This work studies the roles of ideology in the production of literature through linguistic and structural analyses of Giovanni Boccaccio's "Decameron". The repeated discursive structure of each novella is analyzed to show Boccaccio's understanding of causality. Narrative outcomes are surveyed to show the treatment of characters according to gender, social class, and place of origin. Historical references are compared to their sources to show Boccaccio's political and narrative concerns. This comprehensive analysis seeks to produce a new explanation of Boccaccio's beliefs. The final chapters show that when combined with Boccaccio's aesthetic programme and applied to his sources, these ideological beliefs generate the text.