Folklore: The Decameron

Subject: Folklore: The Decameron
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Mar 20 - 06:52 AM

I have to admit to not having read all of Boccaccio's Decameron, though I know some of his tales got re-cycled via Chaucer and Shakespeare and were also featured in Victorian era poetry and painting.

But I was reminded that the book relates to an outbreak of disease in some ways not unlike the one we are seeing nowadays. Because the characters tell their stories to pass the time while fleeing the plague in Florence.

But in these sad days of Coronavirus, a modern sort of plague, maybe a thread summarising some his stories might be amusing. And possibly showing how some of the plots or themes may be found in 'folk song'. Maybe people might even write their own ballads based on his plots and using well-known ballad tunes? Though that is a big ask. But some of us may be spending some time in self isolation, so perhaps worth thinking about?

https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/DecShowText.php?myID=d01intro&expand=empty&lang=eng


http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3726

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13102

Stay well everybody, especially those like myself in the older age bracket and more at risk from Corona virus.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: GUEST,Hilary
Date: 15 Mar 20 - 10:46 AM

I read this article recently, which might be of interest. https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/03/coronavirus-survive-italy-wellbeing-stories-decameron

Also, for analogues to folk song, "Lord Bateman" and "Hind Horn" are similar to the ninth tale on the tenth day. "Suffolk Miracle" and "Bruton Town" are both similar to day four, tale five.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: GUEST,Roger
Date: 15 Mar 20 - 10:52 AM

Is that 10 ex Prime Ministers?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 15 Mar 20 - 12:06 PM

Ha ha Roger.

And Hilary, I had not seen the New Statesman article, but another piece about Italy mentioned Boccaccio and the background to the 'plot' of the story telling in the Decameron. That gave me the idea.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 12:12 PM

Is this thread likely to include anything about the "mediation" of tales?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 12:19 PM

Hilary
'Bruton Town' is unquestionably based on 'Isabella and the Pot of Basil'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 12:31 PM

I seem to recall le décameron noir?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 12:57 PM

An old friend keeps urging me to re-read The Stand and The Masque of the Red Death.

A wide variety of 17th Century plague-doctor bird masks is available at Amazon.com:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=plague+doctor+mask&ref=nb_sb_noss

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: DMcG
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 01:05 PM

I reread "The Masque of the Red Death" a few days back: it is very short and only takes a few minutes.

I have quite an old copy of the Decameron and there are several passages left in the Italian in my copy because they were regarded as too corrupting to be translated for lesser mortals, but anyone educated enough to read the Italian is presumably immune (or maybe already corrupted?)

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 01:26 PM

"'Bruton Town' is unquestionably based on 'Isabella and the Pot of Basil'."
Or 'A Pot of Basil' is based on an earlier song
I seem to remember that there was a renaissance fablieu from around the same time as Boccaccio which indicates that is was in common currency even earlier
Keach in the Creel has a similar history, this time involving the apprentice of a renaissance painter
These things always come with the chicken/egg enigma
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 01:52 PM

The Vincent Price movie of The Red Death (1964) is surprisingly good.

Directed by Roger Corman and scripted by Charles Beaumont (of Twilight Zone fame).

Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year - originally hailed as "nonfiction" - may be due for a comeback.

Highly recommended: The Plague, by Albert Camus.

Factoids:

Some 50% of the 120,000 population of Boccaccio's Florence died in the plague of 1347.

As a boy, Chaucer must have survived at least two English episodes of the plague - in 1348 and 1361. The first wiped out 40-60% of the population, the second another 20% of whoever was left.

The "Gawain Poet" (mid to late 14th century) seems likely to have lived through at least one, and perhaps both, plagues as well.

The same goes for Langland and Gower. And definitely Edward III.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 05:55 PM

@ Yes Lighter. I read 'La Peste' when we did A Level French, and I still have a copy. Might look at it again!

I don't know if anybody else has been to Eyam in Derbyshire, the so-called 'Plague Village'?

I once went to Wetton Mill in Derbyshire and the folk there believed that Gawain and the Green Knight was set in Thor's Cave. Not sure if that theory survives!

The problem with my copy of The Decameron is that the print is too small and just at the moment I'm regretting not having gone to get new specs when they started sending me reminders! Not the time now.

Terry Jones did some re-tellings of stories on BBC Radio. I think these are still available online.

Here is a link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02ctwlr

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 07:49 PM

There is a neat analysis of one of Boccaccio's stories at the start of Wayne C. Booth's "The Rhetoric of Fiction" - it shows just how clever and un-obvious the way Boccaccio told the story was. (My Mad Ex-Girlfriend the literary critic persuaded me to read it - it also persuaded me that critics could have genuinely new and interesting insights).

Well worth a look for anybody constructing narratives in stories or songs.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 08:44 PM

@ Jack. Not he of the unreliable narrator? Not a popular topic here I don't suppose :(   :)

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Mar 20 - 09:00 PM

The story is about Federigo and his falcon (Day Five, Story Nine).

> critics could have genuinely new and interesting insights.

Those were the days. The odds have plummeted since then.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 18 Mar 20 - 05:45 AM

"Those were the days" They say even the food tasted better, but I think this is a case of reader, sorry, eater-response.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Mar 20 - 07:02 AM

"They say even the food tasted better,"
FOR THOSE WHO HAD IT, OF COURSE!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Mar 20 - 07:31 AM

I would highly recommend similar collections which drew on popular oral literature for their inspiration, some using the same setting as the Decameron
The Hedeptameron of Queemn Maggaret of Navarre
The Most delectable Nights of Straparola of Carravagio
Lees Centes Nouvelles (The Hundred Tales)
All extremely enjoyable as well as educational
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Mar 20 - 07:50 AM

"Heptameron" of course
And not forgetting The Canterbury Tales
'The Arabian Nights' is one of the earliest collections - the multi-volume unexpurgated version is well-worth seeking out
Comparing these with some of the earlier jest books, like that of Archie Armstrong and Joe Miller shows just how high up the social scale the art of storytelling reached
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 19 Mar 20 - 08:27 AM

Perhaps for the visually inclined a mention of Pier Paolo Passolini's 'Trilogy of life' : the films of the Arabian nights, The Canterbury Tales and 'Decamerone' would be appropriate?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Mar 20 - 09:09 AM

All great films, as are most of Passsolin's
I have to say we were thoroughly pissed of when we saw th Decameron in a London cinema, by a party of Italian tourists who sat several rows in front of us, opened packed lunches and chatted through the film until we complained   
Jim

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Mar 20 - 09:55 AM

Can I further add that Passolini's masterful use of field recordings from all over the world is a bonus
If my memory serves me right, Robert Cinnamond's 'Napoleon Bonapart' was the high-point of one of them
A very perceptive linking of two art forms
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Mar 20 - 06:45 AM

Many years ago I saw a play in Brum based on the Arabian Knights. We took our mother, which with hindsight was a mistake as they dramatized some of the more explicit bits on stage.

What things like 'The Arabian Nights' tends to show in part is the close link between Arabian culture and our own, going back ages. And also how intertwined the oral and the literate have been since literacy was invented.

Returning to Boccaccio:

Here is just one of the Victorian paintings of 'The Pot of Basil'. I know Sharp post-dated the bulk of the Pre-Raphaelites, but his harking back to some medieval type age seems to echo their pre-occupations in some senses, as discussed on previous threads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_and_the_Pot_of_Basil

Not to mention Shakespeare and Keats.

How many of these stories were 'polygenetic' to use a word supplied by Lighter, we shall never know.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Mar 20 - 07:12 AM

The Pot of Basil is probably pre-mediaeval. Myths about plants regenerating life out of human corpses go back at least to the Egyptian Osiris legend. I suspect Joseph Campbell had something to say about it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Decameron
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Mar 20 - 07:14 AM

"Sharp"
Sharp among most scholars and a good number of singers, were fully aware that the mortifs of the songs reached as far back as Homer
The Arab countries, Italy, Britain, Europe as a whole.... shared motifs that related them all as Indo-European
Nothing special about The Decameron, as many of the internationally shared tales showed
'The Pear Tree', discovered by Ian Russell in the 70s is directed related to a Chaucer tale
"polygenetic"
We may never know how many were related, (jus as we'll never know who made our folk songs) but we know of hundreds of example for certain
Jim, Carroll