Abstract
How should a writer present an alarming truth? How does one convince readers that they must rethink their own social context, their internalized values, their very identities? Literary history offers three alternative answers: directly, indirectly, or not at all. Day VI, which reprises the subject matter of Day I—the power of ingegno as expressed in language—illustrates all three alternatives.1 Madonna Filippa of Prato, who publicly endorses her own adultery and impugns the laws of her city (VI. 7), epitomizes the direct approach; while VI. 9, where Boccaccio privileges the freethinking Guido Cavalcanti, shows nearly the same bluntness. In the famous Cipolla story (VI. 10), the truth is wrapped in allegory and garlanded with laughter. The story of Chichibio in VI. 4, an understated gem, elevates laughter—or rather the role of laughter in upending logic and dissolving class barriers—to the level of truth itself; while the fair Cesca in VI. 8 represents a human intelligence so numb to meaning that neither direct nor indirect communication is of any use at all. Boccaccio fittingly sets these dramatics of wit, together with five other related narratives, in a context of misrule. Having concluded Day V with an outbreak of erotic insolence by Dioneo, he begins Day VI with another interpersonal eruption. We may see the author as using these chaotic interludes in Day VI to highlight the subversive power of ingegno, and alert us to the radical implications of the next three days.
Keywords
Alarming Truth Radical Implication Literate Sophistication Related Narrative Dinner ClubPreview
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Notes
- 2.Pamela D. Stewart, “La novella di madonna Oretta e le due parti del Decameron,” in Yearbook of Italian Studies (1973–75), 27–40; reprinted in Retorica e mimica nel ‘Decameron’ e nella commedia del Cinquecento (Florence: Olschki, 1986), pp. 19–38;Google Scholar
- Robert Hollander, Boccaccio’s Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), p. 41, n.50.Google Scholar
- 4.itaque nulla alia in civitate, nisi in qua populi potestas summa est, ullum domicilium libertas habet; qua quidem certe nihil potest esse dulcius, et quae si aequa non est, ne libertas quidem est. (Hence liberty has no dwelling-place in any state except that in which the people’s power is the greatest, and surely nothing can be sweeter than liberty; but if it is not the same for all, it does not deserve the name of liberty.) De re publica, I.xxxi. 47. For the Livy references in context, see Chaim Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), pp. 9–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 7.Holloway notes a number of instances in which delle Vigne produces both stylistic tone and epistolary examples that were followed by Brunetto. See Julia Bolton Holloway, Twice-Told Tales: Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 3, 5, 8, 23, 35,61, 80, and 84.Google Scholar
- 14.As an ingenious storyteller, Cipolla has attracted a following of contemporary readers, including Guido Almansi, Giuseppe Mazzotta, and Millicent Marcus, who parse his performance as a metafictional image of poetic creation itself. In response to these, Victoria Kirkham (“The Word, the Flesh, and the Decameron,” Romance Philology 41.2 (November 1987) 127–49) has more soberly assessed Cipolla as an example of the self-serving misuse of rhetoric described by Cicero and Brunetto. Kirkham’s remarks are especially apposite when considered in light of the following novella, VII. 1, where Boccaccio assigns a moral order to poesis itself.Google Scholar