Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Chapter 9 centers around a passage from Boccaccio’s Decameron, which was written over a quarter of a century after the Divine Comedy, in the 14th century. Auerbach chooses a passage from the novella that tells the story of a man who left his hometown to avoid being a social outcast as a result of his vice and dishonesty; in Venice, the man met a Franciscan monk who went by Frate Alberto and attracted much attention. Comparing Boccaccio’s work to the works of previous vernacular writers, Auerbach asserts that no one before Boccaccio achieved his ability to portray “sensory phenomena […] in accordance with a conscious artistic plan” (216). The Decameron “fixes a specific level of style, on which the relation of actual occurrences in contemporary life can become polite entertainment” (216). In other words, he has provided literary work that does not have to teach or provide a moral example, or even provide simple, “pleasant” diversions for the upper classes.

Boccaccio’s style is based on “rhetorical treatment of prose” that “sometimes borders on the poetic” and may even seem like oratory, and his style mingles realism and eroticism with “elegant verbal formulations,” revealing a mixed (or intermediate) style, which combines the idyllic and the realistic to represent sensual love (217).