Chapter 1 - Ethical Fables and Antifeminist Exempla

Summary

Chapter 1 begins by exploring Boccaccio’s debt to Aesopic fables, which were widely used in teaching Latin grammar. In the medieval educational system, ancient literature was frequently justified by the claim that the texts inculcated students with moral virtue, and the fables were presented as normative in both the linguistic and ethical spheres. Boccaccio recombines and reassembles their narrative details and plotlines, denaturalizing the apparent inevitability of the inherited outcomes and lessons. The Decameron also draws on the enormous patrimony of Middle-Eastern narrative materials that penetrated the West around the time of the Crusades. The chapter’s later sections investigate two didactic collections of Islamicate origin that circulated widely: the Book of the Seven Sages of Rome and the Disciplina Clericalis. Boccaccio borrows most extensively from the antifeminist tradition they embody in the novelle of Day 7, dedicated to the tricks that women play on their husbands. He rewrites a number of traditional anecdotes, undercutting their misogyny by allowing us to sympathize with the female protagonists and transforming the tales into celebrations of feminine ingenuity.