The necessity and problems of hierarchically organized societies Anonymous College

The purpose of this essay is to examine to what extent Boccaccio’s insistence as to the necessity of hierarchical societies is undermined by his continual consideration of the flaws of established societal norms; as well as the motives for this preoccupation. Florentine society in the time of the Decameron was a Comune, liberated from the feudal system and thus free from its hierarchical methods, yet societal classes still formed a hierarchy felt by inhabitants of the city, even if these were not as strict as they had once been, and the belief that an inherent difference existed between the nobility and the working classes was still very much engrained in popular consensus. Within the Decameron, Boccaccio stresses the cruciality of societal hierarchy within the fabric of Florence, and yet both the stories of the Decameron and the surrounding Cornice highlight the flaws in the system that form a figurative plague on society to complement the literal one.

It was this literal plague, the Black death of 1348, which inspired Boccaccio to write the Decameron in the first place. The plague set the scene for the downfall of polite societal norms and the established hierarchy in Florence, as the authority figures, equally affected by...