The American Boccaccio Association proposes this session, "Avoiding the Plague from Boccaccio to Today," co-sponsored by the LLC Forum on Medieval and Renaissance Italian, to respond to the relationship with and relevance of Boccaccio's text for today. This panel features four speakers.
Remembering the famous opening line of the Decameron, “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti,” Dr. Alyssa Granacki explores what Boccaccio can tell us about recognizing the dignity of every human being as we seek to rebuild our social bonds. Through an analysis of Decameron IV.1 and VI.7 – and the two protagonists, Ghismonda and Filippa, who defy societal expectations – she suggests that Boccaccio urges us to reimagine a world in which all humans, or any human, can be worthy of society’s compassion. This plea for radical compassion in the Decameron mirrors the way our current pandemic has created new, urgent entreaties for essential services from healthcare to universal basic income.
Professor Mattia Boccuti draws our attention to the ballads featured at the end of each day of the Decameron, which have been substantially ignored by scholars. Yet, as he argues, the ballads require a serious interpretation that will deal with the many issues raised by their enigmatic presence. His presentation asks: How do the ten ballads work within the Decameron? Do they relate to the novelle and, if yes, then how? Which message do they aim to convey? What sort of pleasure (“diletto”) are they meant to provide to a community ravaged by the horrors of the Black Death? The answers to these questions will help to shed light on the presence and meaning of the ballads in the overall structure of the Decameron and its frame of the plague.
Professor Brenda Rosado will speak on the relationship between governance and the plague. While in our ongoing/recent pandemic local authorities have ordered shelter-in-place at various times, in the 1348 plague the Decameron’s bubble of seven ladies and three young men established a monarchy that early on preordained a theme-in-place for each day of storytelling. But what happens when Emilia, the queen of Day Nine, lifts the very rule that ensured the company’s entertainment while sheltering in the countryside? Professor Rosado's paper examines Emilia’s allegedly regenerative, yet controversial, government. She asks: Can we draw parallels between Boccaccio’s fiction and the aftermath of COVID-19? For instance, the increase of (domestic) violence both in Day Nine and in the wake of coronavirus, and between Emilia’s lax ruling attitude and that of Texas Gov. Greg Abbot who recently lifted the mask mandate statewide with a bold remark: “We no longer need government running our lives.”
Finally, Professor Panarello's talk turns to medical history and the idea that a proper diet can prevent infection from the plague. Her presentation explores the relationship between recommendations for hygiene by the Salernitan medical school, which has its origins in Arabic culture, and the suggestions to prevent infection which Boccaccio inserts into the frame of the Decameron. She claims that Boccaccio demonstrates the restorative and therapeutic effects of food, as well as the proper ways to nourish oneself in the company of others, drawing attention to the structure of meals and entertainment. Rather than a recommendation for social distancing, Boccaccio's emphasis on the convivial nature of meals forms a part of the therapeutic role of physical and spiritual nourishment, as Panarello argues.
Each panelist will speak for 13 minutes to observe the time constraints, and to allow for fifteen minutes of unstructured discussion.