Topos czy rzeczywistość? O czarnej śmierci w Dekameronie raz jeszcze

Abstract

Literary topos or reality? About The Black Death in The Decameron once again The Introduction of The Decameron contains the most universally known for centuries description of Black Death – the devastation it caused in Florence in the spring and summer of 1348. In pertinent research conducted by historians it became a point of departure and reference, and, at the same time, the object of thorough studies on its concurrence with „reality”. The author abandons this research tradition and confronts two types of sources: literary, chronicle and diary narration, on the one hand, and documents produced by Florentine offices (including court documents up to now studied to a slight extent), on the other hand, in order to capture within them the perception of the plague from the moment of its advance to the first months after its remission. A comparative analysis of these sources deals with a number of problems, enabling the extraction of the differences of their topoi and rhetoric as well as the purposes for which they were created. The author’s reflections concern: The Introduction as an historian’s source, the dynamics of the plague, and the activity of the authorities to be captured in official documentation, „normalcy” at the time of the plague, and the perception of Back Death (Boccaccio’s’ catalogue of attitudes towards the plague, the topos of the helplessness of medicine and physicians and its functioning after Black Death, the topos of the death of the abandoned victims and shameful burial, the topos of annihilation and the documents and undertakings of the authorities). Official documentation dating from the whole period of the plague, produced on a daily basis and encased in the rigid legal formulary and the routine of the authorities, cannot be used for examining the reliability of literary narration or chronicles, which operated with a cumulated image of Back Death at the time of its apogee and the destruction that emerged after its remission. Both types of sources are complementary and offer the researcher a holistic diptych of the perception of the plague, allowing him to better understand the role of old literary topoi, which Boccaccio endowed with new force and significance.