Good Writin': Boccaccio on Love (1350 C.E.)

Good Writin’: Boccaccio on Love (1350 C.E.)

February 15th, 2008

Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is truly a classic of late-Medieval/early-Renaissance literature—and for good reason: it was a book that broke many different forms of ground. It’s a novel and a collection of short stories at the same time. So too is it both a somewhat-historical account of The Plague in Italy and a portrait of Italian life in the 1300s. The inevitable question then posits: If not for historical or educational value, why read this book today?

Because it’s just terribly fun to read! Boccaccio’s ten stories told on ten days is a grab-bag of tales that features literally something for everything. We have love stories, war stories, mysteries, farces, folktales, adventures, tales for moral instruction and tales of delicious debauchery. Unlike many Medieval (and, for that matter, Renaissance) authors, Boccaccio’s vision of humanity—and of women in particular—is neither despairing nor damning; he is not obsessed with saints, sins, or salvation. He does not look upon material love (you know…gettin’ it on) with disgust and does not romanticize Love as a Platonic ideal. This latter regard is what makes Boccaccio’s writing so engaging: he is definitely a Romantic writer, a kindred spirit to Byron, Shelley, Keats, and even Blake, but he neither deifies Love’s triumphs nor spends undue time weeping over its castigations. He sees Love for what it is: beautiful, deadly, consoling, killing.

And what’s more, he views it with a certain wry humor that would later become characteristic of all the great Renaissance humanist writers. So, in honor of St. Valentine’s Day (a date which, honestly, I abhor), I present you this clip from Boccaccio’s “Proem” to The Decameron in which he presents a sly, winking glance at gender roles—and the Love that comes between them (oftimes physically)—in the waning days of European feudalism:

Who will deny, that it [love] should be given, for all that it may be worth, to gentle ladies much rather than to men? Within their soft bosoms, betwixt fear and shame, they harbour secret fires of love, and how much of strength concealment adds to those fires, they know who have proved it. Moreover, restrained by the will, the caprice, the commandment of fathers, mothers, brothers, and husbands, confined most part of their time within the narrow compass of their chambers, they live, so to say, a life of vacant ease, and, yearning and renouncing in the same moment, meditate divers matters which cannot all be cheerful. If thereby a melancholy bred of amorous desire make entrance into their minds, it is like to tarry there to their sore distress, unless it be dispelled by a change of ideas. Besides which they have much less power to support such a weight than men. For, when men are enamoured, their case is very different, as we may readily perceive. They, if they are afflicted by a melancholy and heaviness of mood, have many ways of relief and diversion; they may go where they will, may hear and see many things, may hawk, hunt, fish, ride, play or traffic. By which means all are able to compose their minds, either in whole or in part, and repair the ravage wrought by the dumpish mood, at least for some space of time; and shortly after, by one way or another, either solace ensues, or the dumps become less grievous.

So, the lesson is clear: ladies, when feeling down, pick up a book and read if thou canst not…y’know, sew or be of any goddamned use. And men? Should ye feel the sting of Love’s dart, go forth and kill something!

More seriously, Boccaccio shows in but one single paragraph the troubles facing the sexes individually in his age. In a world as sharply divided, with each sex’s role in life almost written in stone, with women practically jailed and men expected to be eternally “pricking on the plain“, what the hell is Love to do?!

You want to know? Read the Decameron.

By Derek C. F. Pegritz on February 15th, 2008 | Scategory: Good Writin' |