Abstract

The article focuses on the origin and the structural coherence of Decameron IV 2: the analysis also highlights its similarities with the frame narrative structure of the 'Seventh Day' stories (in which wives play tricks on their husbands) and with a group of comic old French tales that end tragically (a lover priest is punished). The comparison clarifies how Boccaccio rewrote the literary source of the central episode and inserted it in another narrative structure.