The Decameron

During a plague that killed a quarter of Florence’s citizens, Boccaccio crafted an exuberant, entertaining, death-defying work of literature. In this book, seven young women and three young men taking refuge in a country villa swap 100 tales of love, lust, mischief, and treachery. 

I read a translation of The Decameron during a sabbatical in Italy and was swept back in time. In every village, I’d look around a piazza and see characters straight from its pages: wily merchants, corrupt politicians, clever wives, henpecked husbands, bumbling fools. This book still resonates in the 21st century—a tribute to Boccaccio’s skill as… show more.

I’m including one book from long ago and far away – fourteenth-century Italy – because it leaped out at me from the bookshelf.

The Decameron is the most artistically complete written story about face-to-face storytelling – though I also love its rivals, One Thousand and One Nights and The Canterbury Tales!

The book opens with the bubonic plague that devastated Florence in 1348. Ten wealthy young friends, women and men, leave the stricken city to vacation in the countryside. While servants prepare lavish meals, the friends spend their days relaxing, dancing – and telling naughty stories. The narrator delights in… show more.

The Decameron is an absolute classic of world literature. This 14th-century Italian work remains entirely readable and accessible. The main story: seven young women and three young men living in Florence have decided to try to escape the ravages of the plague, the Black Death, that has hit the city. They decide to flee to a villa in the country. Once there, they agree to pass the time by each of them telling one story each day for ten days. These one hundred short tales of love are extraordinarily entertaining, exciting, bawdy and full of life. A real classic for… show more.

There’s nothing I relish more than spending an evening with friends, telling stories. That’s The Decameron in a nutshell, except its ten friends regale one another while hiding out from the Black Death, in the 1300s. I savored the many tales about love, tragic or poignant, and I laughed out loud at the stories ridiculing the clergy.

A must for all of you, lovers (hopefully) of intelligence and humor. Avidly read and re-written by the superstars of English literature (Chaucer, Shakespeare), Boccaccio’s celebrated cycle of short stories, told by seven ladies and three gentlemen sheltered in the countryside near Florence during the Black Plague, is a timeless summa of wit, narrative pleasure, and literary sophistication. Even historians recycled Boccaccio’s juicy, gossipy accounts to feature (or slander) their characters. 

This is a classic among classics. It's essentially a collection of stories-- so you can read one or a few at a time and not lose continuity-- told by a group of people seeking refuge from the plague, has direct relevance today to our experience with covid, and offers insight into a different world. Interesting to compare with Tuchman's A Distant Mirror.

Written by Boccaccio after the Black Death struck Florence in 1348, The Decameron is a fictional account of ten young Florentines who fled the city to escape the plague, and the tales they tell to while away the time in lockdown. As well as amusing stories, the book has some sharp contemporary observations on how people and the city responded to the Great Mortality.