A look at one of Boccaccio’s tales from his Decamerone
Early Printed Tales
It occurs to me that some of the earliest novels are collections of tales presented as oral tales, and that these might well serve as a first step in a search for how an oral tale is to be put together. The Decamerone was the first of these, I think, and Messer Boccaccio the first talesman to bind up old tales in a new framework, retell them, and have the result printed out.
The best way to study these is to recite them yourself, record your recital, and then listen to the playback. Go farther, and learn the tale in its essence, and perform it in your own words. As these are tales Messer Boccaccio told in prose, a translation may convey most of his composition and even a good part of his divine style. But these are old tales, and Messer Boccaccio himself did but retell them (or tell of his characters as they retold them to one another in the countryside, to divert their hearts from the heavy gloom into which the plague’s outbreak had cast them). So a translation becomes here but a further retelling.
It is the general structure that I focus on here. Not the structure of the tale, but of the act of reciting the tale orally.
The edition I copy from is in the collection of http://www.gutenberg.net or Project Gutenberg
The Decameron
of
Giovanni Boccaccio
Faithfully Translated
By J.M. Rigg(Project Gutenberg etext thdcm10.txt)
And out of the 100 tales, this is the first of them, day one, tale one. It has the most complete form that I’ve found.
Chapter Subtitle
We begin with the Chapter Subtitle. This is of course a matter of printing, and of the collection, and would not be part of the individual tale if it were recited. I include it only to show how complete such subtitles were in the beginning of the age of print. The entire tale is here summarized, and the ending is not withheld. What will be offered for our amusement, then, is not the surprise of the end, but rather how the end is reached.
Ser Ciappelletto cheats a holy friar by a false confession, and dies; and, having lived as a very bad man, is, on his death, reputed a saint, and called San Ciappelletto.
Talesman’s Introduction
The ‘recital’ or ‘performance’ of the tale begins with the talesman speaking directly to his audience. This shows how the oral talesman cannot possible hide from his audience the way modern writers try to do when they follow the commandment of ‘show don’t tell.’ The talesman here sets forth an introduction to the tale. He doesn’t give us a synopsis of his plot, as in the Chapter Subtitle, but rather he frames the tale in terms of his general themes.
A seemly thing it is, dearest ladies, that whatever we do, it be begun in the holy and awful name of Him who was the maker of all. Wherefore, as it falls to me to lead the way in this your enterprise of story telling, I intend to begin with one of His wondrous works, that, by hearing thereof, our hopes in Him, in whom is no change, may be established, and His name be by us forever lauded. ’Tis manifest that, as things temporal are all doomed to pass and perish, so within and without they abound with trouble and anguish and travail, and are subject to infinite perils; nor, save for the especial grace of God, should we, whose being is bound up with and forms part of theirs, have either the strength to endure or the wisdom to combat their adverse influences. By which grace we are visited and penetrated (so we must believe) not by reason of any merit of our own, but solely out of the fulness of God's own goodness, and in answer to the prayers of those who, being mortal like ourselves, did faithfully observe His ordinances during their lives, and are now become blessed for ever with Him in heaven. To whom, as to advocates taught by experience all that belongs to our frailty, we, not daring, perchance, to present our petitions in the presence of so great a judge, make known our requests for such things as we deem expedient for us. And of His mercy richly abounding to usward we have further proof herein, that, no keenness of mortal vision being able in any degree to penetrate the secret counsels of the Divine mind, it sometimes, perchance, happens, that, in error of judgment, we make one our advocate before His Majesty, who is banished from His presence in eternal exile, and yet He to whom nothing is hidden, having regard rather to the sincerity of our prayers than to our ignorance or the banishment of the intercessor, hears us no less than if the intercessor were in truth one of the blest who enjoy the light of His countenance. Which the story that I am about to relate may serve to make apparent; apparent, I mean, according to the standard or the judgment of man, not of God.
Backstory
From this introduction the talesman gives the backstory of his tale. This is standard structural talesmanship. In an oral performance the Introduction allows all the audience to settle, stop coughing, elbowing one another, and whispering to one another, so that they begin to pay attention. The talesman has now set their minds to considering the theme, and he can launch the tale, confident that his audience will be listening with the theme in mind.
This tale is a story of redemption (in a way) and so the turns will depend upon the hero. The talesman’s backstory concerns this hero, thus signaling to the audience that it is a tale of memorial (literally, in this case).
The story goes, then, that Musciatto Franzesi, a great and wealthy merchant, being made a knight in France, and being to attend Charles Sansterre, brother of the King of France, when he came into Tuscany at the instance and with the support of Pope Boniface, found his affairs, as often happens to merchants, to be much involved in divers quarters, and neither easily nor suddenly to be adjusted; wherefore he determined to place them in the hands of commissioners, and found no difficulty except as to certain credits given to some Burgundians, for the recovery of which he doubted whether he could come by a competent agent; for well he knew that the Burgundians were violent men and ill-conditioned and faithless; nor could he call to mind any man so bad that he could with confidence oppose his guile to theirs. After long pondering the matter, he recollected one Ser Ciapperello da Prato, who much frequented his house in Paris. Who being short of stature and very affected, the French who knew not the meaning of Cepparello, but supposed that it meant the same as Cappello, i. e. garland, in their vernacular, called him not Cappello, but Ciappelletto by reason of his diminutive size; and as Ciappelletto he was known everywhere, whereas few people knew him as Ciapperello.
Tale Setup
The talesman sets up the tale by elaborating on those features of his hero that speak directly to how he will change. The talesman is quite open about what he is doing; the word ‘now’ tells us that a new section of the tale is beginning, and the sentence that completes it sets forth the topic of the paragraph.
Now Ciappelletto's manner of life was thus. He was by profession a notary, and his pride was to make false documents; he would have made them as often as he was asked, and more readily without fee than another at a great price; few indeed he made that were not false, and, great was his shame when they were discovered. False witness he bore, solicited or unsolicited, with boundless delight; and, as oaths were in those days had in very great respect in France, he, scrupling not to forswear himself, corruptly carried the day in every case in which he was summoned faithfully to attest the truth. He took inordinate delight, and bestirred himself with great zeal, in fomenting ill-feeling, enmities, dissensions between friends, kinsfolk and all other folk; and the more calamitous were the consequences the better he was pleased. Set him on murder, or any other foul crime, and he never hesitated, but went about it with alacrity; he had been known on more than one occasion to inflict wounds or death by preference with his own hands. He was a profuse blasphemer of God and His saints, and that on the most trifling occasions, being of all men the most irascible. He was never seen at Church, held all the sacraments vile things, and derided them in language of horrible ribaldry. On the other hand he resorted readily to the tavern and other places of evil repute, and frequented them. He was as fond of women as a dog is of the stick: in the use against nature he had not his match among the most abandoned. He would have pilfered and stolen as a matter of conscience, as a holy man would make an oblation. Most gluttonous he was and inordinately fond of his cups, whereby he sometimes brought upon himself both shame and suffering. He was also a practised gamester and thrower of false dice. But why enlarge so much upon him? Enough that he was, perhaps, the worst man that ever was born.
Tale Ends
The talesman goes on to follow the stages of his tale to its climax. After the climax comes the ending, signaled by the word ‘so.’ I include this part mostly to note how the oral talesman treats dialogue in his tale. One line only he gives in the voice of the friar; the rest of the friar’s discourse the talesman gives in summary, in indirect discourse.
So it was laid in the church, and then the holy friar who had heard the confession got up in the pulpit and began to preach marvellous things of Ser Ciapelletto's life, his fasts, his virginity, his simplicity and guilelessness and holiness; narrating among the other matters that of which Ser Ciappelletto had made tearful confession as his greatest sin, and how he had hardly been able to make him conceive that God would pardon him; from which he took occasion to reprove his hearers; saying:—“And you, accursed of God, on the least pretext, blaspheme God and His Mother, and all the celestial court.” And much beside he told of his loyalty and purity; and, in short, so wrought upon the people by his words, to which they gave entire credence, that they all conceived a great veneration for Ser Ciappelletto, and at the close of the office came pressing forward with the utmost vehemence to kiss the feet and the hands of the corpse, from which they tore off the cerements, each thinking himself blessed to have but a scrap thereof in his possession; and so it was arranged that it should be kept there all day long, so as to be visible and accessible to all. At nightfall it was honourably interred in a marble tomb in one of the chapels, where on the morrow, one by one, folk came and lit tapers and prayed and paid their vows, setting there the waxen images which they had dedicated. And the fame of Ciappelletto's holiness and the devotion to him grew in such measure that scarce any there was that in any adversity would vow aught to any saint but he, and they called him and still call him San Ciappelletto affirming that many miracles have been and daily are wrought by God through him for such as devoutly crave his intercession.
Talesman’s Summing-Up
The tale is now ended. This is the point at which a printed version — the tale written to be read — would conclude; nothing else is needed or desired. In an oral, live performance of the tale, such an ending would be too abrupt; the tale stops, the audience blink, and suddenly behold the talesman standing before them with nothing more to say, suddenly thrown from his role as talesman and entertainer to a common man, in his own flesh and skin and name, there in front of them.
The oral talesman, then, feels the need to withdraw gracefully from the tale, even though it is ended. His summing-up, or envoy, echoes his introduction; he speaks yet about the tale, but puts himself more forward, bringing the audience to see the man telling the tale. In a sense this section, like the talesman’s introduction, allows talesman and audience to straddle both worlds, the world of the tale and the world in which they lead their lives, from which they consider the story-world.
So lived, so died Ser Cepperello da Prato, and came to be reputed a saint, as you have heard. Nor would I deny that it is possible that he is of the number of the blessed in the presence of God, seeing that, though his life was evil and depraved, yet he might in his last moments have made so complete an act of contrition that perchance God had mercy on him and received him into His kingdom. But, as this is hidden from us, I speak according to that which appears, and I say that he ought rather to be in the hands of the devil in hell than in Paradise. Which, if so it be, is a manifest token of the superabundance of the goodness of God to usward, inasmuch as he regards not our error but the sincerity of our faith, and hearkens unto us when, mistaking one who is at enmity with Him for a friend, we have recourse to him, as to one holy indeed, as our intercessor for His grace. Wherefore, that we of this gay company may by His grace be preserved safe and sound throughout this time of adversity, commend we ourselves in our need to Him, whose name we began by invoking, with lauds and reverent devotion and good confidence that we shall be heard.
In a recording of such a tale, using the radio model, this summing-up or envoy is often replaced by swelling music, and perhaps another voice stating that the end has been reached. This is also the way the audiobook model treats the end. With the audiobook today, of course, the performer must conform to a text that has been composed in order to be read off a page; he himself is but a paid announcer, forbidden to alter the composition himself.
In the printed version, the end is signaled by visual forms, and physical ones: the book reaches its end, or a new page begins another story, marked as such. The cover of the book serves as a sort of doorway into and out of the story world.
(Composed on keyboard Tuesday, May 13, 2008)
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