Chapter 1 begins by exploring Boccaccio’s debt to Aesopic fables, which were widely used in teaching Latin grammar. In the medieval educational system, ancient literature was frequently justified by the claim that the texts inculcated students with moral virtue, and the fables were presented as normative in both the linguistic and ethical spheres. Boccaccio recombines and reassembles their narrative details and plotlines, denaturalizing the apparent inevitability of the inherited outcomes and lessons. The Decameron also draws on the enormous patrimony of Middle-Eastern narrative materials that penetrated the West around the time of the Crusades. The chapter’s later sections investigate two didactic collections of Islamicate origin that circulated widely: the Book of the Seven Sages of Rome and the Disciplina Clericalis. Boccaccio borrows most extensively from the antifeminist tradition they embody in the novelle of Day 7, dedicated to the tricks that women play on their husbands. He rewrites a number of traditional anecdotes, undercutting their misogyny by allowing us to sympathize with the female protagonists and transforming the tales into celebrations of feminine ingenuity.

Chapter 4 charts the Decameron’s rewritings of exemplary anecdotes by Roman historical authors. The young Boccaccio has been associated with Trecento vernacularizations of Livy, Ovid, and Valerius Maximus, and his early engagement with translation and his commitment to Italian literary culture are indisputable. This chapter investigates how novella 2.9’s revision of the episode of Lucretia’s suicide in Livy participates in larger debates about the nature of women and the usefulness of generalizations. It also examines Decameron 4.1 – which takes its details from the suicide of Sophonisba – to argue that in killing herself like her classical forerunners, Ghismunda attributes a closer analogy between her situation and theirs than is warranted. The end of the chapter concentrates on Day 10, dedicated to the virtue of magnanimity, especially tales 10.3, 10.6, and 10.8, which echo exempla from Valerius Maximus’ Memorable Doings and Sayings. Although all of this day’s stories seem straightforward narratives of magnificent deeds worthy of imitation, the tales slide inadvertently into ambiguity and parody, belying their ethical pretensions.