SOURCE: Forni, Pier Massimo. “Realism and the Needs of the Story.” In Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio's “Decameron,” pp. 43-54. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

[In the following excerpt, Forni examines Boccaccio's opening strategies for the stories in the Decameron, focusing on his ability to move from the familiar to the unusual.]

The sixteenth-century pioneer of Boccaccio studies Francesco Bonciani observed from an Aristotelian perspective, that any given novella of the Decameron can be divided into three parts: a “prolago” (prologue), a “scompiglio” (the knotting of the plot), and a “sviluppo,” or “snodamento” (dénouement) (1972: 164-65). Of these, the “prolago” is to be regarded as a pre-narrative introduction. It is the part that gives the essential information about characters and facts, and fades into the first stirrings of action. Bonciani's notion of “prolago” coincides approximately with what modern students of fiction call “initial situation,” “background,” “background and descriptive material,” “exposition,” or “introduction.”¹ As Thomas M. Greene, among many others, has observed, this part of the story offers a picture of stability, even as it brings to the fore premonitions of change: “We begin with an initial equilibrium which has maintained itself for a considerable period of time before the story begins; a pre-narrative indefinite balances the post-narrative indefinite extension. But the initial equilibrium is nonetheless vulnerable by definition, since it is threatened by those forces or events which set the narrative in action” (1968: 300) [“Forms of Accommodation in the Decameron,” Italica 45 (1968): 296–313].

In the opening tension, which leads to what Bonciani calls “scompiglio,” we clearly perceive the tension which is at the heart of the story, that which makes a story a story. Maurice Valency's definition of the novella aptly captures the nature of the genre:

The word nuovo, from which novella is derived, had in its day a variety of connotations. Primarily it meant new; it could mean young, fresh, strange, or extraordinary. The word novella therefore carried the idea not only of something new—a piece of news—but also of something remarkable, something worth telling. This something worth telling was usually advanced as fact, and the resulting literary genre was by nature realistic, and could be distinguished from the fiaba which was fantastic.

(1960: 1) [The Palace of Pleasure: An Anthology of the Novella, New York: Capricorn, 1960]

Thus, as Walter R. Davis has remarked:

Central to the effect of a novella […] is a kind of double relation to its audience's lives. On the one hand, the novella is introduced by a narrator in direct rapport with his audience (as if he were an oral storyteller) almost as if it were part of their lives: this really happened in such-and-such a time and place, it is real, it is true, the narrator keeps insisting. On the other hand, it is also something arresting that will take them out of their lives into the realm of the unusual, the strange, the wonderful. The novella, like many a modern “news” story, dwells on the “strange but true,” and is constantly insisting, as it were, on the fictional quality of everyday life. Hence, for instance, its frequent employment of violent dramatic reversal.

(1981: 3) [“Boccaccio's Decameron: The Implications of Binary Form,” Modern Language Quarterly 42 (1981): 3–20]

Every novella stages a number of transitions from the notum to the novum: from flows of continuity to their fraction, from the well-known to the new, and from the ordinary to the extraordinary. This simple, structural truth is the point of departure for the considerations assembled in the following pages.

This chapter's general subject will be a crucial zone in the rhetoric of narration of the Boccaccian storytellers: the zone of inception. The opening of a story is a privileged space, one that lends itself to a critical discourse which transcends mere questions of narrative sequence and goes to the heart of the narrative act. In particular, our focus will be on phenomena of contextualization. A typical opening procedure used by the narrators in the Decameron is that of evoking a context of conformity around their narrative contents. Viktor Shklovsky eloquently showed how in literary texts decontextualization is often at work, how the reader is made to see the object as for the first time (1990: 1-14) [Theory of Prose, Elmwood Park, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 1990]. But the narrators at times employ the inverse strategy, that of showing the object as if for the thousandth time, relegating it to the realm of the ordinary and the indistinct. This narrative necessity of mentioning the unmarked, of rehearsing the unremarkable, constitutes the fundamental interest of the present pages.

The Boccaccian brigata's narrative discourse is marked by the recurrence of conversive segments which situate the content of the stories within a context of normalcy.² Let us turn, for example, to the premise of the book's first story. Musciatto Franzesi, finding himself with a great amount of unfinished business in France which requires immediate attention, chooses a number of agents—Ciappelletto is one of them—who will act on his behalf. As Panfilo presents the initial situation, he discreetly underlies the normality of the occurrence:

[…] sentendo egli li fatti suoi, sí come le piú volte son quegli de' mercatanti, molto intralciati in qua e in là […]

(I 1, 7)

But finding that his affairs, as is usually the case with merchants, were entangled here, there, and everywhere […]

(69; emphasis added)

In like fashion, Filomena will observe, in Day V, that what happens to the young, unmarried and noble Nastagio degli Onesti should not be surprising: “sí come de' giovani avviene, essendo senza moglie s'innamorò” (V 8, 5); “Being as yet unmarried, he fell in love, as is the way with young men” (457; emphasis added). And Fiammetta will adhere to the same rhetorical convention in the following story of Federigo degli Alberighi: “Il quale, sí come il piú de' gentili uomini avviene, d'una gentil donna […] s'innamorò […] sí come di leggiere adiviene, le ricchezze mancarono” (V 9, 6-7); “In the manner of most young men of gentle breeding, Federigo lost his heart to a noble lady […] Federigo lost his entire fortune (as can easily happen)” (463-64; emphasis added).

A merchant who, by the way, is a historical figure (cf. Branca 51, n.5) [Vittore Branca, Boccaccio Medievale i nuovi studi sul Decameron, Firenze: Sansoni, 1986] finds himself in circumstances seen as typical to all merchants, whether they are to be encountered inside the stories as characters or outside in real life. A young man (we do not know whether he is recognized by the audience as a historical character, but he is presented as such by the narrator) is portrayed in a similar way, surrounded by the evoked chorus of all the young people burning with love just as he does. We are asked to view the contents of the story in light of what happens every day in real life. Rather than true information, this is a kind of pseudo-information. These are fragments of a rhetoric of the notum: we are told what we already know, we are reminded that that's the way life is.

The colloquial segments, connecting fictional events with the extratextual world, and situating them within the sphere of the ordinary, not only project a light of verisimilitude on the stories and color them realistically, but assume a significant function in the texture of narrative discourse as well. To begin to see that in detail, let us go back to the opening passage of the novella of Ser Ciappelletto:

Ragionasi adunque che essendo Musciatto Franzesi di ricchissimo e gran mercatante in Francia cavalier divenuto e dovendone in Toscana venire con messer Carlo Senzaterra, fratello del re di Francia, da papa Bonifazio addomandato e al venir promosso, sentendo egli li fatti suoi, sí come le piú volte son quegli de' mercatanti, molto intralciati in qua e in là e non potersi di leggiere né subitamente stralciare, pensò quegli commettere a piú persone […]

(I 1, 7)

It is said, then, that Musciatto Franzesi, having become a fine gentleman after acquiring enormous wealth and fame as a merchant in France, was obliged to come to Tuscany with the brother of the French king, the Lord Charles Stateless, who had been urged and encouraged by Pope Boniface. But finding that his affairs, as is usually the case with merchants, were entangled here, there, and everywhere, and being unable quickly or easily to unravel them, he decided to place them in the hands of a number of different people.

(69)

The reference to the universe of the notum—“sí come le piú volte son quegli de' mercatanti”—supports the circumstantial contexture (“essendo […] e dovendone […] sentendo […]”) out of which the first significant event will eventually coalesce (“pensò”). The listener is asked to dwell on the terrain of the usual and unremarkable, as the contents that make the story, that make it unusual, and therefore memorable, inch closer. The momentary grounding in conformity primes us for the crucial deviation. The story is told because of the unusual, but through the usual. The unheard of must emerge from that which is known, the perception of difference can only be produced from within the perception of the norm.

Emphasis on the ordinary often entails formulas hinging upon “veggiamo”: “avvenne, sí come noi veggiamo talvolta di state avvenire, che subitamente il cielo si chiuse d'oscuri nuvoli” (V 7, 11); “they suddenly found that the sky had become overcast with thick dark clouds, such as we occasionally observe in the course of the summer” (450). “Sí come noi tutto il giorno veggiamo per cammino avvenir de' signori” (II 3, 20); “in the style regularly to be observed in gentlemen of quality when they are travelling” (130). “E veggendo molti uomini nella corte del padre usare, gentili e altri, sí come noi veggiamo nelle corti” (IV 1, 6); “In her father's court, she encountered many people of the kind to be found in any princely household, of whom some were nobly bred and others not” (332-33; emphasis added).

At other times an explicit reference is made to the habits of the community to which the brigata belongs: “Elena, vestita di nero sí come le nostre vedove vanno” (VIII 7, 6); “Elena, who was dressed (as our widows usually are) in black” (621). “E essendosene […] andata, come nostro costume è di state, a stare a una sua bellissima possessione in contado” (VII 6, 7); “But having gone to stay, as we Florentines are apt to do in the summer, at her beautiful country villa” (551). “come usanza è delle nostre donne, l'anno di state […] se n'andava in contado a una sua possessione” (V 9, 10); “every summer, in accordance with Florentine custom, she went away with her son to a country estate of theirs” (464; emphasis added).

“When I come across even the most trivial statements in a narrative,” observes Gerald Prince,” I (may) feel—or know—that the triviality is only superficial and temporary because it is oriented, because it is meaningful in terms of what is to come” (1982: 157) Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative, Berlin: Mouton, 1982]. What do we feel in our bland, innocent, trivial statements? Quite simply, we feel that the story is beginning—or that it is beginning again, since the sense of a beginning is not limited only to the opening sequences. A story begins again every time a sense of stability is reestablished. Rhythms of inertia, contextures of lull, continue to appear throughout the course of a story. There is a continual need for a background from which a new event will eventually arise.

Aside from the rubrics, it is the expository preludes to narration, what we have called exordia, which provide the first mention of the events of each story. Emilia's exordium on Day I promises something memorable: “Né io altressí tacerò un morso dato da un valente uomo secolare a uno avaro religioso con un motto non meno da ridere che da commendare” (I 6, 3); “I likewise will describe a stinging rebuke, but one which was administered by an honest layman to a grasping friar, with a gibe no less amusing than it was laudable” (96). Having created an expectation for the jibe,³ Emilia begins the story by resorting to a leisurely parenthetic cadence. She situates the action in the recent past, in the most familiar of places, and remarks upon well-known customs:

Fu dunque, o care giovani, non è ancora gran tempo, nella nostra città un frate minore inquisitore della eretica pravità, il quale, come che molto s'ingegnasse di parer santo e tenero amatore della cristiana fede, sí come tutti fanno, era non meno buono investigatore di chi piena aveva la borsa che di chi di scemo nella fede sentisse.

(I 6, 4)

Not long ago then, dear young ladies, there was in our city a Franciscan, an inquisitor on the look-out for filthy heretics, who whilst trying very hard, as they all do, to preserve an appearance of saintly and tender devotion to the Christian faith, was no less expert at tracking down people with bulging purses than at seeking out those whom he deemed to be lacking in faith.

(96; emphasis added)

What does Emilia accomplish here by insisting on the closeness of the narrated reality to the brigata, and by emphasizing the ordinariness of her premise (“sí come tutti fanno”)? She rouses the audience's attention as she winds up the narrative mechanism. The brevitas of the exordium was directed at explaining the essence and novelty of the story. Now the prolago proposes a minimal elaboration of the circumstances, in which the notum has a prominent position. The value of the apparently banal statement “sì come tutti fanno,” then, is to be assessed not only by looking ahead, toward the fracture in the continuity which is just around the corner, but also by paying attention to what came before, that is, to the exordium, where a sense of the infraction of a norm (essentially: “I am about to tell you something remarkable”) has already been planted. A statement that seems negligible, instead must be seen as a cogwheel in a rather sophisticated narrative-discursive mechanism.

The exordium of VI 4 is more elaborate than that of I 6:

Quantunque il pronto ingegno, amorose donne, spesso parole presti e utili e belle, secondo gli accidenti, a' dicitori, la fortuna ancora, alcuna volta aiutatrice de' paurosi, sopra la lor lingua subitamente di quelle pone che mai a animo riposato per lo dicitore si sareber sapute trovare: il che io per la mia novella intendo di dimostrarvi.

(VI 4, 3)

Amorous ladies, whilst a ready wit will often bring a swift phrase, apposite and neatly turned, to the lips of the speaker, it sometimes happens that Fortune herself will come to the aid of people in distress by suddenly putting words into their mouths that they would never have been capable of formulating when their minds were at ease; which is what I propose to show you with this story of mine.

(491)

Nonetheless, the passage from the promise of the unusual to the arrangement of a picture containing references to common knowledge is repeated. The following prolago responds to the preceding exordium:

Currado Gianfigliazzi, sí come ciascuna di voi e udito e veduto puote avere, sempre della nostra città è stato notabile cittadino, liberale e magnifico, e vita cavalleresca tenendo continuamente in cani e in uccelli s'è dilettato, le sue opere maggiori al presente lasciando stare.

(VI 4, 4)

As all of you will have heard and seen for yourselves, Currado Gianfigliazzi has always played a notable part in the affairs of our city. Generous and hospitable, he lived the life of a true gentleman, and, to say nothing for the moment of his more important activities, he took a constant delight in hunting and hawking.

(491; emphasis added)

As a further example, let us take the exordium of VIII 5:

Dilettose donne, il giovane che Elissa poco avanti nominò, cioè Maso del Saggio, mi farà lasciare stare una novella la quale io di dire intendeva, per dirne una di lui e d'alcuni suoi compagni: la quale ancora che disonesta non sia per ciò che vocaboli in essa s'usano che voi d'usar vi vergognate, nondimeno è ella tanto da ridere che io la pur dirò.

(VIII 5, 3)

Delectable ladies, after hearing Elissa referring just now to the young man called Maso del Saggio, I have been prompted to discard the tale I was intending to relate in order to tell you one about Maso and some of his companions, which, though not improper, contains certain words that you ladies would hesitate to use. But since it is highly amusing, I am sure you would like to hear it.

(610-11; emphasis added)

And let us place beside it the ensuing reference to the notum:

Come voi tutte potete avere udito, nella nostra città vegnono molto spesso rettori marchigiani, li quali generalmente sono uomini di povero cuore e di vita tanto strema e tanto misera, che altro non pare ogni lor fatto che una pidocchieria.

(VIII 5, 4)

As all of you will doubtless have heard, the chief magistrates of our city very often come from the Marches, and tend as a rule to be mean-hearted men, who lead such a frugal and beggarly sort of life that anyone would think they hadn't a penny to bless themselves with.

(611; emphasis added)

The rhetoric of beginnings relies on the repetition of knowledge shared by the community: “Sí come ciascuna di voi e udito e veduto puote avere”; “Come voi tutte potete avere udito.” The object of this common knowledge is inscribed in the realm of the usual: “Currado Gianfigliazzi […] sempre della nostra città è stato notabile cittadino;” “nella nostra città vengono molto spesso rettori marchigiani, li quali generalmente.” As they begin to tell the story (which means: surprising, amusing, never heard before deeds and words are expected) the narrators declare that they are not saying anything new. Insistence upon the impression of the “nothing out of the ordinary,” helps establish the equilibrium, the “uneventfulness” (of the pre-narrative time when, as it were, everything is and nothing happens), out of which the event will emerge. Let us see this actualizing of the narrative potential in our last two beginnings:

Il quale [Currado Gianfigliazzi] con un suo falcone un dí presso a Peretola una gru ammazzata […]

(VI 4, 5)

One day, having killed a crane with one of his falcons in the vicinity of Peretola […]

(491)

Ora, essendovene venuto uno per podestà, tra gli altri molti giudici che seco menò, ne menò uno il quale si facea chiamare messer Niccola da San Lepidio […]

(VIII 5, 5)

Now, one of these March-men came here once to take up his appointment as podestà, and among the numerous judges he brought with him, there was one called Messer Niccola da San Lepidio […]

(611; emphasis added)

The polarization of exordium and prolago is particularly evident in the story of Ferondo:

Carissime donne, a me si para davanti a doversi far raccontare una verità che ha, troppo piú che di quello che ella fu, di menzogna sembianza; e quella nella mente m'ha ritornata l'avere udito un per un altro essere stato pianto e sepellito. Dirò adunque come un vivo per morto sepellito fosse, e come poi per risuscitato, e non per vivo, egli stesso e molti altri lui credessero essere della sepoltura uscito, colui di ciò essendo per santo adorato che come colpevole ne dovea piú tosto essere condannato. Fu adunque in Toscana una badia, e ancora è, posta, sí come noi ne veggiam molte, in luogo non

troppo frequentato dagli uomini, nella quale fu fatto abbate un monaco […]

(III 8, 3-4)

Dearest ladies, I find myself confronted by a true story, demanding to be told, which sounds far more fictitious than was actually the case, and of which I was reminded when I heard of the man who was buried and mourned in mistake for another. My story, then, is about a living man who was buried for dead, and who later, on emerging from his tomb, was convinced that he had truly died and been resurrected—a belief that was shared by many other people, who consequently venerated him as a Saint when they should have been condemning him as a fool. In Tuscany, then, there was and still is a certain abbey, situated, as so many of them are, a little off the beaten track. Its newly-appointed abbot […]

(294-95; emphasis added)

The dark and congested initial digest, marked by the unusual and the bizarre, turns into a narrative beginning made somewhat soothing and tranquil through the allusions to the everyday (“e ancora è,” “sí come noi ne veggiam molte”). It is as though the story were reluctant to coalesce into its narrative core. As it yields to the coaxing of the narrator who calls it to life, it resists ever so slightly by voicing claims of normalcy.

Is it sufficient to go back to the exordia in order to assess the narrative yield of these allusions to the everyday? When we witness the departure for Cyprus of Landolfo Rufolo, the wealthy merchant from Ravello, we are reassured, in the usual manner, of the normalcy of his actions:

Costui adunque, sí come usanza suole esser de' mercatanti, fatti suoi avvisi, comperò un grandissimo legno e quello tutto, di suoi denari, caricò di varie mercatantie e andonne con esse in Cipri.

(II 4 6)

This Rufolo, then, having made the sort of preliminary calculations that merchants normally make, purchased a very large ship, loaded it with a mixed cargo of goods paid for entirely out of his own pocket, and sailed with them to Cyprus.

(136; emphasis added)

Landolfo is presented as a merchant like any other, one who does what all merchants do, one safely moving in the realm of the ordinary. We, the audience, however, sense and know that unusual events will follow, that this is not just any other trip, taken by just any other merchant. How do we know that we are about to encounter events that are anything but ordinary? We know it by virtue of what was stated in the previous sentence of the prolago:

Tralle quali cittadette n'è una chiamata Ravello, nella quale, come che oggi v'abbia di ricchi uomini, ve n'ebbe già uno il quale fu ricchissimo, chiamato Landolfo Rufolo; al quale non bastando la sua ricchezza, disiderando di radoppiarla, venne presso che fatto di perder con tutta quella se stesso.

(II 4, 5)

In one of these little towns, called Ravello, there once lived a certain Landolfo Rufolo, and although Ravello still has its quota of rich men, this Rufolo was a very rich man indeed. But being dissatisfied with his fortune, he sought to double it, and as a result he nearly lost every penny he possessed, and his life too.

(136; emphasis added)

We are also aware of it because of what Lauretta said in the exordium:

Graziosissime donne, niuno atto della fortuna, secondo il mio giudicio, si può veder maggiore che vedere uno d'infima miseria a stato reale elevare, come la novella di Pampinea n'ha mostrato essere al suo Alessandro adivenuto. E per ciò che a qualunque della proposta materia da quinci innanzi novellerà converrà che infra questi termini dica, non me vergognerò io di dire una novella, la quale, ancora che miserie maggiori in sé contenga, non per ciò abbia cosí splendida riuscita. Ben so che, pure a quella avendo riguardo, con minor diligenzia fia la mia udita: ma altro non potendo sarò scusata.”

(II 4, 3-4)

Fairest ladies, it is in my opinion impossible to envisage a more striking act of Fortune than the spectacle of a person being raised from the depths of poverty to regal status, which is what happened, as we have been shown by Pampinea's story, in the case of her Alessandro. And since, from now on, nobody telling a story on the prescribed subject can possibly exceed those limits, I shall not blush to narrate a tale which, whilst it contains greater misfortunes, does not however possess so magnificent an ending. I realize of course, when I think of the previous story, that my own will be followed less attentively. But since it is the best I can manage, I trust that I shall be forgiven.

(136; emphasis added)

Though it may pale in comparison with Pampinea's, Lauretta's story is, of course, of the same type (it follows the pattern given by queen Filomena). The members of the brigata were asked to tell stories on “chi da diverse cose infestato, sia oltre alla speranza riuscito a lieto fine” (I Concl., 11); “those who after suffering a series of misfortunes are brought to a state of unexpected happiness” (112). And continuing backwards we would arrive at the main narrator's Proem: “Nelle quali novelle piacevoli e aspri casi d'amore e altri fortunati avvenimenti si vederanno cosí ne' moderni tempi avvenuti come negli antichi” (Pr. 14); “In these tales will be found a variety of love adventures, bitter as well as pleasing, and other exciting incidents, which took place in both ancient and modern times” (47).

Our expectation of the extraordinary, then, is deeply rooted in the act that is being performed. A story is being told, and “we tell stories when we know something unusual” (Weinrich 1978: 163) [Harald Weinrich, Tempus: Le funzioni dei tempi nel testo, Bologna: il Mulino, 19978]. Every assertion of normalcy (“sí come usanza suole esser de' mercatanti”) must work in the presence of a primary psychological disposition that regulates our sharing in the ritual of narration: that of the expectation of something that breaks with the norm. Any normalization, any enhancement of the ordinary, is suspicious. Or, in other words, it follows the rules of the game. By tracing the contour of the usual with parenthetical ease, the narrator sets up the character for his future as a character, while at the same time setting us up for our role as co-protagonists in the narrative act. He changes positions, makes himself more comfortable in his seat, and tells us: pay attention, a story is about to begin. In the beginning of the story we can read the story of the beginning, of all beginnings.

These realistic, normalizing, colloquial segments bring an evasive element to the narrative flow. While telling about his characters Musciatto, Landolfo, Nastagio, and Federigo the narrator takes leave of them for a moment to cast an eye upon all other merchants or all other young people. This moment is marked by the limits of the parenthesis. The parenthetical rhythm is the rule in the Decameron's areas of inception:

In Ravenna, antichissima città di Romagna, furon già assai nobili e gentili uomini […]

(V 8, 4)

In Ravenna, a city of great antiquity in Romagna, there once used to live a great many nobles and men of property […]

(457)

Nella nostra città, la qual sempre di varie maniere e di nuove genti è stata abondevole, fu, ancora non è gran tempo, un dipintore chiamato Calandrino, uom semplice e di nuovi costumi.

(VIII 3, 4)

Not long ago, there lived in our city, where there has never been any lack of unusual customs and bizarre people, a painter called Calandrino, a simple, unconventional sort of fellow […]

(596)

Dovete dunque sapere che, secondo che raccontano i provenzali, in Provenza furon già due nobili cavalieri […]

(IV 9, 4)

You must know, then, that according to the Provençals, there once lived in Provence two noble knights […]

(388)

Ghino di Tacco, per la sua fierezza e per le sue ruberie uomo assai famoso, essendo di Siena cacciato e nimico de' conti di Santafiore, ribellò Radicofani alla Chiesa di Roma […]

(X 2, 5)

Ghino di Tacco, whose feats of daring and brigandage brought him great notoriety after being banished from Siena and incurring the enmity of the Counts of Santa Fiore, staged a rebellion of Radicofani against the Church of Rome;

(738)

These are typically Boccaccian configurations of discursive and narrative ease, in which the narrator, having taken the first step, leisurely marks the time. The parenthetical clause, however, far from appearing solely at the beginning of the stories, is one of the stylistic traits that most characterizes the prose of the Decameron in its entirety. We should take an interest not only in the notional contents of our realistic segments, but in their syntactical rhythms as well. The parenthetical clause is a fascinating token of reluctance to proceed, a minimal detour, a leisurely glance cast around on the threshold of the event. It is a rhetorical device which provides a momentary shelter from the pressing demands of teleological purpose. Everything we have said about the role of the banal statements could be re-examined profitably within the context of a study of the role of the parenthetical clause in the Decameron as a whole.

Are parenthetical statements devices of captatio benevolentiae? Is there something concessive or conciliatory about them? To what degree do they contribute to the program of non-aggressive communication that is at work among the young narrators? There seems to be little doubt that this realistic, parenthetic pseudo-information promotes a sort of innocent complicity between narrator and listener. The latter is blandished, cajoled by the presentation of a shared reality. Not only is the difference between what is recounted and what belongs to the real world minimized, but that among the protagonists of the narrative act as well. A form of momentary evasion that offers cover from sequential and teleological rigor, the parenthesis represents one of the great architectural themes of the book. It echoes, within the syntactical music of the page, the theme of a flight from the flow of history (the plague in the city, the destiny of everyone), followed by the refuge in an unscathed zone of recreation (the edenic retreat in the countryside), and ultimately followed by a return to the eventful and perilous flow of life.

Notes

1. Cf. Propp 1984: 24-26 [Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984]; Weinrich 1978: 125-46; Longacre and Chenoweth 1986 [Robert E. Longacre, and Vida Chenoweth, “Discourse as Music,” Word 37, 1–2 (1986): 125–39]: 126; Longacre 1983 [The Grammar of Discourse, New York: Plenum, 1983]: 21; Staples 1990: 35-36 [Max Staples, “Discursive Structure in Boccaccio's Decameron,” Esperienze Letterarie 15, 1 (1990): 31–45].

2. These segments have been noticed by scholars such as Branca (1986: 349) and Padoan (1978: 20-22) [Giorgio Padoan, Il Boccaccio le Muse il Parnasso e l'Arno, Firenze: Olschki, 1978], who have remarked on their realistic import, without bringing to the fore their rhetorical and narrative complexities.

3. In addition to the anticlerical polemic, we find here the theme, so dear to Boccaccio, of an inferior cleverly chastising an unworthy superior. For this type of confrontation, cf. Chiappelli 1984: 21-40 [Fredi Chiapelli, Il legame musaico, Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984].