데카메론의 모호한 여성성과 리얼리즘

Abstract

Decameron is distinguished in that it represents human reality as it is. Any kind of universal principles and truths are no more suggested in it and instead the infinitely diverse fragments of the concrete reality are unfolded by virtue of concrete language. Here, ‘concrete reality’ means the multitude's reality which, in the era of Boccaccio, was veiled by the medieval catholic world-view, and ‘concrete language’ indicates the italian language used by the multitude rather than the latin as the official language at that time. In this paper, the multitude's reality and language in Decameron are highlighted particularly in relation to the representation of the women's experiences, emotions, thoughts, and activities, which are interestingly described in the ambiguous styles. I think that this point leads us to reconsider Decameron from the literary effect of realism since the concrete reality arises from Boccaccio's ambiguous attitude to the women. In other words, Boccaccio's position to the women is inclined towards neither disdain nor defense. One may blame that this shows Boccaccio's dualistic ambiguity about feminity, but at this very point I would like to pay more attention to his figure as a realist who was willing to approach and represent reality because reality itself is not fixed or clarified but ambiguous. If Boccaccio was confused before his reality not ordered by the past doctrines or systems, what he was able to do as a writer was to unveil and show the reality as it is rather than to frame it in any fixed order. Boccaccio did not lie before his reality; he strived to represent the ambiguous reality in the ambiguous way. Here I find the true energy of Decameron; I am able to visit successfully the Boccaccio's world where he meets his reality through his free way of thought and writing so as to realize the literary value appropriately.