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Day 5: Eighth Tale
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
Fiammetta’s story, like Filomena’s, shows women the danger of allowing love to fall into the hands of fortune and her arbitrary whims. Her story comes from the repertoire of Coppo di Borghese Domenichi, a well-respected Florentine gentleman who was particularly gifted at telling stories of the past to his friends and neighbors.
The introduction to Fiammetta’s fifth tale, coming at almost the midway point of the book’s tales (it’s number 49), takes a moment to reemphasize the value of telling a good story well, which is Giovanni Boccaccio’s aim in The Decameron. It also engages with the idea of fortune and its complicated situation in human affairs; although we have already seen plenty of examples where fortune intervenes from the outside, as Filomena explicitly states here, at other times a person’s character and choices intersect with random chance to improve or impair a person’s fortune.
Active
Themes
In Florence, nobleman Filippo Alberighi’s son Federigo is well-regarded for his chivalrous deeds and refined manners. Federigo loves Monna Giovanna, one of the city’s loveliest and most charming women. But because she’s as chaste as she is lovely, his bravery and generosity get him nowhere with her. He fritters away his entire fortune trying to win her love, retreating to live a humble life of poverty in the country on a small farm. A beautiful falcon is the only reminder of his noble past.
Monna Giovanni is married (“Monna” is the equivalent of the modern English “Mrs.”), so Federigo’s suit carries some danger for her. If she’s caught in adultery, she could face repudiation or violence from her husband or other male relatives who are heavily invested in protecting her “honor” (in other words, her sexual chastity). This speaks to the vulnerable and often precarious position of women in a patriarchal society, but it also highlights the contradictions between social expectations of female fidelity and the codes of fin’amors (refined loving), in which chastity can be a bad thing when it denies a man sexual access to a woman he loves. This tale also engages with The Decameron’s ongoing argument about the value of nobility of spirit over nobility by name or wealth. Federigo’s nobility isn’t diminished—indeed, it demonstrates strength and resilience—in his poverty.
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Monna Giovanna’s husband dies, leaving her a widow with a young son. Every summer, they go to a country estate near Federigo’s farm, and he befriends the boy based on a shared love of birds and dogs. The boy greatly admires Federigo’s falcon, and when he falls ill, he tells his mother that it’s his heart’s desire. Giovanna is torn between guilt over her coldness towards Federigo—worrying that depriving him of his one remaining treasure would be “heartless”—and the knowledge that he will give her anything she asks for. Her maternal instincts ultimately overpower her guilt, and she decides to ask for the bird as a gift.
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Federigo is astonished the following morning to find Giovanna at his gate. She says that she’s come to make amends for his suffering on her account, but he swears that her visit now makes up for any past cruelty. He invites her in and then searches desperately for anything refined enough to feed such a great lady. The only thing he can find is his plump falcon, which he has the housekeeper dress and cook. When Giovanna humbly asks Federigo for the falcon on her son’s behalf, appealing to his noble heart, he bursts into tears because he cannot give her what she wants, since she’s already eaten it.
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Themes
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Monna Giovanna initially reproaches Federigo for killing the bird but realizes the generosity of spirit he showed in sacrificing it for her pleasure. She sees that poverty hasn’t destroyed his “magnanimity of spirit.” Sadly, her son dies, and when (after the appropriate period of mourning) her brothers urge her to remarry, she insists she will have only Federigo. His poverty doesn’t bother her. She tells her brothers, "I would sooner have a gentleman without riches, than riches without a gentleman.” Finally married to his love and with his wealth restored, Federigo lives in happiness for the rest of his life.
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