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.

This essay reconsiders Duns Scotus's life in light of recent advancements in textual criticism and the considerable amount of information about the medieval educational system that has become available in the last couple of decades. As a result, it sheds new light on several aspects that had so far perplexed interpreters, including Duns Scotus’s possible stay in Cambridge, the way he commented on the Sentences in Oxford and Paris, and the precise dates of his Paris regency.