The Renaissance idea of man, interpreted by Dante Alighieri as Hell and Paradise of the Spirit In "The Divine Comedy" finds a new artistic reflection in the work of Giovanni Bocaccio. The author of Decameron is the next great artist of the Italian Renaissance. The high poetic flight of the thought of the freedom of spirit and consciousness, characteristic of the epoch, is grounded in Giovanni Bocaccio's real view of life. He discovers in the prose of the human day the real values of the ugly and the wonderful in the public being, which inevitably predetermines the good and the evil in man. Not in the world of the afterlife, but in everyday life, Boccaccio looks for the harmony between spirit and mastery. He discovers the contrast of public morality. It has a very hidden, oppressed passion, which is too earthly in its sinfulness, and in its natural natural right of existence. Giovanni Bocaccio reflects this duality in public and human morality by creating "Decameron", a classic example of Italian Renaissance prose.
This is a collection of a hundred novels, told about ten days of ten different as individuality interpreters. Among them, women are predominant. They are seven in number, unlike men who are only three. For the first time, the woman was rehabilitated not only as an equal participant in the narrative events but also as a narrator. Strange are the circumstances that gather the ten narrators of entertaining anecdotes of everyday life. They are determined by a real historical fact - the plague and the subsequent stunning events for the citizens of Florence in 1348. For artistic "witnesses" of Decameron's hundreds of novels, Boccaccio chooses the youngest representatives of ten prominent aristocratic families in Florence. They are his author's "voice". Incorporated in the way of thinking of each of them, the author tells fascinatingly the truth about the real values of human life, too often hidden behind the mask of false public morality. The thought of death inevitable in the given circumstances - the plague of epidemics in the city, provokes maximum sincerity in the revealed narrative of the seven maidens and the three young men. They seem to enjoy the last moments of their lives. They talk about his joys, talk openly about his hidden pleasures. Life is a carnival of colorful, ridiculous misunderstandings. Loving theme is love. He unites the storyline of the narratives. The writer has a Renaissance attitude to the intimate thrills of the heart. The love feeling is free, open, and everyone is entitled to it, regardless of the place it occupies in the social hierarchy of society. To love is a spiritual gift to man. The personal limits of the individual consciousness become unimaginable. A sense of divine beauty fills the soul. Man is spiritually generous and infinitely generous. It is equal to the nature that created and gave it with love. Man touches his humane nature. In love is the whole truth about the personal potential of every human individual.
To love, you must have the strength to protect your right to love in the contradictory and very hostile circumstances of life. That is what Boccaccio advocates in the confrontation between allowed and unauthorized stories of "Decameron". From this unconscious conflict between ugly and beautiful, the laugh of the author over the ridiculous in life is born, too impudently hidden behind the false, hypocritical mask of decency. The commonplace is a pathetic barrier to the vital power of real human passions. They always break the artificial barriers to false public morality. Sincere, Renaissance Candid is Boccaccio's laughter over the medieval "taboos" in human consciousness. Every ban is a seduction for sinful thoughts. Fleshly pleasures are in sync with the ingenious inventiveness of human thought. In love, the characters of Boccaccio are personalities. They prove themselves. They come from all possible social strata. They are citizens and peasants, merchants and craftsmen, thieves and prostitutes. From the social "bottom" - to the secular and ecclesial elite - all are represented. The bishops and archbishops are the common monks and nuns. And all of them are submissive to love, sinfully abhorred by her natural passions. A female prostitute or a nun woman is rehabilitated alongside the man. Everyone has the right to love if their souls are embraced by the divine gift of love. Giovanni Boccaccio does not share his heroes. All are equal to the power of love, but are different in asserting public rights over it. Then good and evil manifest in the human soul. Among the most active advocates of love, fighting for her, are women. One of Boccaccio-Zizmonda's heroes is the daughter of a prince, but he has the deepest feelings of an ordinary servant. She proves with her behavior that love is primarily a free emotional choice. As the spirit and the flesh are equal, so there are no differences and barriers between men. The notions of a generous and aristocratic honor contradict the harmony of love. The laws of human happiness are incompatible with the social and social hierarchy: "He, you say, was a man of inferior origin, but this is a flaw ... In all of us the flesh is the same ... Not poverty, but wealth takes away the virtue of man.
The Renaissance idea of good and evil as two sides of human virtue is interpreted in the context of love. Virtuous are the actions of everyone who protects their right to love. It is natural for Boccaccio to aspire to lover's pleasures and to live in monastic seclusion. The vow given to God by them for carnal asceticism is not the virtuous path to spiritual perfection, but sin and transgression to the natural impulses of human nature. Any extreme, though motivating absolute virtue, is a limited, dogmatic understanding of the human right to choose a meaningful life. Joy and happiness experienced by love can not be the object of the offense and punishment on the part of the Church. Giovanni Boccaccio denies the dogma of monastic asceticism through the laughter of all those who have sinned in his stories about the holy fathers. He also does not forget the nuns. They are human beings of flesh and blood. In the sinfulness of the love delight, these Christ's bows discover the joy of life. The spirit merges with the flesh, and the thought permeates the truth of good and evil beyond the dogma of church asceticism. On this occasion, Boccaccio writes: "There are many unwise men and women who are completely confident that if the girl puts a white dressing on her head and puts her in a black cow, she is no longer a woman and feels no feminine desire; as if she had become a nun, she became a stone. " Giovanni Bocaccio's "Decameron" is a work with a strong Renaissance spirit. Man is central to the narrative. He attends brightly in every reported event with an unexpected ending. Love always overcomes if its right to life is dignified. But above all the twists and turns of the plot intrigue comes the laughter of Boccaccio-Renaissance, sincere and strong in his merciless critique of false morality and hypocrisy in human morality. In Decameron, the laughter of Renaissance Italy from the 14th century over the medieval frustration of the free choice of availability was collected. Boccaccio protects the right of each of his characters to be faithful to good and evil within himself, but to remain a man in the holy sinfulness of the flesh and spirit, merged into the revelation of the frantic love desire. In "Decameron", Boccaccio describes the plague epidemic not as a disease, but what consequences it gives to human morality. The raging epidemic destroys the most human in the people - the sympathy for the likenesses of the human being. The crash destroys family-related ties, leads to a lack of morality and disregard for human and divine laws. The plague symbolizes the death of old time and the pursuit of harmony between spirit and matter.