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Day 3: Introduction
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Decameron, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Sex
Men and Women
Moderation and Excess
Intelligence
Class and Character
Faith vs. Religion
Summary
Analysis
Filostrato remarks that there are a lot of ignorant people who think that nuns and peasants don’t have any carnal feelings, even though this would be contrary to nature’s design, as his tale will demonstrate.
Like fortune, in the medieval conception of the world, nature was a semi-deity in charge of procreation. She had a complicated position in the Christian faith, since she was imagined as handmaiden to both Venus (the Roman goddess of love) and God. Nature is thus often used as a way to describe the human sex drive, which—as this tale will show—is more powerful than religious vocation or moralistic laws.
Active
Themes
A long time ago, there is a convent with a very beautiful garden where eight nuns and their Abbess live. When their gardener quits, he complains to a handsome young peasant named Masetto that the pay was terrible and that the nuns tended to yell at him. Masetto, tingling with desire to live with these nuns, decides to pretend to be a deaf-mute beggar to convince them that he is harmless. The convent’s steward and Abbess, taken in by this trick and appreciating his hard work, quickly hire him.
Not only are gardens appropriate settings for love stories, but they also symbolize female genitalia, and there are certainly sexual overtones to the importance of the garden in drawing Masetto to the convent. Even before Masetto arrives, however, Filostrato starts to drop hints that the nuns aren’t very upright in the sense of traditional Christian morality, such as their rude, impatient treatment of the gardener. Masetto further demonstrates the power of intelligence when he comes up with his clever plan to infiltrate the convent.
Active
Themes
Masetto plans to tend more than one kind of garden, and because the Abbess thinks he’s “lost his tale as well as his tongue,” she doesn’t pay attention when the nuns (believing he can’t hear them) harass him.
Active
Themes
One day, two of the Young Nuns stumble on Masetto pretending to sleep in the garden. The first one, having heard about the pleasures of the flesh, sees an opportunity to experience them herself—despite pledging her virginity to Christ. Masetto can’t tell on her, and she doubts that he’d even understand what was happening, since he’s such a “dim-witted hulk.” Having convinced her companion, the pair lure Masetto to a shed where they take turns keeping watch and testing his “riding ability.”
Active
Themes
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The rest of the Young Nuns eventually discover these goings-on and join the fun, as does the Abbess, who requires Masetto to indulge her with the pleasure she used to condemn most fiercely.
Active
Themes
Eventually, Masetto becomes so exhausted that he drops the ruse. One night, he “miraculously” recovers his speech and tells the Abbess that while one cock can satisfy ten hens, ten men can barely satisfy one woman, and he himself is responsible for nine.
Active
Themes
Luckily the steward just died, so the Abbess reports Masetto’s miraculous healing to the neighborhood, appoints him the next steward, and he lives at the convent, pleasuring the nuns and fathering their children for many years. He returns to his village as a prosperous old man, rewarded with peace and prosperity for setting a pair of horns on Christ’s head by cuckolding him.
