The Decameron (Day Two / 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.9, 3.1)

1. Story 2.5: Analyze the educative process that occurs with Andreuccio (do NOT simply recount the events of the story). Do you see any repetition occurring here? How do you read this repetition? How does this contribute to his education? What does he learn here? What might the message be for a wider audience? Use specific examples from the text to support your analysis.

Andreuccio, who had never before left his hometown, goes to Naples upon hearing that they have good cheap horses for sale there. He intends to make a steal and brings with him a large sum of money. Being naïve, he shows the entire market place his purse of 500 gold florins and, given that Naples is not a nice, pure city, sets himself up for his education in the ways of the world. The way Andreuccio learns is through a series of falls (literal falls with symbolic overtones): first, into a pile of excrement; then, into a well; finally, into a tomb. The first comes when he falls for the woman’s, who he believes is his sister, trick – he falls through a bad board in the foundation into the feces below him. Symbolically speaking, he falls from a poor foundation (his naïveté could not support him in the real world) into disgrace. Next, the men who find him wash him in the well – this is his renewal, his second chance. The last fall is into a tomb – he ‘helps’ the men rob the grave of a dead man. This time, he realizes right away that they’ve set out to fool him and when he finally gets back out of the tomb, he is reborn, wiser than he ever was, and possesses a ring worth the 500 florins his previous ignorance had cost him.

2. Story 2.6: What does this story have to say about humanity (especially considering that the central character becomes a kind of ‘wild-woman’)? How might this view of humanity influence the story of a whole? Use specific examples from the text to support your analysis.

Madam Beritola becomes a kind of ‘wild-woman’ after her grief over losing her sons consumes her. She ends up going back to nature and gaining the companionship of a deer and her baby roebucks. Becoming friendly with the forest creatures is not the event that really sealed her supposed loss of ‘humanity;’ the scene that does is the one in which she nurses the two hungry roebucks as her own children. What we see here is that ‘humanity’ is based on civilization. We see that same idea in Yvain – when Yvain tears his clothes and goes off into the woods, he is no longer considered a man but a beast; only when he is once again clothed and in the society of his fellow man is he considered back to humanity. Madam Beritola never ceases to be ‘humane’ but that is not the view of humanity here; by going back to nature, she gives up society and thus loses her ‘humanity.’ Like Yvain, once she is clothed and back in the society of people, she is considered human again.