Imagining a story of the "theatricality" or "theatrability" of the Decameron

Abstract

Since the Decameron, with its extraordinarily fortunate short-story style (first and foremost a source of plots) which lies at the foundation of 16th century comedy, one of the essential hubs of invention has been faced within the space of comedy in Italian theater, where domestic life and day to day activities are told but do not act at the level of the characters, due to a fundamental convention that excludes the representations of the indoors. The confrontation between the tradition of showing that same dimension in the drawings, the manuscript miniatures and the images in the printed books proves the reduction in the frequency of some historiographic legends regarding the «medieval theatre», which in fact never existed, and inappropriately and imaginatively developed or invented «watching the figures». This permits us to briefly reflect on some questions of a method as well, with regard to the history of the various interwoven disciplines and their knowledge and competence in this matter.