Introduction

Abstract

In the era of poststructuralist analysis, and lately with Boccaccio’s seven hundredth birth anniversary commemoration (2013), the Decameron has received renewed critical attention as the most contemporary work to emerge from the Italian Middle Ages. Starting from the title page, which elides the author’s name for a surname, galeotto (Galahad, trickster), that intertextually refers to previous works of fiction (e.g., Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Lancelot propre), the Decameron abounds in fictional devices that might be labeled postmodern. The narration, for example, relies on a double framing device wherein an author/narrator tells the story of a group of fictional characters that leaves the plague-infested city of Florence for the countryside where, during ten days (plus four), they tell 100 stories. This narrative device is often replicated within the frame, as the storytellers either relate tales they have heard from others, or empower their own characters to narrate further stories, in a catoptric narrative reflection that highlights the rhetorical nature of the fiction and exposes the artistry of the storyteller and the author as well. Moreover, the author/narrator is not shy, on his part, to interrupt the narration and dialogue with his readers, either to respond to objections and criticism of the book’s subject matter (e.g., Introduction to Day IV, Conclusion), or highlight a character’s fictional nature in the text, as Filostrato does on Day III, when he points out that “one who knows me well has given me the name by which you know me here” (Decameron, 452).¹