04/10/2020
Boccaccio's Human Comedy
This show is a recording of an online meeting that was held on Sunday April 5th, 2020. In this discussion professor Robert Harrison speaks on Boccaccio's Decameron, with particular emphasis on the following novelle: Second Day, story #5; Third Day, story #1 and story #10; Fourth Day, story #5; Fifth Day story #9; Sixth Day, […]
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To all you listeners of entitled opinions is the year host Robert Harrison.
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We're posting today a show which took the form of a Zoom discussion here at Stanford
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among a community of Italianists as well as the larger Stanford community.
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It was a follow-up discussion of what Kachos master beats the decamaran,
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the first session of which was a discussion of the preface and introduction to the decamaran.
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There was enough enthusiasm for a second session that I assigned.
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A few of the select stories inside the decamaran for a more extended treatment of O'Kantras' art of storytelling.
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Those stories were story five from day two, stories one in ten from day three,
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the fifth story of day four, and the ninth story of day five.
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So you may want before listening to this episode to go back and listen to the previous discussion,
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if not, enjoy the show to follow.
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[Music]
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[Music]
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[Music]
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Today we are actually going to plunge into the stories of the decamaran,
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but I want to go back to the frame for a moment before we move to the stories because I think that the
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frame is what is most pertinent to the pandemic that we're living through.
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And last time I spoke about the collapse of the world that the Black Death brought about in Europe
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1348 and the way that all the bonds of community had given way to the almost the inverse or opposite
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namely that my neighbor now has become a contagion or possible contagion of the disease.
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And here when we talked last time about the loss of the world, I think it becomes clear
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through our reading of Bocatua as well as our own experience in terms of sheltering in place and
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six-speed distance between us that what we mean by world is among other things a sphere of exchange,
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exchange between human beings, some real exchange, verbal exchanges, also for Bocatua,
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so many of the stories of the decamaran have to do with the world of commerce,
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namely the business world, the world of exchange of goods and commodities and
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this will feature prominently in at least a couple of the stories that many of the stories
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actually that we have that are on top for today. So this is a dilemma because if the world is a
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place of circulation where you have the circulation of words, the circulation of stories, the circulation
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of desire and in Bocatua's case particularly sexual desire that this world is necessary for our
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human survival and it's exactly what it gets thrown into crisis during a pandemic.
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We saw that the social immune response of the Bocatua, the brigade, is to lead the city of Florence
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with all its kind of collapsed institutional structures and move to a marginal
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liminal space on the outskirts of the city and there are ten storytellers reconstitute
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the basis of the world in a kind of idyllic setting where now there are forms of exchange
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that take on the character of combibiality, community and the mutual edification, psychological
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and existential edification of this very small community there. So it's somewhat of an experiment,
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I want to say a word about the frame of the decamaran because we live in at present in a moment where
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all of the efforts of the nations that are under assault by the coronavirus is that of containment.
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This fear that we have of something that is uncontained, uncontainable. This is very much the fear
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that was associated with the black death as well where a plague became literally uncontainable.
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So how does one go about reforming or re-founding a structure of containment and in this
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respect I think that the frame of the decamaran, the idea that the author tells us how the brigade
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went to the countryside that they decided to establish a certain order where you have
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an everyday someone else will take over the role of being the king or queen that you have 10 stories
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as you've seen every day begins with a little summary of what the theme of the day is
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every story has a little synopsis of what you're out there to expect and this framing device
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for the 100 Nobel in the decamaran, I think serves as a kind of allegory for what the forces of
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containment amount to when it comes to a literary work.
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Here I'd like to say a word about the garden setting because
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if we look at what Pompineas says about what the objective of this two-week soldier on the
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margins of the city is, the objective is really to maximize the plesure
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that is afforded by these beautiful surroundings and this notion of pleasure is something that
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I think has a direct connection to the garden setting. Many of the stories you've seen
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have to do with thanks or the erotic or some kind of natural vitality that is associated
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with the urge which has to do with sexual desire and yet at the same time we know that nature,
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those people who read Bocatua as a kind of total naturalist, someone who just celebrates
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the irrepressible vitality of nature obviously are not paying too much attention to the kind of
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qualifications of the plague. The plague too is a natural phenomenon and this idea that Bocatua is
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just celebrating the vitality of sexuality also. Let's remember where to many of the Gavotro,
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these swellings, where do they take place? Most of them in the groin of the victims of the plague.
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So this idea that there's a certain malignancy at the heart of nature is always on the limits
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of all of these stories. So when the Bocatua decides that they are going to maximize their pleasure,
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it's interesting for us that the queen, Pampinea, of day one, I'm going to quote her, she says,
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"A merry life should be our aim since it was for nor the reason that we were prompted to run away
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from the sorrows of the city. However, nothing will last for very long unless it possesses a definite form."
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And that idea, and she goes on to correlate order and pleasure in her next declaration to the
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fact that our company will be able to live and order and agreeable existence for as long as we choose to
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remain together. La nocere companya, gona oredina e compiace de a sensea, una veragon,
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nia beva, de deux rí pantu a grado ne fía. So literally with order and with pleasure and without any
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shame, this idea of pleasure that is submitted to order or some kind of organization,
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some kind of containment so that it doesn't degenerate into the mere gratification of
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appetites or something on the order of lust or even pornography, this emphasis Bocatua brings
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to bear on the importance of organizing pleasure, I think has its correlate in the garden settings.
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I'd like to say one word about the difference between Italian gardens and, for example, French gardens,
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where in the latter case, the French art of gardening is one in which if you think of what
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Louis XIV did in Versailles, you take a track of land, you raise it down, and then you just
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impose upon it a structure in which nature is forced to submit entirely to the will of the architect
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and to the artifice of a certain kind of rationality that dominates the garden aesthetic. It can
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be very beautiful, but one has a sense that nature in the French garden typically is submitted to a
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rather tyrannical will of art. By contrast, the Italian garden, the art of the Italian garden,
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is one where nature and art are happily married, one to another, where the gardener,
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by giving form to the vitality of nature takes care not to over a control over it, so that you have
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a sense that the garden is at once a kind of a place of nature where nature is free to express
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itself and its vitality, but it's done so within the limits of the form that is given to that garden.
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And I think this is exactly what the frame of the decamaran does. It gives us all the kind of body,
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kind of sexual stories or the nature's irrepressible exuberance is given room to breathe,
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but at the same time, there is a certain kind of discrete form that organizes and keeps things
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contained. The fear of losing containment is ever present among the storytellers, and that doesn't
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mean that there's a strict repression of going beyond the limits we spoke about that last time,
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a trapezade, you say no, and trapezade, la rajrole, but every time there is an overstepping of limits,
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you find that they also go back within the prescribed orders and disappoints. So in that regard,
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I think the decamaran's art of storytelling has a great deal to do within the setting in which
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the stories are told, which are these beautiful gardens that are described in parts of the decamaran that
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we have not assigned for you all to read, but I urge you all to have a look at.
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So with that introduction, I'm happy to plunge into some of the stories that are on tap, and I
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chose to begin with the fifth story of the second day, which is about this character named Andreutial,
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and here we are right in the midst and think of the world of the merchant. So many of the
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characters in the decamaran are either merchants or the stories revolve around the kind of exchange
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that takes place in the marketplace. The marketplace, the markets are a place of trade,
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exchange, and of circulation of goods, and in that sense, they can be highly promiscuous
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places of exchange, but vocabulary really is known for having found a way to give a new
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qualified heroism to the middle classes, the merchant classes of a thriving, foreign team,
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republic, and a kind of a new class, a work in town of class that was emerging in Europe.
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So Andreutial is a horse stealer, and we find ourselves in the story right in the marketplace of
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Naples, a city that in Bocatros time was very vibrant and had much of the same character as it has today.
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And Andreutial, let me start with his name Andreutial, our friend Andreut Al Capra is tuning in from
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Paris, but Andros in Greek is a word for man. Andreutial is a diminutive of Andreutial, and in that
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sense, his name already signals to us that we're dealing with a little man in the sense that
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he is not quite as big or as he thinks he is. And therefore, there's a certain naive day about him.
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He goes with 500 gold florins, and he's kind of displaying them in public, trying to make a deal
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in terms of buying horses. And of course, no better place than Naples for a woman like
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Fjord de Liza, who is the other like the female character in this story, who is basically
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a prostitute. And by the way, prostitution is another form of exchange. You get, you know, sex
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for money, money for sex, and it belongs right in the thick of the marketplace.
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Go, Catro. Well, you know, well aware of that, of course.
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Fjord de Liza, she sees Andreutial, she has this woman with her who knows him from another
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part of her life and comes up with this brilliant scheme to Rob Andreutial of his money.
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I will point out again that the main strategy by which she does that is storytelling.
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She invents a beautiful story to to completely enchant Andreutial. In fact, she draws him
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into this world, which is really a garden to be. Now, we have another garden within the garden
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setting in this story, which is Fjord de Liza's apartment, or whatever her home, and she takes Andreutial
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upstairs, and it's full of flowers, and it's full of incense and the sense. And so he is really
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at the top of the mountain of purgatory, if we're looking at Dante's image of where the garden
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of the building is. You've read the story I'm presuming, so you know that Andreutial ends up
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being wind and dined and completely gullible, believing that Fjord de Liza is his natural sister.
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And then when he when he goes to relieve himself, he falls from the planky falls right into the
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mire in between two buildings in this very bad neighborhood of Naples called Malepyr to join the
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Italian. Fjord de Liza was intelligent enough to get her and Andreutial had come there at night
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time, so he wouldn't know exactly where he's going. So we have a fall, and it's the first of three
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falls from heights. Now Andreutial goes from that garden to be even right into the mire,
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and from there realizing what's happened to him, he meets the thieves who are going to rob a
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graves of an archbishop. And they want to clean him off, so they
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they use a rope and and lower him into the well, so that he can get the stench removed from himself.
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And at that moment, these guards or policemen will come on the scene and they run away to do the
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thieves, the policemen are hungry. I'm sorry, they're thirsty. They pull up the rope. And Andreutial has
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a second. Well, let's say this is his first resurrection. He goes from the bottom of a well,
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coming up to the world above. And the guards are terrified. They run away. Andreutial rejoins
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the thieves, they go into the cathedral to the tomb of the recently deceased
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archbishop of Naples, who's named by the way is Philippe Bo Meenutula. I don't know what to make of it,
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but Philippe, I know that but cat there's in procatros stories or sorry, anything that is doesn't have
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a reason for being there. Philippe Bo happens to mean a lover of horses. Andreutial is a horse merchant.
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So you go figure what you want to make of that. The point being is that these thieves also
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had in having listed Andreutial because they they want to send him down into the sarcophagus
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to recover whatever goods were buried with the archbishop, including especially a ruby ring
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of great value, more valuable than the 500 Florence. And having read the story, you know what happens
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there that they when they think they've gotten everything that's there, they close the lid on it.
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And Andreutial is really now in the world of the dead. He is he's fallen upon the the cadaver of the
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Archbishop and it seems like he is he's doomed. Then of course it's opened again by the
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other member of the clergy who had the same idea about to possess themselves of the goods of the
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valuables that were buried there. And it's in that one moment where the little man Andreutial who
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has been a plaything of fortune up until this point, at least he has that moment of action where
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he's intelligent enough to grab the leg and scare the daylights out of these people and who go away
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thinking that the devil has somehow taken claim of the of the torsion they flee out and Andreutial
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scrambles out of the tomb and is it goes back home with even more money than he left with
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given that the ruby ring is highly valuable. So it seems like a very you know fun entertaining story
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but there's a lot there under the surface that I think has to do with bokacos vision of a world of
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commodity exchange and above all the so called wheel of fortune. In the middle ages there was
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this famous image of fortune being a blindfolded goddess and she constantly rotates a wheel and this wheel
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is where all the goods and wealth and possessions of a civilization belong and she keeps turning
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this wheel so that there will in the end be a kind of equitable distribution from generation to generation
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even from individual to individual and therefore while it seems that I've had all this terrible
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bad luck I was a rich person now I've lost all my money we're right in the middle of that with
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all the people with their investments and their retirement accounts and yours truly you know the
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fortune has in the last few weeks just come to take away a lot of what
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one had and the idea in the middle ages is that there's this constant turning when when you're at
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the top of the wheel you can be sure you're going to go down on the wheel and it's going to go back up
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and the usual in the in the space of one night is is kind of turned around that wheel three times no
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that fuel to the leaves is house that falls into the mire both into the well and then he's brought
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back up on it and then he goes into the into the tune and then he resurrects again so this is both
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conscious way of putting into play in a rather subtle way that the wheel of fortune in the case of
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the experience of one you know one character I'd like to ask if anyone happens to remember on what
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day of the week all this takes place it's another very subtle thing that one would easily
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overlook because it's mentioned at the very onset of the story that
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and the future left his hometown of Peru just the two Naples on a Sunday
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therefore all this takes place on a Monday, lun-de, our word Monday is the same as lun-de which is
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goes back to the moon it's the day of the moon and I don't think it's by chance that
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Vocantra chooses this day of the week for this story because throughout the decamaran he
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distinguished he says that what these two my world is not Dante's world as of this the world
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above the spheres of the moon and the eternal heavens my world is the human world which is the sub
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lunar world the world under the moon which in ancient and medieval cosmology is the sphere of
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change flux fortune fortune belongs to the sub lunar world the moon as we know is fickle it
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plays games on us and so forth so it's another typical discrete gesture on Vocantra's part to make
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this whole story take place on the day of the moon
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mind if I screen a quick question to you absolutely anyone wants to go ahead yeah so Patricia has asked
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a great straightforward question about the way that the stories are are addressed in their outset
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why is it to women why are they only and always addressed to the women in the in the audience
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you mean by the start when they begin their stories it's a dearest ladies and and so I'm
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presumed that that's what she means by that yes yeah yeah that's well first thing they they constitute
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the majority there seven out of the ten and then it was also typical of medieval lyric Italian
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poetry that you address it's part of the chivalric code of addressing the ladies first and
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primarily now of course Vocantra he addresses the ladies but he's also has a number of stories in which
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the he makes it quite clear what he what he thinks about um that you know that the sexual
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let's say freedom that women will appropriate if they are given a chance no against the suppression
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but we'll talk about that in in the other stores and I think we have another question from Victoria
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Mondo yeah she's got her hand raised go ahead Victoria hear me
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you can't hear me okay um so I had a question about um I was really interested in what you mentioned
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about containment and I was thinking about how this doesn't necessarily apply to all the stories
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we read for today but it does to a few and Andre Ucho also um I was interested in how he the story
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in the events happen in a different city than the city of origin and so they're kind of like
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contained to like he goes from Peruja to Palermo he has this whole experience and then he returns back
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to Peruja like a different man and this is also true for like Masito for example or Masito
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he travels to the convent he has this whole experience and then we hear that he returns he's different
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and also Alabek who travels to the desert and has these kind of this transgression and the desert
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comes back and interacts with the people that she was interacting with prior to the events um so yeah I was
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just interested in how and also maybe this idea that the events are contained to a new city and then
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there's a return how we can extend this concept further to also like the frame and the storytellers
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and returning to the city once they've lived in this kind of ideal like garden like environment
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and whether it's changed them because it does for the characters but I'm not sure if for them the
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the objective is really to change while they're away from Florence or if it's just a kind of
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live in this kind of suspended reality and then return to their life as it was before
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so travel is the very medium of mercantileism it's by and oftentimes the travel that takes place in
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these stories follow trade trade routes in um of the Middle Ages and there were certain commercial
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centers yeah it would uh Naples but they had one of these are places that merchants would go
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because of the circulation of goods you know requires also that the merchant also set out in person
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to affect the kind of exchange of goods and there are other stories in the
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camera on where we have this the travel is much more followed where we have um
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I'm thinking of the uh what's her name the Sarah's and Princess who passes through nine
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husbands before she's returned home it's a kind of odyssey and in statistical book contro that where
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Homer will give us you know the um travel stories of a hero a war hero and a warrior for book contro
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this kind of travel takes place really among the merchants who are the diminished heroes of his age
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because I'd be the right now to miss heroes the classical nation but nevertheless
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book contro had a great admiration for the uh the willingness to venture into the
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unknown or into foreign territories in order to make a profit and these merchants oftentimes have
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an imagination that book contro admirer is even if they're not fully aware of how much imagination
|
| 00:31:12.320 |
is required for you to be a successful merchant and travel is really the medium of the mercantile
|
| 00:31:23.440 |
world I'd like to say a word about the ruby ring the story before the Andrud just stories about
|
| 00:31:29.840 |
another merchant who takes me of his city of brabedaloy comes from one of those beautiful places in
|
| 00:31:37.920 |
Italy he already has a lot of money but he wants to double his fortune and so he invests all his money
|
| 00:31:44.960 |
in what we would call perishable goods he sends off to cypress other people have had the same idea
|
| 00:31:50.800 |
he finds that there's no market for its goods and then he takes to um he takes to piracy and he's
|
| 00:31:59.280 |
then captured by other pirates anyway he ends up in a after a shipwreck being saved by holding onto a
|
| 00:32:06.800 |
chest that is floating on the on the on the sea surface and when he arrives when he's kind of
|
| 00:32:13.520 |
washed up on the shores of the island of kurfu he opens the chest and is full of precious stones
|
| 00:32:19.120 |
gems
|
| 00:32:23.840 |
so the question there is what is this economy there there are two economies one is the economy of needs
|
| 00:32:30.880 |
and uh this would be the Marxist notion of an economy of essential needs that we find
|
| 00:32:39.120 |
Landofo at the island of cypress the market is just saturated there's no use for me they have to throw
|
| 00:32:45.680 |
them away but there's another economy of the imagination what is a precious stone what kind of
|
| 00:32:51.200 |
pragmatic biological value does it have none really it's because these these precious stones are really
|
| 00:33:00.080 |
some simulacra of eternity of something that we invest a kind of enormous value in even though
|
| 00:33:09.600 |
we can't eat them or wear them or do anything that really promotes you know the basic needs of
|
| 00:33:17.840 |
physical survival so the traffic in precious stones is also something that required
|
| 00:33:26.240 |
merchants to go from place to place and you can't be a merchant without being a nomadic
|
| 00:33:32.000 |
in a service so you're right that in so many stories there's a setting out and also a return
|
| 00:33:38.240 |
but it's in that circle of a circumnavigation around that we find both casual also alluding to
|
| 00:33:46.880 |
to the marketplace and the role of place in our in our world I think so hello I think we have another
|
| 00:33:56.000 |
question from Donatella are you there Donatella?
|
| 00:34:00.960 |
Amir can you hear me? Yes go ahead. So Professor Harrison my question is more about
|
| 00:34:11.200 |
book-action linguistic choice of using vernacular English so I'm going to read the question that I wrote
|
| 00:34:18.320 |
in which way does the user vernacular in reach the the camera in other words does the vernacular
|
| 00:34:25.840 |
language allow the author to portray elements details or teams the Latin cannot yeah well
|
| 00:34:38.880 |
I think the use of the vernacular is directly linked to what we've been talking about namely
|
| 00:34:45.360 |
book-catchers ambition to write a mercantile epic which is what the decamaran has been called
|
| 00:34:53.600 |
rightly so I think it's not only a mercantile I think but it is it is a an epic mostly of the middle
|
| 00:35:02.640 |
and not yeah the bourgeoisie and to have written book-catcher wrote a number of other of his works in
|
| 00:35:13.280 |
Latin but they were intended for a very different audience than the decamaran's audience so the
|
| 00:35:19.840 |
use of the vernacular abusing his vernacular Italian was a I think a decision that assured that
|
| 00:35:28.640 |
these kind of stories would find their you know their target audience and would
|
| 00:35:35.040 |
circulate liberally within that class of people now the other
|
| 00:35:46.400 |
consideration this goes back to the previous question about the the address to the women
|
| 00:35:54.480 |
that
|
| 00:35:56.480 |
no-catchers predecessor Dante makes the point in his vita noa among other places that
|
| 00:36:06.480 |
the reason poets began writing in the vernacular rather than in Latin is because they wanted
|
| 00:36:15.440 |
the their women the women that they were in love with and for whom they wrote poems to be able to
|
| 00:36:22.000 |
understand their literary gestures given that women at the time were not educated in Latin
|
| 00:36:32.640 |
the use of the vernacular had this direct connection with the ability of women to understand
|
| 00:36:42.240 |
what one was writing and given that the decamaran as a whole is dedicated to women
|
| 00:36:47.440 |
and only to women it would have been quite ironic and paradoxical had
|
| 00:36:53.440 |
ochotry written in Latin so the vernacular vernacular is essential to the whole mission of this
|
| 00:37:01.440 |
okay does that answer your question don't I tell you it does my only concern and I was thinking
|
| 00:37:07.920 |
about the same about the connection with the audience but I'm considering that I'm not and if you
|
| 00:37:16.400 |
remember last week I sent you the second question about the female audience if actually this audience
|
| 00:37:26.080 |
there seems to be like women it's I mean the audience is for in his mind the audience is I mean
|
| 00:37:36.560 |
the camera is for women or women as audience is just like a sort of not at a logical
|
| 00:37:43.680 |
speaking in order to talk about certain topics that we'd either like a type of audience he cannot
|
| 00:37:53.920 |
yeah I that's good I think that bokachua sincere in his address to the women and that his experience
|
| 00:38:04.240 |
as a socialite was that company company reality the kinds of the kind of pleasure that he is
|
| 00:38:14.400 |
associated with storytelling and social interaction was infinitely enhanced by the presence of women
|
| 00:38:22.560 |
and that and therefore I don't think that he's just using women as a you know rhetorical figure
|
| 00:38:32.080 |
to address an audience it's not primarily made up of women and I'm also thinking like especially because
|
| 00:38:41.360 |
I know the bokachua sometimes I mean there are like a lot of debates about if bokachua is a
|
| 00:38:51.760 |
misogynist writer or it's not considering what he wrote in the cormacho so that he says people
|
| 00:38:58.400 |
see the cormachas a misogynist like um leader at work so I wasn't sure but thank you for the answer
|
| 00:39:07.600 |
anyway well we can we can talk about that on our own the cormacho will take us a little bit
|
| 00:39:13.600 |
for a few I know I know I'm so sorry I apologize that's good thank you don't I think we have
|
| 00:39:20.720 |
another question from Josh do you want to speak your question about the anti-clerical aspects
|
| 00:39:29.360 |
are you there
|
| 00:39:31.200 |
okay maybe I'll just read the question uh Josh interrupt me if you'd like so the question that we
|
| 00:39:41.040 |
received is the following given the anti-clerical and possibly anti-church undertones of these stories
|
| 00:39:48.240 |
priest trying to rob a sarcophagus nuns enjoying the death mute devil into hell and so on
|
| 00:39:54.960 |
did the pandemic at the time give bokachua a unique timing opportunity to circulate these
|
| 00:40:00.960 |
stories which might not have been otherwise possible too many other upheavals for the church to deal
|
| 00:40:06.560 |
with right yeah that's that's a good question Josh um you know the anti-clericism is part of the
|
| 00:40:17.760 |
the great humor and believe it or not it wasn't the church did not become inquisitorial and repressive
|
| 00:40:28.400 |
because of anti-clerical um jobs at it it really the the Protestant Reformation made the the
|
| 00:40:39.360 |
Catholic church much more paranoid about critique but Dante had been extremely
|
| 00:40:44.720 |
the anti-clerical and his divine comedy when he puts the popes in hell and a lot of the clergymen
|
| 00:40:50.720 |
for greed and so forth um and I think certainly the black death of 1348 made the atmosphere much
|
| 00:40:59.840 |
more liberal than the church uh probably was um you know reeling from the effects of it but I
|
| 00:41:10.160 |
have it I would imagine that bokachua would have been equally open in the um in the kind of
|
| 00:41:20.000 |
parody and ridicule of the clergy as as he was even regardless of the other pandemic
|
| 00:41:27.600 |
so we have another question um coming up from Hilton are you there do you want me to read it
|
| 00:41:39.520 |
okay so the question is about how was the book produced so of course in the era before the printing press
|
| 00:41:48.480 |
and distributed how was it received yeah so we know that it wasn't published as uh in its finished form
|
| 00:41:58.160 |
that it was being published and disseminated at least the first three days had been widely publicly
|
| 00:42:08.480 |
available before bokachua composed the fourth day because the fourth day begins with a long response to his
|
| 00:42:20.000 |
critics who found that these stories were too pornographic and not and were beneath the dignity of a
|
| 00:42:28.240 |
you know of a great literary artist or scholar like bokachua so the fact that he engages in a
|
| 00:42:36.800 |
rebuttal of his critics at the beginning of the fourth day is evidence enough that it was circulating
|
| 00:42:42.640 |
we also know that many of the manuscripts were owned by merchants because in the margin
|
| 00:42:48.000 |
alias uh you would have all these economic uh numbers and figures and sales and and so forth so
|
| 00:42:56.000 |
clearly the the biggest audience at least the people who were purchasing the available copies of
|
| 00:43:02.000 |
the individual days or the book as a whole seem to have come from the merchant classes that they
|
| 00:43:07.200 |
would take this book with them and read it uh you know on their travels and
|
| 00:43:11.280 |
we thought it was so good. Thank you Robert I think Maria was going to jump in with a question here.
|
| 00:43:18.800 |
Sure yeah I was um I'm wondering because of the um the fact of the themes of the day that we
|
| 00:43:27.600 |
haven't quite talked too much about yet but it seems to me to have a lot to do with the idea of an
|
| 00:43:32.800 |
economy of the stories um the well the ones that we were reading for today we're talking about
|
| 00:43:39.520 |
happy endings against all odds happy endings and love stories happy endings uh unhappy endings
|
| 00:43:46.240 |
getting what you want things like that and it I can't help but think of um of narrative mapping
|
| 00:43:51.600 |
especially with regard to Andrillo and how the worst something gets the more uh drastic and rewarding
|
| 00:43:59.280 |
that happy ending tends to feel even if you were to look horizontally across the let's say like the
|
| 00:44:04.720 |
payout of the beginning state and the final state there's really a very small margin of improvement
|
| 00:44:10.720 |
in the very end but it's this kind of overall economy as if you're watching stocks rise and fall
|
| 00:44:16.480 |
that makes the ending feel so so dramatically um happy and I wonder if if you think that that does indeed
|
| 00:44:22.400 |
have to do with this um this general interest in exchange and and value being ascribed to things
|
| 00:44:29.200 |
rather arbitrarily at times yeah that's very well put I um I think you're you know you're
|
| 00:44:39.120 |
absolutely right um of course the theme of the second day in particular is characters who after
|
| 00:44:47.520 |
experiencing um misfortune are are rewarded with a a greater fortune than they could have
|
| 00:44:55.600 |
imagined so it is that dip and then rise again but in terms of the economy of the narrative
|
| 00:45:05.200 |
I think it also follows as you said the rise and and follow markets and so forth and let's think about
|
| 00:45:11.520 |
the economy in a story like the Mazeto story which is the first story of the third day about the um
|
| 00:45:18.480 |
the gardener who decides to play death and dumb and presents himself to the to the convent where
|
| 00:45:27.040 |
there are all these nuns who are young and have been probably forced to enter the convent by their
|
| 00:45:36.240 |
mothers and brothers fathers and so forth and there Mazeto very cleverly goes about
|
| 00:45:46.080 |
servicing one after another they then they end up having being nine nuns in all including the
|
| 00:45:55.760 |
abysse herself and it's of course not by chance that there's nine nuns because nine was
|
| 00:46:01.840 |
the great number in Dante for Dante who associated with Beatrice it's the Trinity times itself
|
| 00:46:09.200 |
Dante had a whole mysticism about the number nine but Contra takes that number nine and puts it
|
| 00:46:14.960 |
right down into the into the sexual economy of a of a convent and clearly this story okay so he's a gardener
|
| 00:46:29.040 |
and there's a lot of play on the traditional christian myth that the womb of the Virgin Mary is
|
| 00:46:38.320 |
the garden in which grows the flower the lily flower of Jesus and the garden the convent is a garden
|
| 00:46:49.200 |
which is a forte of the innocence of the garden reading that we will return to after death and so
|
| 00:46:57.520 |
forth so but Contra is not spoofing but he's engaging in with the christian symbolism of the garden
|
| 00:47:05.360 |
and having a gardener who really takes care of the vital forces of the sexual forces of the convent
|
| 00:47:14.400 |
and at the end I mean I think it's quite funny you know Saint Augustine in this confessions when
|
| 00:47:20.560 |
gives a very famous account for the origins of human language where he says if you look at
|
| 00:47:25.680 |
infants the way the reason that we begin to speak or an infant learn how to speak is because he's
|
| 00:47:31.040 |
full of desire and he wants to indicate what the objective is desire is and therefore when he
|
| 00:47:40.720 |
hears his parents name something that he learns and they because he wants to say you know I
|
| 00:47:46.800 |
want the cake or I want the toy or I want this so Augustine gives a genealogy of language in this
|
| 00:47:58.160 |
kind of breathless desire for things.
|
| 00:48:00.660 |
Vocacho takes this and it's only at the moment of the over-saysiation and sexual exhaustion of
|
| 00:48:08.400 |
desire that Mazetho will actually break into speech in order to create a barrier between himself
|
| 00:48:14.080 |
and the excessive desires of the nuns and the abbess has to come to a reason decision what are
|
| 00:48:21.040 |
they going to do let him out and tell the story you know well they decide they regulate the
|
| 00:48:26.640 |
big note economy of this community and it's done in such a way that the art of gardening
|
| 00:48:35.280 |
is brought to bear on the way that they actually organize you know the sexual economy of the
|
| 00:48:43.680 |
place in a way that suits kind of everyone everyone except the the monklets and the nuns
|
| 00:48:49.920 |
as is put where they have to be funneled out into orphanages because after all you know sex is related to
|
| 00:48:59.280 |
procreation and reproduction and so they were but anyway I think the what you're talking about the
|
| 00:49:06.560 |
in terms of the economy is and the happy ending you know that could end very badly but it's
|
| 00:49:12.960 |
typical of Vocacho to find a way to bring it all to a kind of harmonious balance here
|
| 00:49:20.480 |
thank you yeah that's great that to get some of the other stories in there too in this reflection
|
| 00:49:27.680 |
I'm not sure how much you wanted to say about our other novellas in and of themselves but we do have
|
| 00:49:34.080 |
Christina wanted to ask a bit of a follow-up questions maybe we can give her a moment
|
| 00:49:39.120 |
Christina do you want to jump in? I can although I also like the idea of proceedings I'm
|
| 00:49:45.120 |
happy to feel that yeah I just wanted to ask really after this so if we can think of the group of
|
| 00:49:51.680 |
time as a rough approximation of Vocacho's audience I'm wondering about those three men
|
| 00:49:57.200 |
so who are they? Which story? As a general matter the entire decanaran
|
| 00:50:06.080 |
the audience as women and if we think of the ten as a sort of stand-in for his audience then let's
|
| 00:50:13.120 |
say the majority of that audience is women right and indeed the stories address themselves to
|
| 00:50:17.680 |
women but who are the men who are his audience? So when you say that there's a three story teller
|
| 00:50:27.040 |
male story tellers they have an equal status with the women and so it's interesting that the two
|
| 00:50:43.120 |
stories that I suggested one the first one is told by one of the male narrators named Philos
|
| 00:50:50.240 |
Dreto his name already indicates that he is a the frustrated lover that's what the name Philos
|
| 00:50:58.720 |
said the means and typically tell stories either about men who are completely vanquished by
|
| 00:51:15.920 |
the sexual prowess of women or he tells stories about this kind of unbelievable you know fantasized
|
| 00:51:24.480 |
male sexuality the other story about Ali Beck is very much in keeping with the first story the
|
| 00:51:35.120 |
sentence story the third day it's about the young the young girl who naively goes into the desert
|
| 00:51:41.600 |
because she wants to serve a serve God and ends up with you know the young hermit who thinks at
|
| 00:51:50.560 |
first that he can resist and yet it only takes him like a couple of minutes to realize that he
|
| 00:51:55.680 |
he's no match for nature and of course there too we have the same idea this kind of male
|
| 00:52:02.880 |
fantasy fantasy of this insatiable female sexual
|
| 00:52:08.400 |
this story so basically the these men the three men story tellers especially Philos
|
| 00:52:18.800 |
and Dio neo tell different different types of stories and then the women women story tellers
|
| 00:52:28.720 |
and you know it's hard to do you know it's is an interesting case because he's the one who has the
|
| 00:52:36.560 |
special privilege of being exempt from following the assigned themes of the day so he is the one
|
| 00:52:43.680 |
who always tells the last story of the day as well so he's he's at the limit of containment
|
| 00:52:49.440 |
no he is the one of the ten who cannot really be contained and but it's by agreement and by
|
| 00:52:55.680 |
rule that he gets to be outside of the containing theme and also speaking last so he gets to go beyond
|
| 00:53:07.520 |
the limit but every time he goes beyond the limit he's you know the group as a whole will bring things
|
| 00:53:15.280 |
back you know within the rule and the story of Ali back is another kind of very brilliant parody
|
| 00:53:25.120 |
of religious symbolism and religious language about the devil you know Satan the pride of the devil the pride
|
| 00:53:38.800 |
is superior wanting to rise above the status of God is what gets Satan thrown down into hell
|
| 00:53:46.640 |
and therefore pride is the the principle sin of all and it's because it's attempt to rise above
|
| 00:53:59.120 |
say so so this raising of the the the devil the the devil that's raising its head in pride
|
| 00:54:06.560 |
is all very funny referring to male erection the hell and putting the devil back into hell
|
| 00:54:12.800 |
the resurrection of the flesh all these um all these ways in which bokatra is is humorously engaging with
|
| 00:54:20.640 |
with christian language and symbolism it's it's it's well it's it's enchanting because bokatra is the
|
| 00:54:30.240 |
one writer who can be sexually completely explicit without ever being vulgar no it never
|
| 00:54:41.520 |
the the camera never becomes pornographic in the sense that even though it doesn't it doesn't repress
|
| 00:54:48.960 |
any of the details it doesn't do do that in in a way that uh breaches decorum and this
|
| 00:55:02.960 |
brilliant double-speed double language of the resurrection of the flesh and so forth all that makes it
|
| 00:55:09.040 |
there's a is a prime example of how bokatra can be completely uninhibited on the one hand
|
| 00:55:15.680 |
and avoid any kind of a descent into pornographic vulgarity on the other
|
| 00:55:21.120 |
right we have a really um super rich list of questions coming in so i'm going to turn it over
|
| 00:55:29.360 |
to Andre Akapra to ask a question really quick um go for it under well first of all greetings
|
| 00:55:36.560 |
from the other side of the oceans it's great to it's great to see you um i was i was very intrigued by
|
| 00:55:42.880 |
what you mentioned about the will of fortune right because at times bokatra is heralded as one of the
|
| 00:55:49.440 |
great anthropocentric writers meaning a writer that talks about humans there are full of agents
|
| 00:55:56.240 |
and they end up overcoming a set of challenges and eventually impose their will or at least
|
| 00:56:02.720 |
these advantages of their resolution but i think you're touching on a very interesting point when you
|
| 00:56:08.960 |
mentioned that the role of the merchant is also eventually in the unknown and indeed i think that
|
| 00:56:15.680 |
fortune the role of fortune did the camera is precisely this obscure force um that sure i mean at
|
| 00:56:23.120 |
times can be leveraged by humans but it's not there for the for the humans um the protagonists of
|
| 00:56:30.480 |
the story that we read they they and the other one that we haven't read yet they do have a strange
|
| 00:56:36.240 |
awareness that things can indeed go bad and most certainly they will go bad in their lives and
|
| 00:56:42.400 |
that's why they have this kind of battle ready uh attitude and that's i think one of the main
|
| 00:56:48.000 |
difference right between a bokatra's time and that were time i mean we kind of have been living in
|
| 00:56:52.880 |
this long nap after the second war war then now corona kind of snaps us out of this state of you
|
| 00:56:59.360 |
know things eventually will go well where as an impact there are you know dangers and strange and
|
| 00:57:04.880 |
uncontrollable forces out there so my question to you is uh what do you think is the role of the
|
| 00:57:11.680 |
fourth day the day when everything goes bad um is it is a moment when bokatra's just shows
|
| 00:57:18.640 |
uh lifts this veil and shows the dark forces that lie beneath or is it sort of like safety
|
| 00:57:25.280 |
or is it something that is an is it is it's controlled by the structure of containment that
|
| 00:57:31.440 |
we're talking about or uh i i would just consider your thoughts about this
|
| 00:57:35.440 |
yeah thanks andrea from Paris it's great it's uh so we didn't assign it i didn't assign any
|
| 00:57:46.560 |
stories from the fourth day but let me just tell you know the people that are participants at
|
| 00:57:51.680 |
the fourth day the theme the prescribed theme is um tragic tragic story about stories that end in
|
| 00:58:00.560 |
bad way i think we do have one from the fourth day do we not uh yes yes we lovely's back
|
| 00:58:08.880 |
that oh at least we expect that's a true that's true actually if you don't mind i think
|
| 00:58:13.600 |
Sarah proton has a question that might dovetail really well and maybe you could address them both
|
| 00:58:18.720 |
Sarah do you want to address the burden?
|
| 00:58:20.240 |
Sure my question was simply about the comic and tragic elements in fact in bokatra and so i had
|
| 00:58:29.840 |
juxtaposed the endra ucho story with the lise betto story so you know the endra ucho story you
|
| 00:58:34.800 |
know that that ends well despite the number of challenges and then of course these are better which
|
| 00:58:40.000 |
just reasons pure tragedy i mean from happy love through death to death by tears so yeah my
|
| 00:58:45.680 |
question was more broadly if we might talk about these elements of tragic and comic uh sort of in
|
| 00:58:50.960 |
in bokatra and the function of these these sort of tensions are juxtapositions that's great um
|
| 00:58:57.440 |
so yeah addressing both those questions the the fourth day are stories that end in misfortune
|
| 00:59:07.840 |
they end they end badly are they tragic i am not sure because these categories of tragic and
|
| 00:59:14.640 |
comic i think comedy is definitely the principal m o of the decamaran and the lise betto story
|
| 00:59:26.000 |
i don't know if it's it's a very sad story whether it's a tragic story i'm not sure in the typical
|
| 00:59:35.440 |
sense of the um the classical way in which you have a protagonist to magnanimous and
|
| 00:59:42.880 |
and somehow through an overreaching or some kind of reversal of fortune is cast down you know into
|
| 00:59:50.080 |
the depths of misery for reasons that may or may not be his fault or her fault no
|
| 00:59:55.760 |
because of it the reason i chose that story is because it has a lot of pain thus and it shows that
|
| 01:00:02.800 |
the decamaran is not only stories that are funny and comic but i think it's also if you take the
|
| 01:00:12.160 |
it's a it's a psychological portrait of a character who is almost born to born and to grieve
|
| 01:00:21.200 |
and i don't know if i'm over in over determining the fact that she already displays all the
|
| 01:00:30.880 |
behavior and look accents of grieving before she even knows that her gloennzo is dead
|
| 01:00:41.760 |
so she goes you know whining to her brothers and she's always be ceaching and what so you have a
|
| 01:00:48.480 |
sense that vocatrous chosen to give us a a psychology of um of lamentation regardless of what
|
| 01:00:58.320 |
actually happens or doesn't have i might be over playing the cards here in that respect
|
| 01:01:03.840 |
but on the question of comedy in general and and tragedy what
|
| 01:01:10.160 |
and reia was asking about about the fourth day there are there there might be one or two truly tragic
|
| 01:01:17.200 |
stories i'm thinking maybe the first one about gismoda and greasquatador but
|
| 01:01:24.800 |
and i'm sorry to talk about a story that most of you haven't read necessarily but that's a story
|
| 01:01:32.240 |
where it's a father and a daughter and a father who discovers that his daughter he's the prince
|
| 01:01:38.640 |
of sannen i discovers his daughter is kind of a secret lover who is his servant
|
| 01:01:42.560 |
his valet servant and in a moment in anger upon this discovery he has a greasquatador rested and then
|
| 01:01:52.560 |
he cuts out his heart and sends it to his daughter in a chamber and in a chalice saying let this
|
| 01:02:01.680 |
console you for the loss of your dearest possession referring either to Lorenzo or to make more
|
| 01:02:10.000 |
more likely to um uh you know a certain part of his anatomy she then confronts her father
|
| 01:02:22.320 |
because when her father comes and we have this story that would have ended in perfect tragedy
|
| 01:02:27.200 |
but right in the middle of it there's a confrontation between father and daughter which is three
|
| 01:02:33.120 |
pages of discourse where she presents her arguments of father and other and all of a sudden you realize
|
| 01:02:39.680 |
Sophocles could never have introduced that into antigony it would have completely ruined the tragic
|
| 01:02:46.160 |
effect of action that leads inevitably and necessarily to death you have a sense that the father and
|
| 01:02:54.000 |
daughter in that in that critical moment that anything could have happened he could have murdered
|
| 01:02:58.080 |
his daughter he could have even raped his daughter because there was a suggestion that there's an
|
| 01:03:03.200 |
incestuous obsession of the father for the daughter never explicitly mentioned but the fact is that
|
| 01:03:09.520 |
both catar chos to introduce a scene which keeps the possibility of real tragedy at bay keeps it
|
| 01:03:18.400 |
at a distance so I think that even the story that comes closest to having a tragic character avoids
|
| 01:03:26.400 |
the classical tragedy now another thing that I would like to say about
|
| 01:03:33.840 |
the tragic and the dark is when dreo was talking about the fourth day but we already know from the
|
| 01:03:40.640 |
plague that there's a great kind of horror in the in the very background of all these stories
|
| 01:03:51.120 |
but happy endings are happy endings are something that is a required or insisted upon by the
|
| 01:04:01.600 |
bourgeoisie there's nothing more bourgeois than happy endings and the desire for happy ending
|
| 01:04:08.880 |
whereas because the merchant class for bocacho it's a precarious class you're taking a lot of
|
| 01:04:16.960 |
risks with your investments your investments at any moment can go south and you can lose your money
|
| 01:04:23.520 |
and the idea that when you lose your money if you're not an aristocrat you lose everything
|
| 01:04:30.720 |
the aristocracy doesn't run the same risk when it loses its possessions because it has this complete self
|
| 01:04:39.760 |
confidence of a class that no matter how impoverished you are the fact that you're an aristocrat means
|
| 01:04:46.640 |
that you will always have a dignity and magnanimity that is independent of your material
|
| 01:04:54.640 |
possessions of your goods so much so that we have that other story that I recommended the story
|
| 01:05:00.720 |
of fidde de dico de dio dio de dio de dio dio dio dio he's the one who has this falcon
|
| 01:05:04.960 |
and he's the one who who squandered his entire fortune trying to win over
|
| 01:05:19.280 |
the favors of this woman that he's in love with but who never really acknowledged him at all
|
| 01:05:26.080 |
so he he's left with absolutely nothing except a country house and a falcon he's but he's a noble
|
| 01:05:33.680 |
he has this kind of no he belongs to that aristocratic class where bocacho is giving a support of
|
| 01:05:39.600 |
someone who does not even aware of the fact that he's become poor until she presents herself
|
| 01:05:47.600 |
on his property to ask him a favor and he realizes he has nothing really to offer to eat
|
| 01:05:55.280 |
he sees the falcon the only and what is the falcon is the very emblem of that class of
|
| 01:06:01.280 |
aristocracy is the bird of the hunting bird of the imperial
|
| 01:06:06.160 |
cord of Frederick II it's the bird of loyalty that will always come back to a semester and so
|
| 01:06:12.880 |
it's it's the emblem of aristocracy without even hesitating for a second when he sees it there
|
| 01:06:18.960 |
plump and he brings its neck and serves it up to this woman in the typical magnanimity of
|
| 01:06:26.640 |
an idealized aristocrat and when she finds out what he's done she is horrified on the one hand and
|
| 01:06:34.800 |
completely in admiration on the other her son dies she inherits the fortune brother's
|
| 01:06:45.040 |
wanted to remarry and she said okay if I'm gonna have to get remarry I'm the only person I will
|
| 01:06:49.040 |
marry is to the legal and look at what happens now
|
| 01:06:57.680 |
but then he go marry sir and he if I can read to you the ending of the story because it has
|
| 01:07:06.480 |
everything to do with tragedy and comedy it's in the fifth day right yeah it begins you are to know
|
| 01:07:16.800 |
then that copo de bode des endomani chi who wants used to live in our city and possibly lives
|
| 01:07:22.960 |
there's still one of the most highly respected men of our century a person worthy of eternal
|
| 01:07:27.600 |
fame which he his position of preeminence by dint of his character and abilities rather than by
|
| 01:07:34.080 |
his noble lineage frequently took pleasure during his declining years in discussing incidents
|
| 01:07:40.240 |
from the past and one of his favorite stories is this story of fiddity go that he tells all the time
|
| 01:07:46.000 |
his name is copo de bode des endomani means bourgeois he clearly belongs to that
|
| 01:07:53.280 |
bourgeois class and he takes delight in telling this story about this fiddity go who at the end
|
| 01:08:00.320 |
of the story last paragraph seeing that her mind was made up and knowing fiddity go to be a gentleman
|
| 01:08:08.400 |
of great merit even though he was poor her brothers fell in with her wishes and handed her over
|
| 01:08:13.920 |
to him along with her immense fortune that's for finding himself married to this great lady
|
| 01:08:20.720 |
with whom he was so deeply in love and very rich into the bargain fiddity go managed his affairs
|
| 01:08:28.000 |
more prudently and lived with her in happiness to the end of his days i would say this is exactly
|
| 01:08:37.520 |
the wrong ending for a person like fiddity go because he's been co-opted incorporated into the middle
|
| 01:08:47.360 |
class ethic and here's someone who didn't hesitate to squander everything he had
|
| 01:08:54.080 |
out of devotion to the true lady but now he is going to join a family where he's
|
| 01:09:01.920 |
they're going to manage their affairs more prudently so this ethic of prudence is also one that
|
| 01:09:08.720 |
it has a class dimension and so i think that this happy ending is in this story in particular
|
| 01:09:16.000 |
shows us that it's above all the bourgeoisie that climbers for happy endings the aristocracy could
|
| 01:09:23.760 |
deal with tragedy because okay happens to me but it's going to happen on a grand scale i can
|
| 01:09:28.160 |
i can i can i can deal with that i don't know if i'm persuading anyone about
|
| 01:09:34.240 |
about this but what do you say Andrea i agree with you i think my question wasn't
|
| 01:09:42.640 |
very much referring to the tragic side of darkness but quite on the contrary about the fact that darkness
|
| 01:09:49.600 |
creates the conditions of possibility for those characters to shine and it's precisely their
|
| 01:09:56.880 |
awareness of that darkness that allows them to kind of repurpose them and to spin the will of
|
| 01:10:04.000 |
fortune yet again so i think i think it's more about a decomity side of things you know something
|
| 01:10:10.960 |
that the awareness that things will eventually go bad and do something that makes them go well
|
| 01:10:16.640 |
rather than the tragic side of things that ends you know in a disaster yeah that's great
|
| 01:10:22.560 |
and Sarah what about you to you uh yeah well as i listened to you i mean it struck me that this
|
| 01:10:27.920 |
this whole element of you know character flaw or strength really doesn't it's not emphasized in
|
| 01:10:33.600 |
these stories no way that you'd expect for true tragedy so of course and rai ucho you know
|
| 01:10:37.920 |
ends up in this happy story almost despite being a fool and of course these are but the sufferers
|
| 01:10:41.920 |
sufferers with no obvious tie to in her character so you know you you got me thinking about that as
|
| 01:10:47.200 |
well the role of character and how these people's stories play out and the emphasis really does
|
| 01:10:51.280 |
seem to be on the capacity you know where there is comedy and happy endings for it to be about
|
| 01:10:55.760 |
built to and once capacity to manage a certain set of situations to turn the circumstances around
|
| 01:11:00.720 |
rather than it being a reflection of their other character per se so uh those were just you know my
|
| 01:11:05.760 |
thoughts as i as i listened to you uh work through that question of you know the tragic versus i
|
| 01:11:11.440 |
guess i guess this element of pathos really um but what i'm very i says about darkness being
|
| 01:11:18.400 |
an occasion to shine that it's unfortunate as a this unpredictable flux of circumstances
|
| 01:11:26.000 |
vocatra definitely has certain heroes that he puts forward as as as admirable characters and these
|
| 01:11:38.560 |
are the ones who know who take initiative and who act in the moment of decisive moments in ways
|
| 01:11:52.160 |
that will lead to a happy outcome rather than a tragic outcome so many of his
|
| 01:11:59.280 |
his positive heroes are are resourceful intelligent
|
| 01:12:08.320 |
not clear of why but at least able to manipulate circumstances in such a way that it will go to
|
| 01:12:19.280 |
their to their benefit and the new to has that one moment where he does the right thing and that
|
| 01:12:26.000 |
you know that's enough for him many other in many other cases um vocatra does unlike passive
|
| 01:12:31.520 |
victims of uh circumstances and that's why lise beth uh he does tell the story of lise beth
|
| 01:12:38.720 |
full of pathos and stuff but she is exactly the kind of hero that he is that it is not put forward
|
| 01:12:47.360 |
for for admiration um so i think i if i if i understood and reah properly this this
|
| 01:12:56.400 |
championing of the empowerment of human agency and the the willingness of characters to
|
| 01:13:06.000 |
take things into their own hands in the in the critical moments something that um
|
| 01:13:12.880 |
is a is a book action virtue i think i'm gonna jump in we have a couple more questions and
|
| 01:13:20.400 |
to help in it so i think it's about right but um just before we do those i want to make sure
|
| 01:13:25.920 |
Robert did you have something you wanted to bring in about the stories that haven't been talked
|
| 01:13:31.600 |
about that much yet or so we've mentioned lise beth i i'm glad that we got to speak about the
|
| 01:13:39.040 |
if they did ego story that's one of my favorite stories about the falcon and they have the ending there
|
| 01:13:44.000 |
and and the class i'm out of that that's uh you know this idea of prudence yes vocatra
|
| 01:13:49.680 |
understands crew so we talked about that we talked about mazette the alley beth and i think we've
|
| 01:13:54.720 |
covered them all Laura own and yeah i the one that i didn't say anything about it but i mentioned
|
| 01:14:01.680 |
last time is the story of the first story of the sixth day about the night and the lady
|
| 01:14:08.960 |
on and outing and he wants to tell her a story and he makes a big mess of it
|
| 01:14:13.840 |
do we have it do do you want me to say something about that Laura or or
|
| 01:14:20.800 |
i i certainly can do it it's really up to you i think we have a couple questions so maybe we should
|
| 01:14:26.800 |
do those before you run out of time okay um we have a question from jodie i don't know if you want to
|
| 01:14:33.360 |
ask it yourself are you there you have to unmute yourself yeah uh head yes just a quick question i
|
| 01:14:42.960 |
wanted to see if you could comment on the connections between kennedy tails and uh carina
|
| 01:14:49.920 |
barana and and this that the camera may seem to have a lot of connect uh similarity to me
|
| 01:14:56.480 |
yeah well uh kamina vurena i don't have a whole lot to say i know that we of course
|
| 01:15:05.600 |
the chaser um vocatra's de camarran was one of the great one of the sources for the kang
|
| 01:15:12.320 |
and many of the kangtaberry tails and it was um vocatra was even more important to him than
|
| 01:15:18.960 |
than done today and so you have a retelling of some of the de camarran tails in um in the kangtaberry
|
| 01:15:26.960 |
tails but i have to say that it's really amazing to me that chaser it was ahead of vocatra
|
| 01:15:38.320 |
historically because for me and vocatra just seemed so much vocatra it's kind of full fledged
|
| 01:15:45.520 |
modern renaissance type of uh writer and chaser it just very medieval and rather um you know historically
|
| 01:15:58.720 |
you would say anterior to vocatra but chronologically that's not the case anyway the
|
| 01:16:07.440 |
vocatra and the chaser was an excellent excellent reader of um a vocatra and and it gives us a
|
| 01:16:15.440 |
de camarran a result in the kangtaberry tails. All right i think we have one more question from
|
| 01:16:21.360 |
johnny that was about a number of the stories together are you there? Yes can you hear me? Yes
|
| 01:16:28.400 |
excellent excellent thank you thank you all for another amazing discussion it's been it's been so
|
| 01:16:33.520 |
interesting to to sit in on again i want to use six one which we haven't really had time to talk about
|
| 01:16:39.120 |
as a as a vehicle to ask a question about the about the texts uh on a slightly wider level
|
| 01:16:44.000 |
because it occurs to me the commentators are very quick to underscore the structural and
|
| 01:16:50.240 |
thematic privileges of that story being as it is an ovenla very much about the first story of the
|
| 01:16:57.680 |
sixth day madam ore being as it is an ovenla very much bound up with the art of an ovenla
|
| 01:17:03.840 |
but it's also of course very much placed at the structural centre of the texts now
|
| 01:17:10.560 |
for as i rassen you've spoken before i think about uh or under for yours or and uh juda
|
| 01:17:16.080 |
zalim juda zalim eli belata as texts which are inherently polycentric and i think it's a term
|
| 01:17:21.840 |
that you could absolutely apply to the decanmer as well so what i wondered if was that if you could
|
| 01:17:27.040 |
maybe unpack exactly what you mean by polycentrism in this kind of literary context
|
| 01:17:31.600 |
and perhaps what are the implications if there are any of such a concept to our
|
| 01:17:37.760 |
reading and our appreciation of of this of this text great yeah thank you so
|
| 01:17:44.320 |
the decanmer on has ten days with a hundred stores and you sit it's unlike the divine comedy
|
| 01:17:56.640 |
which has a hundred condos and three canticles with the divine comedy you are always aware of the fact
|
| 01:18:07.200 |
that you everything is part of one large megastore and that and that it's it which has a centre
|
| 01:18:14.960 |
and that centre is almost everywhere you find the decanmer on the central message of the decanmer
|
| 01:18:22.480 |
on is reflected in all of its parts with the decanmer on every story it becomes impossible to draw a
|
| 01:18:31.920 |
particular definitive message lesson or ethic from any particular story because the next story
|
| 01:18:38.800 |
will revise qualify and in some cases even undermine the previous story and in that sense is polycentric
|
| 01:18:48.160 |
in the sense that i don't want to say it has a hundred centres but it wouldn't be way off the mark to
|
| 01:18:56.880 |
suggest something of that sort now they all must relate but they relate to each other more as a network
|
| 01:19:07.280 |
rather than a uh let's think the rhizomatically rather than our borely it's not it's not a tree
|
| 01:19:16.720 |
image that everything is unified by a trunk but if the decanmer on does have a numerical centre
|
| 01:19:23.840 |
it would be between the fifth and the sixth state no i happen to believe that the sixth day is as
|
| 01:19:32.880 |
close to the numerical centre as you can get and that's is why vocacho devotes the sixth day
|
| 01:19:43.040 |
as he says here begins the sixth day we're in under the rule of ethics and the discussion turns
|
| 01:19:48.240 |
upon those who on being provoked by some verbal plasantry have returned like for like or who
|
| 01:19:54.480 |
by a prompt retort or shrewd maneuver have avoided danger, discomfort or ridicule and thus in the sixth
|
| 01:20:02.640 |
day we have this um view of the role that language plays the proper use of language as a medium of
|
| 01:20:11.440 |
human exchange that language takes a form of clever witticisms of retorts to someone who has made an
|
| 01:20:19.280 |
offhand comment or a vulgar comment to you storytelling and yeah language in vocacho is reminding us
|
| 01:20:29.120 |
that the vast majority of human relations takes place through the medium of language and that
|
| 01:20:37.440 |
the quality of our human relations is going to depend entirely upon the degree to which we cultivate
|
| 01:20:46.320 |
the art of speech and the art of storytelling.
|
| 01:20:49.520 |
You could use the analogy of calligraphy you know when i when i was in back in in early grade school
|
| 01:20:59.680 |
we used to have to write essays we were graded on the content and on the handwriting and those
|
| 01:21:07.440 |
grades were equal in value to a final grade how important was handwriting in that you know in the
|
| 01:21:15.360 |
previous generation you see that the handwritten letters of people of earlier generations of
|
| 01:21:20.320 |
beautiful hand if you look at handwriting today it is it even adults tend to write more you know
|
| 01:21:28.080 |
more like children in a very unrefined kind of calligraphy well fortunately for writing we use
|
| 01:21:37.840 |
typewriters of we use to use typewriters and keyboards and so forth.
|
| 01:21:42.640 |
Nevertheless when we speak to each other we are still in the medium of human speech and
|
| 01:21:51.680 |
I think that by comparison with previous ages we are speaking in the kind of childish handwriting of
|
| 01:22:01.120 |
people in our own but when you see how this completely lost art of handwriting so
|
| 01:22:13.200 |
in I think there's a very serious lesson to be learned from day six which is how important it is to
|
| 01:22:21.200 |
enhance cultivate and use this medium through which most of our communication takes place
|
| 01:22:29.600 |
you know to its full potential and how what a terrible job we do these days of you know
|
| 01:22:40.320 |
exploring the potential of our verbal media.
|
| 01:22:46.480 |
Well you have certainly redeemed it to a certain extent at least for this morning.
|
| 01:22:50.560 |
Maybe we can on that note take a take a moment to thank you for Professor Harrison and thank
|
| 01:22:56.720 |
all of these wonderful participants such an example. Thank you all and I appreciate all the
|
| 01:23:02.240 |
interest that you've shown the camera and thank Maria and Laura Whitman all of you.
|
| 01:23:09.200 |
And a pleasure so on that I think I will end our meeting and I wish you all a happy rainy Sunday.
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| 01:23:16.080 |
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