To start out, I would like to mention something that I noticed. This is not the author's, Giovanni Boccaccio, original piece, it is a translated version. I think that it would have been better for us to read his original work because we would pick up on key words used by the author to explain a certain something. While this version might be just as good as the original, it isn’t ideal. We have to rely that the translation stays true to the original text and does a good job transmitting us the ideals and emotions, along with mental images that Giovanni Boccaccio would have wanted his readers to experience.
P.A.P.E.R.
From what I understood, the main purpose of this article was to inform the reader about the black plague and it's impact as well as its possible reasons for spreading. The way that it is written, one would not immediately notice the references to religion because while it is not excessively noticeable it is also not non-existent. These references in the text are well woven in. This is because during the time in which the original author lived, religion was something that dominated and was a huge part of people’s everyday lives so it was normal for such references to be included into what was written. We notice such references as soon as we begin to read the article, “thirteen hundred and forty-eight years had already passed after the fruitful incarnation of the Son of God….” There is also a part where he mentions that the plague was so virulent that no medicine or praying/ faith could stop it. So basically, one can tell he is someone who has strong connection to religion. It is also noticeable that he is someone who is part of the high class because he talks about the way that most of the sick were those poor because they did not even have servants to attend them. He also says “ the plight of the lower class, and, perhaps, a large part of the middle class was even more pathetic,” while it could have been true, there were also those who belonged to the high class and fled their cities. The way it is said, suggest that he did not belong to either groups, meaning he was either middle class that did not flee or high class who according to him, had not need to. For the most part, as I read this, I found myself picturing him as someone who could have bee alive during our time because while religion is present, he also makes sure to include that things happened not because of God but because of our decisions and our form of living. It seems to me that the author intended the reader to be someone who did not experience the effect of the black plague, did not see it, or was unaware of it, it is shown by the way that everything black related in very emphasized and explained.
A few of the methods mentioned that were used to avoid getting the plague seem unreasonable to believe now a days but seemed to be very common back them We can also notice that while there were many that believed such methods, there were some parts that Boccaccio himself believed untrue. For example, he mentioned a few things by using “they believed” instead of stating the actions taken as facts. He also omits a few things, although it could be said that technically mentions it, he avoid telling it up front. He goes a few times around the idea of the plague spreading due to the repositioning of people to other plague-free places, and while telling it, he mentions certain groups instead of people in general which makes it as if he is trying to keep that information hidden.
In the other reading on the black plague we did on our text books, the idea that most people relied on both medicine and God to save them was shared with this article and so is the opinion that the poor were the ones who suffered the most and it makes sense because as there was a high increase in amount of doctors, only some of them actually knew what they were doing and those few were out of budget range for the poor which would explain why so many of them died.
