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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does Nuto leave the convent where he was the gardener?

2. What do the brothers do to Isabetta's lover?

3. Why does Musciatto Franzesi choose Ser Ciappelletto to handle debts and trade?

4. Tiring of Monna Lisetta's vain confessions, what does Brother Alberto do?

5. Who is Alatiel?

Short Essay Questions

1. How dies Alatiel end up on the island of Majorca?

2. How does Tancredi discover the affair between Ghismunda and Guiscardo?

3. How does the handsome Masetto manage to become the gardener for a convent of eight nuns and an abbess?

4. Why does Isabetta cry over a pot of basil?

5. What does Alibech learn from Rustico?

6. What eventually transpires between Masetto and one of the nuns?

7. How does Ghismunda end her life?

8. What ultimately happens after Ciappelletto dies?

9. Why have the young people of the novel left Florence and gone into the country?

10. What do the village women tell Alibech after she explains how she put the devil back into hell with Rustico.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay of at least two typewritten, double spaced pages on the topic, Why Story Telling is Becoming a Lost Art. Begin with the modern media today that involves being spoon fed stories in visual and interactive formats. Discuss the fact that people no longer sit together and relate tales they have made up or have heard. Speculate how different the situation of THE DECAMERON would have been if all the people in the group had iPods and PCs.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay of at least two typewritten, double spaced pages on the topic, Women as the Weaker Sex in THE DECAMERON. Use at least three different examples of how women are seen as inferior to men and more susceptible to moral transgression than men as seen in the book. Discuss how this idea not only plays out in the tales but also in the acceptance of the women gathered in the group of story tellers.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay of at least two typewritten, double spaced pages on the topic, The Historic Setting for THE DECAMERON. Include the bubonic plague that caused people to leave the cities looking for ways to avoid contact with the plague. Discuss the limited ways to find entertainment under such circumstances. Finally, address the activity of story telling as the best possible form of entertainment under the circumstances in 1348 A. D.

(see the answer keys)

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