Decameron Lies & Deceit Quotes

Holy contradictions, Batman! The English princess (a.k.a. the Abbot) has to be very diplomatic when addressing Pope Boniface, hence her apparently hypocritical explanation of how much she normally hates deception. If you're careful, you can see several levels of subterfuge here: lying to Daddy, gender-swapping, stealing, and employing a cute gentleman with the intent to marry outside her social milieu. She's in deep, so we're fairly impressed that she and Alessandro escape burning at the stake.

Boccaccio works with an old trick when he writes this scene: it's the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39). In the biblical tale, Joseph is sold into slavery and becomes the head of his master's household. But the master's wife really digs him and gets miffed when Joseph repulses his advances. She claims he assaulted her and Joe winds up in jail. This is one deception that Boccaccio clearly doesn't find to be justified, and he has the lady repent on her deathbed, restoring the count's honor.

The most comical stories about deception need a gullible husband, and there are plenty in The Decameron. In this tale, Madonna Isabella is juggling a husband and two lovers, and when one lover, Lambertuccio, interrupts her in bed with the other, uses her "extraordinary presence of mind" to cook up a story on the spot and fool Lambertuccio and her husband at the same time.

Filostrato's lament shows that he's been thrashed on the rocky road of love. Much of the deception in The Decameron involves, like this passage, lovers who are cheating on their spouses and going to great lengths to conceal it. Often, this is excused because, as we know, sexual passion just can't be denied, especially within the rules of courtly love.

Ever hear the saying "One lie begets another"? We believe that, and Chichibio here can attest to it. Generally speaking, subsequent lies are meant to save one's hide. Happily for Chichibio, he's able to have the last hilarious word and his story ends with laughter instead of a thrashing. Also, please note the sniping against Venetians here. If you pay close enough attention, you'll notice that our young Florentines have a whole sackful of stereotypes at their disposal when discussing their fellow Italians.

The trade in relics during the middle ages was so brisk that John Calvin once exclaimed that if all the relics of Christ's cross were brought together in one place "they would form a whole ship's cargo." Friar Cipolla (whose translated name is "Brother Onion") is clearly the type of ecclesiastical fraud who can prey on the gullibility and lack of experience of the faithful in order to make money off fake religious objects. He thinks fast and explains that the coals were the coals over which St. Lawrence was roasted. Everyone buys it. The tale suggests that Friar Cipolla's pretty awesome in being able to make up a new story on the spot when the originally promised relic didn't appear. In fact, Cipolla insults Balena by suggesting he's too stupid to play a good trick.

Love is being praised here as the master of all deception. Of course, Lauretta's offering a backhanded compliment to this mischievous deity. In this case, Love gives Ghita the ability to avoid detection of her cheating ways and inspires her with a special level of meanness to abuse her husband in the process. Boccaccio often implies that women need as much help as they can get, since they aren't naturally endowed with a ready wit. Therefore, this kind of intervention really is divine and nothing to condemn. How to we know that Love is behind all this? According to Lauretta, the woman wasn't smart enough to pull this off herself.

At first glance, this is a light-hearted tale about a harmless prank: two friends convince the town fool that magic stones can make him invisible. They keep up the joke by pretending not to see him while they walk along with him back home. But at the end of the story there's a 180. Calandrino's wife is perfectly able to see him. He figures it's because she's destroyed the stone's magic spell and he beats the %$&!@ out of her. For some reason, Calandrino's friends find this hilarious. Collateral damage, we guess.

Pampinea, mature and rational person that she is, doesn't want everyone to get carried away by all the funny stories about tricks people play on one another. She assures the group that deception often leads to disaster, and what goes around comes around. Her story of The Student and the Widow is one of the most disturbing in The Decameron; the Widow gets some pretty brutal payback by the deceived Student. According to Pampinea, it's his intelligence and the widow's lack of it that allows him to turn the tables on her. This story also contains another form of deception—the complicated magic spells that the Student thinks up and makes the Widow perform.

Despite what we've said about Boccaccio cribbing most of his stories from other sources, the tale of Griselda appears to be an original. It so impressed other writers that it was adapted for re-use over the centuries. But why? It's really a miserable little tale about a serious case of psychological domestic abuse. Gualtieri's willing to deceive his long-suffering wife for more than a decade before he decides she's a keeper, and Dioneo praises Griselda's generous and patient behavior. So how far is too far? That question applies to both the deceiver and the deceived.