Gittes, Katharine S. New York: Greenwood Press, Thompson, N. Decameron and The Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press, All Rights Reserved. Advanced Search. Advanced search All these words. Date to. Author Exact author.
Send to Friend Share. Additional Info. Petrarch's focus is on using the tale as an example of how to live within classical ideals and does specify his intent to reference religion, and while Chaucer's version refers to Petrarch and cites him as the source of the tale, Chaucer's intentions, similar to Boccaccio's, are less transparent.
In Boccaccio's original writing of Griselda, her story is the last story of the last day in the Decameron. In choosing to tell the story of Griselda as the last story of this theme, Boccaccio creates ambiguity in whether her deeds of obedience, or her husband's cruelty, are munificent. Her husband's tests are certainly liberal, as her tests throughout the story include him pretending to have their children put to death, him expelling her from their home with none of her possessions, and him remarrying and having her prepare his bride for the wedding.
Nor do I advise anyone to follow his example, for it was a great pity that the fellow should have drawn any profit from his conduct. Boccaccio further surrounds this story with ambiguity by ending with Dioneo questioning the feasibility of Griselda's actions as well as the marquis's:.
What more needs to be said, except that celestial spirits may sometimes descend even into the houses of the poor, whilst there are those in royal palaces who would be better employed as swineherds than as rulers of men? Who else but Griselda could have endured so cheerfully the cruel and unheard of trials that Gualtieri imposed upon her without shedding a tear?
For perhaps it would have served him right if he had chanced upon a wife, who, being driven from the house in her shift, had found some other man to shake her skin-coat for her, earning herself a fine new dress in the process. Boccaccio purposefully places these ambiguous and questioning statements at the beginning and end to prevent his audience from taking away any one example or lesson. However, in asking who else but Griselda could have endured his trials, the narrator, and Boccaccio, point out that her ability is unique and not entirely realistic for others in society to follow.
Her example is a perfect one, and may be the exception to the rule, not the rule for human conduct itself. After leading the reader to question whether her constancy is actually a desirable or common characteristic, Boccaccio notes that her husband should have been more punished for his tests, and that perhaps in real life, with women who won't suffer this kind of treatment easily, that the men who test their wives like this, or bosses who test their employees like this, or more likely, the God who tests his followers and believers like this, deserve more of a comeuppance than to continue to receive constant faith and loyalty.
Throughout Boccaccio's Griselda story, the connections to religion are obvious, but what conclusion he wants his readers to draw, and his own intent, are less clear. He very much addresses constancy in terms of religious faith, and establishes this by including multiple covenants: the promise the marquis makes to his people to marry, and the promise Griselda makes to the marquis to obey him in all things and not question his will.
However, Boccaccio's treatment of constancy also brings a discussion of free will and human agency into play. When Griselda is forced to give up her children, she gives in yet asks the messenger is he will please give her children a proper burial; this is Griselda's only ability to gain some aspect of agency and control over her circumstances, by adding her own request and obeying her lord, but in her own way and through her own means.
Boccaccio's representation of agency in combination with the virtue of constancy is unique to his writing; while Chaucer represents Griselda's request, he followed Petrarch's example and removed the language revealing Griselda's inner turmoil and struggle.
This leads his treatment of the tale to seem more of an unequivocal example rather than a story meant to encourage rumination. Chaucer does not change the fact that when asked to give up her child to be murdered, Griselda acquiesces and requests that her child be given a proper and respectful burial:. But kissed her son, and afterwards it blessed;. Save this, she prayed him that, if he could,.
His tender limbs, pleasing in appearance,. What he does change, however, is her emotional response. Chaucer copies Boccaccio's language in writing that outwardly she revealed no sadness, but removes any sign of emotion. Boccaccio and Chaucer both wrote for a wide and varied audience, but Chaucer maintained Petrarch's somewhat elitist treatment of virtue and constancy in The Clerk's Tale. Boccaccio's handling of Griselda's story reflects a more ambiguous intent. His story clearly references the relationship between religion and its followers, and is reminiscent of the trials of Job in the Bible, but depicts a cruel God in the form of the marquis.
This would be consistent with how Boccaccio personifies Fortune as hostile, and how Griselda maintains her constancy because she promised her lord her loyalty and obedience, and trusts that he knows best even in the face of some horrific trials.
Chaucer's depiction includes all of these elements and certainly mimics the underlying idea of the virtue of constancy.
His intent, if possible, is less clear than Boccaccio's. In any case, Chaucer's removal of Griselda's emotional response and inclusion of more speeches and flowery, elegant language praising her husband's generosity and her desire to obey, makes this tale more absurd in its rejection of realistic human tendencies. Why he chose to do that will always be up for interpretation, similar to Boccaccio's treatment of the tale. Overall, Boccaccio's treatment of constancy involves more ambiguity and welcomes more of a reader response.
His framing of the story by clearly questioning the actions of Griselda and her husband call for consideration rather than acceptance at face value. One cannot accept his story as an unequivocal example of a virtue to follow, like Petrarch sought to portray. Boccaccio's story could be seen as a response to the sudden cruelty of the Black Plague, and the idea that one way to survive it could be to remain steadfast in the face of adversity.
The ironic part is that the rest of his tales offer hedonism and disorder as the other coping mechanism, and the narrator who tells the story of Griselda is part of a group that have the wealth and privilege to be able to escape and not have to rely on conservative virtues like constancy. Considering the importance of the tales and stories for the an average medieval European, it should not be at all surprising, therefore, that many authors chose to compile the various stories that they had come into contact with into a single collection.
Even the best-educated of medieval writers lived in a society in which oral entertainment was one of the most common types of entertainment. Because of the fact that they heard stories that were both told and read aloud, they had a tendency to reword their written influences into a fashion that was more typical of how an oral storyteller would tell them, which means altering details and making use of styles that were appropriate not only to their own tastes but to those that would hear the story read aloud.
It is apparent, if not obvious, that Chaucer must have read Il Decamerone at some point before writing his Canterbury Tales. Both Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio were noblemen with strong court connections; Chaucer was a courtier and a civil servant, while Boccaccio studied as a lawyer at the court of Robert the Wise.
While it is tempting to state that Chaucer was completely inspired and influenced by Boccaccio, it is just as likely that the two literary geniuses simply used the same sources. Occasionally, similarities between two tales can only be based on speculation, as the stories, in their journey from one end of Europe to another, may have been radically altered from their original form. After all, the more complicated the plot of a story is, the more likely that the two different versions have a common origin and were passed along in a chain from storyteller to storyteller.
Petrarch , in turn, used the last story
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