Part 7, Sections 31-35 Summary and Analysis

Part 7: The Human Comedy: A Composite Work begins with a quote by Henry David Thoreau in 1849 that it takes two to speak the truth: one to speak and one to listen. This is followed by Virginia Woolf's claim that nothing has happened until it has been described.

In Section 31: Escaping the Plague, the horrors of the plague provided Boccaccio with the incentive and opportunity to write stories of human adventures and misadventures without morals. In the "Decameron", he created "a human panorama of love, courage, cowardice, wit, wisdom, deceit, and folly" (p. 269).

Section 32: Joys of Pilgrimage explains how the pilgrim metaphor permeated Christian literature with its own rituals and had become a flourishing institution by Chaucer's time, providing the reason Chaucer used pilgrimage for his contribution to the human comedy. "Canterbury Tales", written in the last decade...