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"The sight of this garden, so beautifully arranged, with its plants and its fountain and the little streams that flowed out of it, gave so much pleasure to the ladies and the three young men that with one voice they declared that they did not think the beauty of the place could be improved on, and that if Paradise could be created on earth, they could not imagine it having any other form" (Boccaccio 93).
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Locus amoenus translates to 'pleasant place', and it is exactly that. Imagine a natural space where you feel at peace. That is a locus amoenus. Several pleasant places are seen throughout Decameron. The band of storytellers in this book, also known as the brigata, find themselves in several examples of these peaceful places.
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Boccaccio does a beautiful job of describing the lush gardens and palaces the brigata encounter. The imagery is so vivid it makes me wish I was right there with them. I would say they deserve to find moments of temporary bliss—they are escaping an extremely brutal plague. Lush gardens aside, I think the spaces that the brigata members themselves choose to talk about is interesting. They are there to escape reality for just a moment and keep their sanity by telling stories for fun.
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The brigata members take readers all around the world, or at least Europe, over the course of the 100 tales told. I've noticed that a handful of the tales mention the church. The tales we've been assigned to read that mention the church are usually poking fun at corrupt clergymen. I just think that's interesting because it's the brigata's way of acknowledging that this happens in their world outside of the tales.
Works Cited
Boccaccio, Giovanni and Wayne A. Rebhorn. 1313-1375. The Decameron, First edition, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.Page updated
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