If One Could Make Paradise on Earth: The Garden Frame of Decameron Days 3–6

• In Event: Approaches to the Architecture of the Decameron: Function and Meaning of the cornici

Abstract

This paper investigates the possible interconnections existing between the stories narrated in Days 3-6 and their narrative settings. Moving from the acquisitions of the studies devoted to the literary traditions converging in the Decameron gardens, this paper adds a new line of investigation by concentrating on the trope of the Earthly Paradise present in the garden descriptions and reverberating in several of the novelle told in the days considered. In particular, it looks at two apparently unrelated stories which bookend the central three days of storytelling: the novella of Masetto and that of Frate Cipolla. Both stories evoke traits of the trope of Eden and connect them with an investigation on the nature and the uses, as well as the ends and the limits, of human language.

Author

• Simone Marchesi, Princeton University