The Decameron (Penguin Classics) (edition 2003)

The Decameron is obviously a hugely influential piece of literature (actually, it's just plain huge), so it's no wonder I'd get around to it eventually. I'm not a huge fan of Chaucer, really, but I did recognise a couple of the source texts he used in this, and I imagine that the choice of frame narrative for the Canterbury Tales might've been suggested to Chaucer by The Decameron. Certainly The Decameron was an influence, anyway.

The Decameron also inspired a song by one of my favourite singers, Heather Dale, 'Up Into The Pear Tree', about Pyrrhus and Lydia and their trick on Lydia's husband. It's a lovely song, playful and quite in keeping with the tone of The Decameron.

Despite its length, The Decameron is very easy to read. It's a collection of a hundred short stories -- or perhaps a hundred and one, if you count the frame story -- split into ten 'days' with the conceit that a group of ten young men and women meet outside Florence during the plague years, and to entertain themselves, they elect a king or queen from their number each day, who dictates a theme for the stories that they tell. The stories are quite similar at times, when they revolve around a specific theme, but overall there's a lot of different stories, often funny, and often to do with sex. You get the impression that no women in medieval Italy (with the exception of Griselda and Zinevra) were ever faithful to their husbands!

Being a medieval work, it's unsurprisingly not terribly good about subjects like rape or feminine strength. Sometimes it praises women to the skies and at other times blames them for what isn't their fault, or what certainly isn't a fault in all women. Still, it didn't make me uncomfortable most of the time, and there are plenty of clever and strong women in the tales as well.

The Penguin translation, by G.H. McWilliam, is extremely good, in the sense of always being very readable and entertaining, rather than dry, and this edition comes with a wealth of notes on context and on each specific story. There are maps and an index, too. Even if you're not reading this for study, it's worth getting -- perhaps especially so, because it explains things clearly no matter what your level of expertise on the subject. ( )

Suck it Boccaccio, I totally read your shit. Well, around 65% of it. I used a couple of different lists of "the best of them," and skipped any stories that weren't on either list.

I've read a bunch of non-fiction books recently that at least touch on Italy in the 14th century, and I keep thinking, "Yeah, I understand this from Boccaccio." Corruption in the church, the role of women, the lives of the nobles and the common people... I get a better sense of these things from the Decameron than from the history books. So if Boccaccio's goal was to describe what life was like in his time, from every imaginable point of view, he has nailed it.

I thought about what it would be like if someone did a modern version of the Decameron - 100 stories from all kinds of perspectives on today's world. At its best, that would be pretty awesome, huh? Worthy of being a classic.

And that got me thinking more about all those stories about violence and rape. Because there are a lot of them, and they're often played as sorta funny and I haven't been sure how to deal with that, but it's true that Boccaccio's exposing the darker things that were happening in his time - along with all the other things. It's an unflinching tour, but it's misted by this irreverent tone that throws you off balance.

Apparently Boccaccio himself wasn't crazy about the Decameron, but I think it's pretty dope.

Not that I have anything to compare it to, but I found Michael Musa's translation easy to read and entertaining, modern without being over-modern. Thumbs up to that.

I've been reminded recently how grotesquely hateful the last story in this collection is, and I feel like it's a public service to warn potential future readers about it: it leaves a very bad taste in your mouth. Horrifically misogynist. Skip it - or at least read it out of order, somewhere around the middle, so it's not your last impression. ( )

10 stories a day, 10 days. Boccaccio's often bawdy tales deliver his characters from the sorrows of the plague and allow fair, gentle ladies (his supposed audience) a literary escape. ( )

10 tales a day for 10 days. Boccaccio reigns supreme as one of the most subversive of Renaissance authors (I especially appreciate the subtle condemnations of cupidity within the Florentine church). Boccaccio (and his contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer) defined the genre of the framing narrative. ( )

This is fairly raunchy but quite entertaining stories about some medieval folks who did not expect to live long. ( )