How The Decameron drew on The Golden Ass
A documented line of influence: Giovanni Boccaccio demonstrably engaged Apuleius’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Golden Ass
Apuleius · c. 170
Ancient RomeThe influenced
The Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio · c. 1351
MedievalRelevance
8/10
On The Decameron’s page
- Two of the Decameron's sharpest sex comedies were lifted, almost intact, from Apuleius's The Golden Ass
- Boccaccio didn't stumble on them — he found the Monte Cassino manuscript, annotated it, and copied out the entire text by hand
- Read the tub trick (VII.2) and the fuller's wife (V.10) in Apuleius first, and you'll watch the medieval frame-tale reach back a thousand years to borrow its filth wholesale
On The Golden Ass’s page
- The bawdy adultery tales here didn't just survive antiquity — they got copied out by hand, twelve centuries later, by the man who wrote the Decameron
- Boccaccio personally annotated the Monte Cassino manuscript of Apuleius and transcribed the whole text for himself
- Two of those tales walk straight into the Decameron: the wife's tub becomes Peronella's (VII.2), the fuller's wife becomes day five's tenth story (V.10)