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Boccaccio's Decameron Day Four Story Two begins on an ironic note. Among the plague-shy aristocrats who are Boccaccio's assembled storytellers, the King has specifically requested a sentimental love tragedy to suit his mood, and requests it directly from Pampinea. But as Boccaccio tells us, Pampinea is in no mood to oblige the King straightforwardly here: "she decided, without straying from his theme, to tell a humorous story. She began in this way: The man who is wicked and thought to be good / Can do no wrong, for no one believes that he would." There are two things worth noting at the outset then: that to some extent the comedy in this tale may represent a sentimental and sad love-story misdirected into the low stuff of comedy (due to the King's request and Pampinea's refusal to grant it, which invites us to question whether in some way the story does grant it) and also that we are in the realm of moralized tales -- the couplet at the beginning reassures us that the story that follows will have a moral purpose, despite what will turn out to be its somewhat racy particulars. Pampinea claims that the story is to demonstrate "the hypocrisy of the monks" and reveal "exactly what it is that they keep hidden beneath their bulging habits" which sounds like another way of hinting...
But the monk in Pampinea's tale is hardly typical: he is in fact an inveterate liar and all-around wicked fellow from Imola, named Berto della Massa. When he soon exhausts the patience of Imola, he moves to Venice -- that "receptacle of all sorts of wickedness," Pampinea says -- where he transforms himself into a monk and "in this disguise pretended to lead an ascetic life, praising repentance and abstinence." The comedy, of course, hinges upon this fake monk meeting an extravagantly attractive and extravagantly stupid woman, Madonna Lisetta or "Lady Dimwit," as Pampinea puts it.
It is at this point in the narrative that we begin to understand the method: for Boccaccio comedy is grotesque, it is the opposite of refined. In a word -- which is particularly necessary, given the Venetian setting and the ultimate involvement in the plot -- it is carnivalesque. This means the frank sexuality is accompanied by a level of lurid cartoonishness, and indeed the strategem whereby the fake monk gets Lady Dimwit into bed is a perfect example of the sort of inverted sublime of Boccaccio's grotesque humor -- Brother Alberto sets it up so that she believes she will be visited by the Angel Gabriel,…
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
Shakespeare's Play "All's Well that ends well" -- a Critique Conflict between generations is a theme prevalent in many of Shakespeare's tragedies, histories, and comedies. Romeo and Juliet struggle against their parents' feud and values. Hamlet battles within himself to deal with the ethics of his father's order for revenge. Hal and his biological father, Henry IV, work out an uneasy coexistence, while the Prince simultaneously resolves his relationship with his
role of Islam as a unifying force Perhaps more than any other religion in the world, Islam has put to work its less obvious sense in order to unify the peoples sharing the same belief. Through its art, its common language and its judicial system that has the Koran teachings at its base, Islam was a unifying force among the Arabic peoples of the Arabic Peninsula, Northern Africa and the
living in the Middle Ages. What new things are available for you to experience? The prelude to modernism The history that establishes origin and evolution of the modern society has its basis from the ancient time. Initially, the world and society featured various practices that today we may perceive as being barbaric and outdated. However, it is essential to acknowledge that it is through the various ages of revolution that the
Dis-missal of the great French fairy tale writers from the palace of King Louis XIV help revolutionize the literary French fairy tales? French fairytales and literature are indeed a topic that is worth discussing. This is because the work compiled by the French writers, back in the 17th and 18th century is still part of the English as well as French literature. Nowadays, the term fairy tale is used by many
" Initially, the painters were given the assignment to create sample frescoes which were to be evaluated. On the basis of the evaluation, they were to be employed or not. However, their talent was rapidly acknowledged and they were commissioned to continue the work without any other testing. The individual scenes constitute a whole because they comprise typological references to one another. They present Moses as prefiguring Christ. We must