Carte d’identità letterarie dei narratori decameroniani

Abstract

The essay aims to reconstruct the inner story of the Decameron’s storytellers, whose literary identities for the first time come to light with clear outlines. Moving from some textual elements, it is possible to outline precisely family links and love affairs among the storytellers. Boccaccio provides the reader only with a few clues, which are nontheless enough to outline the profiles of the ten storytellers. Special attention will be devoted to the Introduction to Day I and the ballads that conclude each day, but also to Boccaccio’s narrative works that precede the Decameron, namely the Filocolo, Filostrato, Teseida, Comedia delle ninfe, Elegia di mf. Reconstructing the inner story of the ten storytellers does not only allow to identify a new paradigm to read the novellas from the point of view of who tell them, but also to reinterpret the entire work as the narrative ending point of all of Boccaccio’s former production. Such an approach demonstrates once more how the frame story of the ten storytellers is most likely Boccaccio’s most complex narrative invention.