I believe that it is harder to read quickly through a book that contains many short stories rather than one extended one. Just as the reader becomes used to certain characters, the story is over and a new one begins. Often, the stories are so short that it is impossible for the reader to even begin to care what happens to the protagonists in each short story.

If the Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio, were simply a collection of witty short stories, I might have enjoyed the reading of it far less than I did. However, Boccaccio provided an ingenious frame story, narrating how ten young well-born Florentines – seven young women and three young men – decide to flee the city at the height of the Black Death and pass their time in the countryside, eating, drinking, dancing and, of course, telling stories. There is an introduction to each day, followed by ten stories, one told by each of the members of the brigata or company, and a conclusion to the day in which the theme for the next day’s stories is announced and one member of the brigata sings a poetic song. Each day has a “king” or “queen”, crowned by his or her predecessor, and the reigning monarch determines the theme of the stories for the next day and the order in which the members of the brigata are to present them. The storytelling covers ten days of stories (thus, a “decameron”, from the Greek δεκα, “ten” and ἡμερα, “day”), therefore creating one hundred stories in all. The author also tells a story of his own in the introduction to Day Four, which effectively makes for one hundred and one stories (not counting the frame story).

Much has been written about the symbolic meaning of the storytellers. The seven women were considered to embody the four Classical virtues and three Christian ones, while the men personify the three parts of the soul according to Plato. I am certain that with effort, a reader could properly track and identify which member of the brigata is associated with which attribute, but this was not what caught my attention in the frame story.

Instead, I saw a love story unfolding. My theory is my own, and I have no way of knowing whether anything has been written to the same effect. Given the extreme age of the Decameron and its status as a classic of world literature, I would be very surprised if my observations were entirely novel.

That having been said, I found an incredible depth and texture being conducted behind the scenes of the stories, which are themselves entertaining and engaging but fairly superficial. The effect is subtle but very clear, if only the reader spends a bit of time learning who the members of the brigata really are.

Most people waste their time on Dioneo, who is considered the “bad boy” of the group. His stories are the most salacious, without doubt, but while he is demanding the reader’s attention Boccaccio is engaging in a sleight of hand that involves Filostrato, Fiammetta and Filomena, who are coincidentally the three characters whose names begin with the letter “F” (the other members being Dioneo, Panfilo, Pampinea, Emilia, Elissa, Neifile and Lauretta).

To begin with, Boccaccio tells us that the three young men are boyfriends of three of the women, but he does not elaborate on who is involved with whom beyond saying that Neifile is one of the women who has a beloved. Based on my reading of the Decameron, I believe that Neifile is the beloved of the scandalous Dioneo, and Pampinea, the oldest and most proper of the women, is betrothed to Panfilo, the most noble acting of the men.

This leaves Filostrato, whom I believe to be in love with Fiammetta. However, something happens to Filostrato. When he is chosen to be “king” for the Fourth Day of storytelling, he asks that all the stories be of love that has a tragic end because, as the reader later learns, he believes he has lost his love. He chooses Fiammetta to begin the storytelling on that day, and she, protesting the theme, begins by telling the story of a daughter whose father kills her lover and sends the lover’s heart to her in a chalice. She pours poison into the chalice and drinks from it, ending her life (IV, 1).

When Filostrato, as “king”, tells his own story (IV, 9), he tells the tale of a faithless wife whose husband discovers her adultery. He waylays and kills her lover, cuts out his heart and then has it cooked and fed to his wife. After she has eaten it, he reveals what exactly she has eaten, at which point she throws herself out the window and to her gruesome death. Filostrato repeats Fiammetta’s theme of having one’s heart literally ripped out, but Filostrato’s story is told with greater cruelty and malice. In both cases, the theme also provides a literal depiction of a figurative expression (having one’s heart ripped out). And when Filostrato hands over the crown to Fiammetta (choosing her to be the “queen” for the fifth day because he believes she is the one who can best make the brigata feel better after the gloom surrounding his day), Boccaccio takes the time to describe her incredible beauty.

Filostrato’s kingship is also marked by a curious circumstance. Before beginning to tell about the day, Boccaccio as the author intervenes into his story to defend his work from those who say it is indecent, or that he shouldn’t be spending time with young people – presumably, as the result of his distribution of some of the stories to young female companions prior to its ultimate publication. He tells his “author’s tale” about a young man who was kept from all women by his father, who felt that all evil came from them. When the son finally had to leave the hermit’s cave his father had retreated to, he immediately felt an attraction to the first women he saw and refused to return to the cave. Such, says Boccaccio, is the power of love and attraction. Boccaccio is, in essence, saying that he can’t keep himself locked up in a cave and refuse the power of love, even if he has been scorned by the object of his affections.

It is as a result of this that I felt that Boccaccio was identifying himself with Filostrato, who has obviously lost his Fiammetta based on his statements and his mood. It is worth noting that Boccaccio called his own beloved and muse “Fiammetta” (probably Maria d’Aquino, the daughter of King Robert the Wise of Naples, who was married when he met her), who was to him what Beatrice was to Dante or Laura to Petrarch. In fact, Boccaccio wrote an earlier work called Filostrato that was written for his Fiammetta. Filostrato served as the basis of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (just as the Decameron itself inspired The Canterbury Tales). He also wrote the Teseida for her. Tellingly, after the Decameron, he ceased his literary efforts and his writing in Italian and wrote Latin reference works like De Mulieribus Claris (On Illustrious Women) and Genealogia Deorum Gentilium (Genealogy of the Pagan Gods) – the first of which is wholly available and the latter of which has been partially published by the I Tatti Renaissance Library series from Harvard University Press for those who are interested. It is known that Boccaccio was unhappy in love in they years following publication of the Decameron.

At the time he wrote the Decameron, however, I believe that Boccaccio was encouraged to believe that he had found a new love, a beloved (and “beloved” in Greek can be rendered Φιλομενη or Filomena). And so it seems that Filostrato finds a new love. After Filostrato boldly declares to the assembled company in the poetic song ending the Fourth Day that he has lost his love, something interesting happens in the introduction to the stories of the Fifth Day. Licisca, Filomena’s maid, approaches the brigata because she has had a quarrel with Tindaro, Filostrato’s manservant. The substance of it is that most women aren’t virgins on their wedding night, which causes the entire company to laugh over Tindaro’s foolishness, but it leads the reader to ask: well, just why were Licisca and Tindaro talking to each other in the first place? In story after story of the actual tales of the Decameron, we see the fante or servant being used as the intermediary for lovers or potential lovers to communicate. The reader is thus given the hint that perhaps Filomena and Filostrato have something to say to each other.

This suspicion is reinforced when, at the end of the Seventh Day, Filomena sings of how she has been struck by a new love, after which Boccaccio notes “Estimar fece questa canzone a tutta la brigata che nuovo e piacevole amore Filomena strignesse” (This song made the entire brigata believe that a new and pleasant love had taken hold of Filomena).

Considering that the brigata is isolated from the rest of the world by their actions at the beginning of the story, and considering that only Filostrato has announced to the assembled group that he has lost a love, the natural conclusion is that Filomena and Filostrato have begun a new relationship, and that Filostrato is moving on from Fiammetta.

Although recounted by Pampinea, I believe that the seventh story on Day Eight is Boccaccio’s own cri de cœur regarding his own Fiammetta. The story relates the tale of a young scholar who is innamored of a woman who does not love him. She leads him on even though she already has a lover, finally making him stand outside her home on a snowy night in December while she and her lover enjoy each other’s company and laugh over his naïvété. The young man nearly dies from the cold and resolves to avenge himself. After his beloved believes he has moved on, she asks him to help her enchant her lover, who has left her for someone else. He fools her into going up a ladder to a platform in a tower one night in the middle of Summer, naked, and takes away the ladder. As day breaks, she realizes that the scholar means to make her endure the burning sun, heat and gadflies all day in revenge for what she did.

The plot of Pampinea’s story is not that different from many of the other tales. However, the story is exceptionally long and told with great emotion and force. The young scholar’s extended monologues read as though they come straight from the author, and not from his storyteller Pampinea. They are filled with bitter regret and pain, and so I believe them to be part of Boccaccio’s personal state of mind regarding his love for his own Fiammetta. He is now a bit wiser and, at times, more cynical. In either case, however, he seems to be seeking and obtaining some form of literary closure.

After Filomena’s new love starts, the competing and complementary stories of Filostrato and Fiammetta take on a new dynamic as Filomena’s stories become more closely intertwined with Filostrato’s. After Filomena tells a story of Calandrino, Bruno and Buffalmacco (VIII, 6), Filostrato takes his next opportunity to tell a story (IX, 3) to also tell a story about Calandrino, Bruno and Buffalmacco. Interestingly, Fiammetta seems to have had a change of heart and also tells a story about Calandrino and Bruno (without Buffalmacco) after him (IX, 5), attempting to restore their connection through their stories. And, perhaps most tellingly, when finally it is Fiammetta’s turn to sing her song at the end of the tenth and final day of the storytelling, she sings of her jealousy, saying that her lover has betrayed her.

While it is possible that the actual events could be interpreted differently, this was the story that I thought I saw unfolding behind the scenes. It is possible that there are some other interactions that I missed by focusing on the Filostrato angle, but I am certain that this was the primary story that Boccaccio sought to tell to those who were observant enough to notice, given the meaning of the names when put in the larger context of Boccaccio’s work.

The Decameron is a classic and worth reading by anyone with eyes.