The Renaissance was a rediscovery of classical literature and classical ideas. Unlike the medieval period when sex and desire were taboo topics due to the religious control exercised by the pope and Catholicism, the Renaissance saw a newfound interest in human desires and longings. Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (edited and translated by G.H. McWilliam, Penguin Classics, 2003) a collection of one hundred short stories set within a frame, discusses the problems, conflicts, and triumphs that come from lustful desires. In these discussions of sexual desire Boccaccio emphasizes the naturalness of lust, love, and desire.
Sex and Nature in The Decameron
Examples of Boccaccio interweaving sex and nature can be found in several stories of The Decameron, specifically in the first story of the third day where “Masetto of Lamporecchio pretends to be dumb, and becomes a gardener at a convent, where all the nuns combine forces to take him off to bed with them” (192) and in the fourth story of the fifth day as well where “Ricciardo Manardi is discovered by Messer Lizio de Valbona with his daughter, when he marries, and remains on good terms with her father” (393).
Nature and Desire in "The Song of the Nightingale"
The fourth story of the fifth day, narrated by Filostrato, is also known as “The Song of the Nightingale.” Caterina and Ricciardo are in love but cannot be together because Caterina is kept under the close watch of her parents. Ricciardo tells Caterina that she should “come to the balcony overlooking [her] father’s garden, or better still, to sleep there” (394) because then they could spend the night together.
Their first physical contact will take place in, or actually above, a garden. Their natural lustful human desires will come to fruition in a natural setting rather than in a richly created man-made tapestried room. Caterina is able to convince her parents to allow her to sleep outdoors by saying that she “should have the nightingale to sing [her] off to sleep” (395).
This metaphor of the nightingale singing or the song of the nightingale is played upon to the end of the story when her parents discover her and Ricciardo together. Caterina’s father insists that the two young people must marry “so that [Ricciardo] will have put his nightingale into his own cage and into no other” (397). The nightingale singing and being placed in a cage becomes the sex act itself and the two images are intertwined throughout Boccaccio’s story of human desire.
Human Desire in Boccacio's Decameron
In the first story of the third day, also told by Filostrato, Masetto, a muscular attractive intelligent young man, plays dumb so that he will be hired by a convent as a gardener. Masetto realizes that even though nuns are married to God as it were, that they still suffer the same pangs of lust that other women do.
Although Masetto’s encounters and experiences with the sisters and abbess take place indoors there is still the reminder of his job as a gardener, a person who tills the soil and lives off the land. However it should be noted that the abbess does spot him, uncovered, “stretched out fast asleep in the shade of an almond-tree” (198) and she is “riveted to this spectacle” (198). She then takes him to her quarters and keeps him there, indoors, for herself to enjoy.
The Decameron's Idea of Natural Human Desire
While these two stories differ greatly in their settings and basic plots they do have similarities that should not be ignored.
Both stories emphasize the naturalness of sex and human desires. In Ricciardo’s case by having the sex actually take place outdoors and in Masetto’s case by having him take on the role of gardener, one that takes care of the land, who’s job is to be in tune with nature.
Boccaccio focused on the naturalness of human desire, lust, and sex by intertwining sexual experiences and encounters with nature and the outdoors. By weaving the two together Giovanni Boccaccio irretrievably places sex into the natural world making it seem commonplace and normal, rather than the previous medieval view of sex as taboo and chaste.
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