a cowslip’ (Cymbeline, II, ii).

  3. Albenga A harbour on the Ligurian coast a few miles west of Finale Ligure, the town from which Zinevra takes her assumed name of Sicurano da Finale. Branca prefers the reading Alba, explaining that this was the old name for Albisola, a harbour slightly north-east of Savona.

  Tenth Story

  1. a city where most of the women look as ugly as sin The ugliness of Pisan women, like the miserliness of Genoese men (see I, 8), was proverbial among Florentines.

  2. vemaccia A white wine, thought to possess medicinal qualities (see X, 2), but here presumably brought into the narrative as a supposed aphrodisiac.

  3. a calendar… of the sort that was once in use in Ravenna Ravenna was said to have as many churches as the number of days in the year, with the result that the city celebrated an extraordinary number of Saints’ days.

  4. the four Ember weeks Specifically, the weeks following the first Sunday in Lent, Whitsunday, 14 September, and 13 December.

  5. Montenero A promontory some twenty miles south of Pisa.

  6. Monaco The principality was a notorious haven for pirates in the fourteenth century. The only other story in the Decameron that includes a reference to Monaco is VIII, 10, where the chief character, Salabaetto, claims that one of his ships has been seized by Monegasque pirates.

  7. mortar sin… pestle sin Bartolomea is deliberately punning on her husband’s reference to mortal sin, using a sexual metaphor that reappears in the story of Monna Belcolore (VIII, 2).

  8. There’s never any rest for the bar The Italian text reads ‘Il mal furo non vuol far festa,’ literally ‘The wicked hole refuses to take a holiday.’ As elsewhere in the story, B. is engaging in gentle mockery of Pisan pronunciation. The sexual pun of the original is made possible because furo, the equivalent of Florentine foro, can refer both to the vagina and to the bar, or legal profession. The translation exploits the sexual connotation of ‘bar’ in American English.

  (Conclusion)

  1. tomorrow is Friday and the next day is Saturday For the reasons spelled out here by Neifile, there is no storytelling on the last two days of the week. Hence the retreat of the storytellers to the countryside includes four days of ablutions, rest and prayer as well as the ten days of storytelling. It should be noted that the ‘Sabbath’ in fourteenth-century Florence ran from noon on Saturday to noon on Sunday, noon being taken to mean the ninth hour of the day after sunrise.

  2. to avoid being joined by others As at other points in the Decameron, stress is laid upon the need of the group to distance itself from the world outside.

  THIRD DAY

  (Introduction)

  1. before tierce was half spent Less than an hour and a half after sunrise.

  2. a most beautiful and ornate palace The description of the second locus amcenus differs from that of the first chiefly in the extended account of the beauties of the walled garden. The connection between the garden and the earthly paradise, or Garden of Eden, becomes explicit with the writer’s assertion (p. 191) that ‘if Paradise were constructed on earth, it was inconceivable that it could take any other form.’

  First Story

  1. slung an axe over his shoulder The narrative detail of the axe, repeated at the end of the story, when read in conjunction with the various references to Masetto’s tending of the nuns’ garden, has obvious phallic overtones.

  Second Story

  1. wisdom… guile This story can be read as a caustic commentary on the concept of honour, with intelligence as a prominent secondary theme. Emphasis is laid throughout on the wisdom of the king and the cleverness of the groom. The two men are engaged in a sophisticated game of cat and mouse, from which both emerge with credit, and with the honour of the sovereign and his queen finally unimpaired.

  2. Agilulf Agilulf, Duke of Turin, through his marriage to the Catholic Bavarian princess Theodelinda, widow of Authari, ascended the Lombard throne in AD 590. Pavia, some twenty miles south of Milan, had fallen to the Lombards in 572 and became the seat of the Lombard kings, whose rule extended over all of the main cities in Italy north of the Po. B.’s knowledge of the Lombard Empire was derived from the Historia Langobardorum, compiled in the latter part of the eighth century by Paulus Diaconus (‘Paul the Deacon’), whose description of Agilulf bears a close resemblance to B.’s own presentation of his character. The assertion, later in the story, that ‘in those days, men wore their hair very long’ (p. 204) is likewise based on a passage from Paulus Diaconus.

  3. a flaming torch in one hand and a stick in the other Like Masetto’s axe in the previous tale, the torch and the stick are strongly suggestive of the character’s intentions.

  Third Story

  1. the forty masses of Saint Gregory Pope Gregory I (‘Gregory the Great’), who ordained that the Kyrie Eleison should be repeated nine times, celebrated thirty masses for the liberation of the soul of the monk Justus. The lady’s deliberate exaggeration of the number contributes to the vigorously anti-clerical tone of the whole story.

  Fourth Story

  1. a tertiary in the Franciscan Order Tertiaries are so called because they belong, not to t
he first order (monks) or to the second (nuns), but to a third order consisting of lay members who take simple vows and are allowed to remain outside the monastery and to own property, whilst following a portion of monastic rule. In B.’s day, they were for the most part Franciscans, and were notorious for their excessive piety. Many of them engaged in self-flagellation, a common devotional practice in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

  2. the sermons of Brother Anastasius or the Plaint of the Magdalen The latter could be a reference to any one of a number of devotional texts bearing some such title, but of the former work there is no record. B. probably invented it himself, furnishing its fictitious author with a name, Anastasius, that was popular in religious orders.

  3. compline The last of the canonical hours, recited at sunset. Friar Puccio’s uncomfortable penance is to coincide with the hours from sunset to sunrise, when the first canonical hour, Matins, is recited.

  4. astride the nag of Saint Benedict or Saint John Gualbert The colourful metaphor for sexual congress is invoked because the two saints were often depicted riding a donkey, in this case standing (literally) for the male member.

  Fifth Story

  1. the Vergellesi family of Pistoia A leading family of Pistoia, north of Florence, the Vergellesi were politically active in the early part of the fourteenth century on behalf first of the White Guelphs then of the Ghibellines. Francesco de’ Vergellesi is recorded as having undertaken a political mission to the French court in 1313, and around 1326 he was indeed appointed podestà (governor) in the province of Lombardy.