I believe that Giovanni Boccaccio had several reasons in having the first storyteller invoke God. One of the main reasons is that even tho his writings are a bit indecent, he had that first character to invoke God to show that his work isn’t disrespectful or of any bad influence. Another reason was that his stories were already religious based. What’s more significant about that is, whenever the plague hit, people could care less about God or other religion, because their main focus was surviving or preparing for death. The fact that someone such as Boccaccio himself wrote religious based stories shows that he had faith during this hard time which is quite impressive. So, to show that he still had that faith, he invoked God through his first storyteller.
His works were quite indecent mainly because Boccaccio had compassion for women and many of the stories were about adultery. This may be indecent but also a historical fact. It’s a fact, because during The Black Death, families were torn apart, people going out, remarrying others rapidly from left to right. It was chaos and adultery happened super quick like it was a natural thing to do. It’s like people forgot what was normal at the time and things went unbalanced causing a chaotic scenes everywhere. Boccaccio is trying to explain his indecent stories with a sense of respect for the religion at the same time.
Whenever serious cases happen such as The Black Death happens, all people care about is escaping to safety or perhaps accept fate and prepare for death. When I mentioned about adultery, this of course wasn’t the case for everyone. I’m sure there were some families who remained faithful to each other and stuck together as a family. With that being said, as parents it’s natural for them to protect their children and loved ones during this time. Boccaccio invoked God to help those who committed adultery, did bad things to help them realize that God is the way out and by invoking God, he’s giving him credit.
People left their faith/leaving God for reasons such as, “well why should we continue to believe in him, if he caused this destruction and not bothering to save us.” When people see that there’s no way out of something, they lose faith and that’s how many people left their faith in God, as a result they perished.
In conclusion, one of the major reasons that Giovanni Boccaccio had the first storyteller invoke God is to show his respect for some of the indecent writings of his. Also, because he was a religious man himself and why wouldn’t he add credits to God in his writings. A lot of people forgot what it is to live normal by abandoning families, committing adultery left and right. Some people just solely focus on surviving, escaping somewhere else, or accepting fate by preparing for their death-come. All these things that Boccaccio mentioned in his writing wasn’t just a story it was also a historical fact that actually happened during The Black Death.
Thanks for reading my essay today. I hope you liked it or at least learned something new from it. I’ll be posting more soon and have a great rest of your day!
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