Literary Devices in Decameron
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
The story begins in Florence, Italy, circa 1348, around the time of an outbreak of the Plague and at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. Boccaccio gives a grim description of the city as it's grip...
Narrator Point of View
Shmoop doesn't mean to be elusive here, but we're talking about one hundred stories and eleven different narrators (counting the frame story). So to be clearer, have a look at this breakdown:Frame...
Genre
In the most basic of terms, The Decameron is an early prose novel, probably the first written in the Italian vernacular. We can call the work as a whole a comedy, even though disease and death are...
Tone
It would be impractical to identify the tone of each of the 100 stories of The Decameron, and it won't be on the exam, so we'll start with the frame narrative and the author. We're most aware of th...
Writing Style
Although Boccaccio follows the well-established tradition of modestly berating his own literary abilities, there's no real way that he truly believed that he was a writer of small talent. Just look...
What's Up With the Title?
Boccaccio uses the naming pattern of The Hexameron, St. Ambrose's series of six sermons on the Creation to create a portmanteau of the Greek δέκα ("ten") and ἡμέρα ("day"). So we get De...
What's Up With the Ending?
Boccaccio offers an "Author's Epilogue" after the conclusion of the storytelling game and the return of the brigata to Florence. It's part of the narrative frame or cornice that began with the Pr...
Tough-o-Meter
If you stick with a good translation, the toughest thing about this work is the length. The stories are wickedly funny (most of the time), hugely bawdy, and irreverent. Boccaccio does get philosoph...
Trivia
Boccaccio's stepmom was Margherita de' Mardoli, a relative of Beatrice Portinari. You know, the Beatrice—Dante's great love and purpose for his mystical journey through Hell, Purgatory and Parad...
Steaminess Rating
Domestic abuse? Sexual slavery? Sexual slavery perpetrated by a convent full of nuns? Murder? Adultery? Vulgar punch lines? Sacrilege? Total shagfest? The Real Housewives of Medieval Europe? Check...
Allusions
We're only giving you a small sample of the many works that left a mark on The Decameron. Shmoop doesn't want your head to explode. We need you in one piece so you can click through the rest of th...