Appearances in The Decameron
In each of the tales in which Calandrino is a character (VIII, 3; VIII, 6; IX, 3; IX, 5), he is portrayed as a simpleton who believes in the folk magic of the time period. In the first tale (VIII, 3), the three painters hunt for heliotropes, and Calandrino believes that by finding one he is rendered invisible. Bruno and Buffalmacco, his friends and fellow painters, pretend they don't see him and kick rocks at him all the way back to Florence, where he arrives bruised.
In the second tale (VIII, 6) Bruno and Buffalmacco subject him to a medieval version of a polygraph test. According to common belief at the time, a person who is lying wouldn't be able to swallow the prepared bread and cheese when under examination. However, Bruno and Buffalmacco sour the cheese with dog ginger, a very bitter herb which Calandrino then spits out. This convinces his friends that he is lying about a pig of his being stolen (which in reality they had taken).
Calandrino is convinced that he is pregnant in story IX, 3. To give him a painless miscarriage he takes a potion that is specially prepared by his friends, Bruno and Buffalmacco.
Finally, tale IX, 5 is a story in which Boccaccio uses the Calandrino character to ridicule the folk magic of his time period. To gain a woman's affections, Calandrino casts a spell and prepares a potion from a scroll supplied by Bruno. The potion contains all sorts of absurd ingredients and the scroll is filled with gibberish. When his wife discovers his intentions, she beats Calandrino.
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. He was known par excellence as the Certaldese, and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism.
This article contains summaries and commentaries of the 100 stories within Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron.
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