What is Decameron the introduction about?

Giovanni Boccaccio introduces his acclaimed collection of novellas, the Decameron, with a reference to the most terrifying existential crisis of his time: the decimating effects of the bubonic plague in the 1348 outbreak known as the Black Death.

What is the main idea of The Decameron?

Arguably, the moral base of the Decameron is Nature. The storytellers strongly suggest this in several cases and from different point of views. Those who oppose themselves to the law of Nature are bound to failure and also perhaps to causing great harm.

What does Boccaccio describe as nearly incredible?

What is even worse and nearly incredible is that fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their children, as if they had not been theirs. Some thought that moderate living and the avoidance of all superfluity would preserve them from the epidemic.

How does The Decameron reflect humanism?

The Decameron reflects Humanistic thinking about the elevation of man, which had an influence upon morality in the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a period when society, attitudes and ideas were changing. Capitalism allowed for social mobility, yet it also served to change peoples opinions on morality.

What is the narrative structure of The Decameron?

The Decameron’s structure resembles a series of frames that digress within each other; the external narrator tells the reader about 10 internal narrators who in turn tell stories that occasionally contain characters who tell stories.

What is the cause of the plague that struck Florence according to Boccaccio in his introduction to Day 1?

The plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis which was carried by the fleas of rodents, primarily rats, who were transported between regions through trade or by troops returning from or heading toward deployment.

What does the Decameron say about the plague?

In the Decameron, Boccaccio states some possibilities: “Some say that [the plague] descended upon the human race through the influence of the heavenly bodies, others that it was a punishment signifying God’s righteous anger at our iniquitous way of life.

What were the certain signs of death described in the Decameron?

“The symptoms were not the same as in the East, where a gush of blood from the nose was the plain sign of inevitable death; but it began both in men and women with certain swellings in the groin or under the armpit. They grew to the size of a small apple or an egg, more or less, and were vulgarly called tumours.