Decameron Day 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 2.3

1.1) "Dearest Ladies, it is fitting that everything done by man should begin with the marvelous and holy name of Him who was the creator of all things;I intend to start with one of His marvelous deeds,so that when we have heard about it, our faith in Him will remain as firm as ever and His name be ever praised by us." This quotation is not unlike the opening of many of our other stories such as Tristan and Ysolde in that it is a brief description of events to come and gives us (the audience) an idea of what the basis of the story is. After this first page about holy men and this person who reached such a status as Saint was simply a manipulative fraud and yet may have been all the more holy, after this page we only hear about how bad of a person he is. But we know that all of the tell of how holy this guy would pretend to be was going to come into play somewhere. It's like a foreshadowing prologue that reveals the true meaning of these first tales as nothing more than spoken stories from one noble to the others, meant for entertainment.
1.3) "The Jew willingly gave Saladin as much money as he desired, and Saladin later repaid him in full; in fact, he more than repaid him: he gave him great gifts and always esteemed him as his friend and kept him near him at court in a grand and noble fashion." As we already know that these tales are being told to a group of nobles by other nobles this quote gives us an eye into how corrupt the government of the day was. This man Saladin had put great effort into tricking this other man and when the other man found out he not only turned the trick against him but gave the man more than he would have had he fallen for the trick. The idea that a man would give another man everything he wanted without a seconds thought simply because he tried to trick him into giving him money seems to be the conjuring of twisted logic. Could this be foreshadowing the rest of the book?
1.4) Having completed her story, Filomena fell silent and Dioneo, who was sitting close to her, without awaiting any further order from the Queen (for he realized by the order already begun that he was the next to speak) started speaking in the following manner:" Here we can tell amny things, first off we see an introduction of the author of this specific story much like those by chretien yet here it is more likely that it is to put us in the mind set of the author. A King, for instance, might think about a story differently than a lowly servant girl. We also see that they have started an order meaning that some of these stories may sound purposely forced in order to convey the sub-plot that is going on behind the smaller short stories.