Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375)

When the plague hits Florence in 1348, 7 women and 3 men decide to escape the city and retire to the countryside -- and once there they tell each other stories. 10 days, most of them with a specific topic, each of the 10 youths tell a story of love, hate and whatever else they can think of. But the book is not just the stories - there is also a framing story around them, complete with the reactions of the people who are not telling the story, with songs, with details about the countryside show more and there is Boccaccio - defending his own work and adding an extra story to Day 4 (incomplete around to him; actually complete if you compare it to the rest of the stories).

Very few of the stories are original ones - some had been moved in time or space, some had been mixed together but they are mostly preexisting stories from the existing literature at the time - in Latin, French and Italian; some of it translated into the language from more exotic languages (including Arabic tales). How familiar that had been for the people reading the book in the Middle Ages is unclear; these days one is a lot more likely to have heard one of the books and stories which had used Boccaccio's tales as their base - from Chaucer through Shakespeare and to the authors of today, everyone had been borrowing parts of stories (and occasionally complete ones) and made them their own.

But despite that, the collection is worth reading. Not all stories worked for me (but then this would be impossible considering the number of stories). There were some disturbing elements (women being punished for not accepting the love of a man; both men and women managing to get in bed with someone by misrepresenting themselves and still getting a happy end; making jokes of what is essentially the village idiot), there were heartbreaking stories and there is human cunning and cruelty. The attacks on the church and its representatives was not exactly unexpected but still a lot more pronounced than I expected.

As the days progressed, the stories got occasionally repetitive -- especially when the topic was too concrete, it felt like the same story wa told over and over again. It helped to let the stories breathe a bit. The irregular lengths did not help much with planning either.

The translator G. H. McWilliam added a lot of geographical, historical and linguistical notes (combined with notes on the sources for each story) which are not essential but put the stories in context (and can be amusing at times - especially when he comments on earlier editions and translators). His introduction is also extremely informative although as usual, it really should not be read as an introduction unless you want the few surprising stories to get spoiled for you.

At the end I liked the book quite a lot. But one needs to be prepared for it - it is a 14th century book after all - as progressive it might have been, it is still almost 7 centuries old at this point. So there is the occasional story which is sexist enough to make you want to grind your teeth, there are the not so occasional notes and hints towards the fragility of women (although there are also some strong women), there are the behaviors which are creepy and borderline criminal and yet considered normal in the book. But then that is part of the charm in reading old literature - the world had changed and these books are the only mirror we have into the past. And then, especially with books which had been as popular as this one for centuries, it is always fun to recognize a plot you had read elsewhere (and that's where the notes on the sources also helped - showing how the stories traveled from book to book and from writer to writer and culture to culture). show less

This was a delight. I learned a little bit about medieval Italy and the plague (apparently the worst in European history) that wrecked the population and I had lots of laughs. The story here is that seven women and three men left disease-ravaged Florence to distract themselves in the nearby countryside by singing, dancing, and telling stories. Each in the company tells a story each day for ten days. More often than not, the stories stick to a common theme for the day, and more often than show more not, they're at least a little bawdy.

Boccaccio's book (and his sources) served as source material for some of the stories most of us read from Chaucer, and his book makes me want to go back and reread The Canterbury Tales. It's a pretty long read (in this edition, about 800 pages plus about 140 pages of introductory matter and a bunch of end notes), and though I enjoyed it and didn't ever quite get bogged down, I imagine that many would find it tedious in spite of the belly laughs it so often inspires. It's definitely one I'll dip into from time to time in the future (I dog-eared the best of the dirty jokes). show less

How does one write a review for a book that is usually classified as one of the “Great Books” of the Western Canon? Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th century opus (not really a novel) is such a book.

I recently attended (on line) a Great Books Symposium sponsored by the University of Notre Dame in which The Decameron was one of the featured works. The aspect of the book that generated the most controversy was whether it deserved to be called a “Great Book.”

The events related take place in show more 14th century Italy during the great plague known as the Black Death. Ten young wealthy Florentines and their retainers leave the city to repair to a villa in the countryside to avoid the ravages of the plague. To occupy their time, they tell one another stories. Each one tells one story per day for ten days, or 100 in all. All of the stories are short, usually no more than 6-10 pages. Nonetheless, my paperback edition ran to more than 900 pages.

Themes that run through the stories include a strong sense of irony, disrespect for the established Church, clerical corruption (both fiscal and carnal), machismo, wily peasants outsmarting nobles, servants outsmarting masters, wives outsmarting husbands, and an occasional tale of heroism or munificent deeds. Despite the passage of nearly seven centuries, the cleverness of the writing often shows through, even in translation, with the use of clever similes, particularly in describing sexual acts.

From an historical perspective, the book is significant in that it broke away from the religious themes that were prevalent in the middle ages in Europe. Also, it was written in the local language (Italian), rather than Latin.

But is it still a “Great Book” today? The short stories, although often clever, become repetitive and soporific if read sequentially. My advice to scholars: study it hard for historical significance. My advice to the casual reader: read a few stories (no more than four) at a time, put it away, and come back three or four weeks later—and if you actually get through the whole thing, you can cross off one of the “Great Books of the Western Canon.”

(JAB) show less

When I was looking for a new translation of the Decameron to read, I read a quote by G. H. McWilliam, describing this translation as a "magnificent specimen of Jacobean prose." He went on to describe its serious shortcomings, but I ignored this. I love the Decameron and I love Jacobean prose. As I hoped, I found this cheap e-book edition on Amazon and was able to enjoy it despite minor print-to-electronic text shortcomings.

I loved the book and the translation. This book is famous for show more shocking people and I was surprised that I was shocked by two of the stories. I was not shocked by the bawdy stories. I loved them and wished Florio had not flinched at some of the details. I was upset by two of the serious stories purporting to provide morals for the reader: one, suggested a good beating as a cure for shrewishness in a wife; the other, the famous story of patient Griselda, in which a wife is praised for her willingness to accept an enormous amount of abuse from her husband. show less