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The Decameron: Second Edition (Penguin Classics)

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This fascinating fourteenth-century text is as complex as it is misunderstood. The premise is simple enough: the author creates a fictional set-up where, over ten days, seven female and three male characters who are cooped up in a country estate tell one another a total of 100 stories. The title, "The Decameron," literally means "ten day's work."

But this framing technique of ten narrators is hardly the point. The star of this work are the tales told by these sequestered characters. These 100 stories are chillingly sneaky in how they will mess with your mind. At first the tales will appear shocking, overtly sexual, or even knee-slappingly funny. (Think "Monty Python.") But in fact, like Aesop, the great Italian prose author Boccaccio tucks an ambiguous, gnawing moral into each tale. You will laugh at first, and then the bittersweet truth of each story's lesson will zap you.

The true brillance of "The Decameron" is that it is kaleidoscopic in nature: while all the tales are somewhat similar to one another, each story is truly unique in how it aligns its characters, its structure, its action, and its moral. The basic ingredients are similar in dozens of stories, and yet their outcomes prove to be wholly different. So instead of getting "re-runs," you the reader wind up in a quicksand-like universe where some good-hearted characters are punished, others rewarded, and some scoundrely characters are quashed while other soar.

It is Boccaccio's humorous (yet ultimately grim) portrait of our herky-jerky, you-never-know world, where a person can never be sure of his destiny despite his conduct, that makes this work brilliant. Behind the ribaldry and the chuckles, this late-medieval author proves that our world (sometimes benevolent, sometimes cruel, but always inscrutable) is, indeed, nothing but a human comedy.

Giovanni Boccaccio is one of the three supreme literary masters of the Italian Renaissance--sharing those laurels with Dante and Petrarch--and he is also the most accessible. Written in the 1350s, in the wake of the worst part of the Black Plague (which would kill off one-third of Europe's population), THE DECAMERON is a collection of one hundred surprisingly light, hilariously funny and frequently bawdy short stories. In his preface, Boccaccio claims to have intended them to entertain Italian women who spent most of their lives indoors. Seven young Florentine ladies and three young gentlemen sojourn together to a Tuscan villa to escape the contagion-filled city. They pass each of their ten days in the picturesque countryside with long walks, good food and wine, jovial games, and oh yes, telling stories. Each of them is crowned queen or king for a day and gets to choose the order of the telling. This framework combined with the beautifully described rural setting makes the reader, too, feel warm, welcome, and one of the party.

Boccaccio indulges in a popular form of satire against the foul and corrupt members of the fourteenth century clergy--one of the ten actually admits that it's "too easy" to pick on such scoundrels. With humor and the power of shame he attacks both the hypocrisy of the clergy and the hypocrisy toward which the Catholic Church's sexually repressive laws drove people. Here we find a group of nuns fighting over the sexual favors of the convent gardener; there a wily cleric indulges his prurient urges by convincing a foolish woman that he is the Angel Gabriel; still another adulteress cows her angry husband by claiming he is not enough to satisfy her lust--is it fair that she throw the surplus to the dogs? But the prize is taken by the hermit who persuades a young girl that there's only ONE WAY to fight the devil! Quite often one or another of the chaste storytelling party finishes a tale of illicit pleasure on a note of "May we, too, always have our desires fulfilled." THE DECAMERON is not all lust and corruption, of course, there are tales of great bravery and loyalty in the face of high odds. Great sacrifices are made, fortunate coincidences occur, true faith is rewarded.

THE DECAMERON is easy to dip into again and again and feel rewarded every time. It is impossible to read these wonderful stories without thinking that Boccaccio was enjoying himself inordinately as he wrote them. However he may revel in the permissiveness brought on by the terror of the Plague, much more importantly does he praise life and love and passion as precious and worth grabbing. Boccaccio's generation had certainly seen enough of pain and suffering and death, after all--we should begrudge them nothing.

One of the world's finest literary treasures, THE DECAMERON belongs on the shelf of everyone who loves great storytelling.

The translation that you choose will have an impact upon your enjoyment of any work written in a foreign language. In the case of The Decameron, the translations recommended by "The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation" are those by (1) G.H. McWilliams and (2) Bondanella and Musa.

I purchased the McWilliams translation and found it to be enjoyable, although slightly wooden. There were also several howlers (e.g., addressing the women in the group as "Delectable Ladies.")

There's a 100+ page introduction, which I found to be overly academic and tedious. This is, as far as most readers are concerned, a fun book to read; the introduction should not detract from that experience.

This volume has extensive endnotes at the end of the book. Most of them are of little interest to the general reader and add nothing to one's enjoyment of the stories. Since they are short, and given modern editing technology, they could just as easily been included as footnotes at the bottom of the page on which they appear, which would have been more convenient. (Inexplicably, the notes to the Introduction are footnotes.)

The book is bawdy, but not obscene. McWilliams, justifiably I think, is of the opinion that certain passages are misogynistic and homophobic, which seemed to me to be correct. The latter is odd, because Florence during the Renaissance was notorious throughout Europe for its large homosexual population (most of its great artists reputedly were gay). Forewarned is forearmed.

I have not read the Bondanella and Musa translation, but McWilliams (who appears to be remarkably fair) speaks well of it in his Second Preface. Based upon the foregoing, I would choose it instead.

Ten young Florentine noblemen and women escaping the Black Death in Florence in 1348 entertain themselves by each relating a story per day for ten days - 100 entertaining stories in all, mostly set in and around medieval Florence. Although famously naughty, none of these stories strikes a modern reader as more than mildly erotic. Rather, they consistently astonish by their thoroughly modern message that women are as good as men, nobility doesn't come from birth, sanctity doesn't come from the church, and - above all - true love must never be denied. Amazingly, Boccaccio often delivers this message while pretending to say the exact opposite; sometimes he presents very sympathetic characters who get away with things thought scandalous in his time, offering a mere token condemnation at the end, while other times he depicts someone actually following the accepted code and committing some horrible act of cruelty in the process. Either way - and despite his claims to be upholding convention - we always know what he really means, and apparently he didn't fool too many people in his own day either.

But one doesn't need to focus on the revolutionary aspects of the Decameron to enjoy the book; each of the stories delights the reader with a different tasty morsel, and, you can read as much or as little at a time as you please. Once you get past the introduction, (and that's probably the most serious part of the book, so be sure not to give up before you get to the first story) the stories will make you laugh, make you cringe, and make you sit on the edge of your seat. Inspiring authors from Chaucer to Shakespeare and entertaining audiences for over 700 years, the Decameron continues to delight.

Any book defined as a true classic is likely to be thought of as stultifying and incomprehensible...at best. Yet, there are dozens and dozens of books that are true classics and still manage to speak to today's modern audience. Boccaccio's Decameron is one such book.

The Decameron was written around 1350 during an outbreak of plague in Florence. It is the fictional account of ten young people who flee the city to a country manor house and, in an effort to keep themselves occupied and diverted, begin telling stories.

Ten days pass in the pages of the Decameron (hence its name), and each person tells one story per day, making a total of one hundred stories. These are stories that explore a surprisingly wide range of moral, social and political issues whose wit and candor will probably surprise most modern readers. The topics explored include: problems of corruption in high political office, sexual jealousy and the class differences between the rich and the poor.

The titles themselves are both imaginative and fun. One story is titled, "Masetto da Lamporecchio Pretends to be Deaf and Dumb in Order to Become a Gardener to a Convent of Nuns, Where All the Women Eagerly Lie With Him." And, although the title, itself, is a pretty good summary of the story, even a title such as this cannot adequately convey Boccaccio's humor and wit.

Another story that seems surprisingly modern is, "Two Men are Close Friends, and One Lies With the Other's Wife. The Husband Finds it Out and Makes the Wife Shut Her Lover in a Chest, and While He is Inside, the Husband Lies With the Lover's Own Wife on the Chest." A bit long for today's modern world, perhaps, where popular books are dominated by titles such as John Grisham's The Firm, but the outcome of this story is as socially-relevant today as anything that happened in fourteenth-century Florence.

The Decameron, however, goes far beyond plain, bawdy fun and takes a close look at a society that is unraveling due to the devastating effects of the plague. The people in Boccaccio's time suffered terribly and the book's opening pages show this. The clergy was, at best, inept and, more often than not, corrupt. Those who had the misfortune to fall ill (and this includes just about everyone) were summarily abandoned by both their friends and family.

Those looking for something representative of the social ills of Boccaccio's day will find more than enough interesting tidbits and asides in these stories. Serious students of literature will find the ancestors of several great works of fiction in these pages and readers in general cannot fail to be entertained by the one hundred stories spun by these ten refugees on their ten lonely nights.

I had to read a good part of "The Decameron" last quarter and I have gone back to read more stories from it even though the Fall quarter is over. This is a great book: funny, entertaining, subtly revolutionary, insightful, and superbly well-written. Approach it without fear. It is a Classic, but it will have you laughing, thinking, and learning far better than any current best-seller. Anyone with an interest in journalism and/or history will profit from Boccaccio's Introduction, at the beginning of the First Day. His description of the Plague in Florence is vivid and gripping, and this eventually provides the background for the setting of the one hundred and one tales that seven young women and three young men will narrate in a villa away from the dying city. Also, the Introduction to the Fourth Day presents the reader with an unfinished, but hilarious story about a man who has been kept away from women. This story is what my teacher called the 101st, and I have to agree with her.

Do not think that all "The Decameron" deals with is sex. The mostly illicit sexual encounters depicted are some times funny, sometimes sad, but they share a common trait with the stories from the Tenth Day, for example (these ones are mostly about sacrifice, abnegation, and servitude), or with those of the Second: Boccaccio's concern for his society and the terrible tensions that had reached a breaking point by the 14th century. The Plague, in Boccaccio's universe, acts as a catalyst of emotions, desires, and changes that had to come.

Read, then, about Alibech putting the Devil back in Hell, Lisabetta and her pot of basil, Ser Ceperello and his "saintly" life, Griselda and her incredible loyalty in spite of the suffering at the hands of a God-like husband, Tancredi and his disturbing love for his daughter, Masetto and the new kind of society he helps create with some less-than-religious nuns, and then it will be easier to understand why Boccaccio is so popular after 650 years. And although it may be skipped by most readers, do not miss the Translator's (G. M. McWilliam) introduction on the history of "The Decameron" proper, and that of its many, and mostly unfortunate, translations into English. This book is one of the wisest, most economic ways of obtaining entertainment and culture. Do not miss it.

This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
The "Decameron" is a collection of 100 novellas by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, probably begun in 1350 and finished in 1353. It is a medieval allegorical work best known for its bawdy tales of love, appearing in all its possibilities from the erotic to the tragic. Other topics such as wit and witticism, practical jokes and worldly initiation also form part of the mosaic. Beyond its entertainment and literary popularity, it remains an important historical document of life in the fourteenth century.

Decameron is structured in a frame narrative, or frame tale. Boccaccio begins with a description of the Black Death and leads into an introduction of a group of seven young women and three young men who flee from plague-ridden Florence to a villa in the (then) countryside of Fiesole for two weeks. To pass the time, each member of the party tells one story for each one of the nights spent at the villa. Although fourteen days pass, two days each week are set aside: one day for chores and one holy day during which no work is done. In this manner, 100 stories are told by the end of the ten days. Each of the ten characters is charged as King or Queen of the company for one of the ten days in turn. This charge extends to choosing the theme of the stories for that day, and all but two days have topics assigned: examples of the power of fortune; examples of the power of human will; love tales that end tragically; love tales that end happily; clever replies that save the speaker; tricks that women play on men; tricks that people play on each other in general; examples of virtue. Only Dioneo, who usually tells the tenth tale each day, has the right to tell a tale on any topic he wishes, due to his wit. Each day also includes a short introduction and conclusion to continue the frame of the tales by describing other daily activities besides story telling. These frame tale interludes frequently include transcriptions of Italian folk songs. The interactions among tales in a day, or across days, as Boccaccio spins variations and reversals of previous material, forms a whole and not just a collection of stories. The basic plots of the stories including mocking the lust and greed of the clergy; tensions in Italian society between the new wealthy commercial class and noble families; the perils and adventures of traveling merchants. The title is a portmanteau, or combination of two Greek words meaning "ten" and "day". Boccacio made similar Greek etymological plays of words in his other works. The subtitle is Prencipe Galeotto, which derives from the opening material in which Boccaccio dedicates the work to ladies of the day who did not have the diversions of men (hunting, fishing, riding, falconry) who were forced to conceal their amorous passions and stay idle and concealed in their rooms. Thus, the book is subtitled Prencipe Galeotto, that is Galehaut, the go-between of Lancelot and Guinevere, a nod to Dante's allusion to Galeotto in "Inferno V", who was blamed for the arousal of lust in the episode of Paolo and Francesca.

Throughout Decameron, the mercantile ethic prevails and predominates. The commercial and urban values of quick wit, sophistication, and intelligence are treasured, while the vices of stupidity and dullness are cured, or punished. While these traits and values will seem obvious to the modern reader, they were an emerging feature in Europe with the rise of urban centers and a monetized economic system beyond the traditional rural feudal and monastery systems, which placed greater value on piety and loyalty. Beyond the unity provided by the frame narrative, Decameron provides a unity in philosophical outlook. Throughout runs the common medieval theme of Lady Fortune, and how quickly one can rise and fall through the external influences of the "Wheel of Fortune". Boccaccio had been educated in the tradition of Dante's Divine Comedy, which used various levels of allegory to show the connections between the literal events of the story and the hidden Christian message. However, Decameron uses Dante's model not to educate the reader, but to satirize this method of learning. The Roman Catholic Church, priests, and religious belief become the satirical source of comedy throughout. This was part of a wider historical trend in the aftermath of the Black Death, which saw widespread discontent with the church. Many details of the Decameron are infused with a medieval sense of numerological and mystical significance. For example, it is widely believed that the seven young women are meant to represent the Four Cardinal Virtues (Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude) and the Three Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity). It is further supposed that the three men represent the classical Greek tripartite division of the soul (Reason, Spirit, and Lust, see Book IV of Republic). Boccaccio himself notes that the names he gives for these ten characters are in fact pseudonyms chosen as "appropriate to the qualities of each". The Italian names of the seven women, in the same (most likely significant) order as given in the text, are: Pampinea, Fiammetta, Filomena, Emilia, Lauretta, Neifile, and Elissa. The men, in order, are: Panfilo, Filostrato, and Dioneo.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

An Italian version "Canterbury Tales". A simple premise: there's a plague in Florence and 10 affluent young people (7 women and 3 men) decide to sit it out in the countryside. To amuse themselves, each one has to tell a story each day. 10 days, 10 people = 100 stories.

This is a great book in reading about medieval life in an amusing, non-dogmatic manner. There are tales of trickery that rival the Arabian Nights in their ingenuity. There are tales which relate to agriculture, injustice, knighthood, love and valour. Some of the days have all the tales on a specific topic.

One theme that I found most interesting was the treatment of sex. So many of the tales deal with it and it's done largely in a slapstick and carefree manner. This book is a sign that no church or social norm was ever successful in suppressing the popular erotic imagination in Europe. But even so, the licentiousness of some tales (in relation to the time they were written) surprised me - there are stories of amorous encounters between clergy and the opposite sex, of homosexuality, of multiple affairs etc.

Some of the tales are too long as they're stretched out to fit a literary style reminiscent of the medieval romances. But I found almost all the stories to be interesting.

As a note, I read the translation by Aldington which was very good but it feels to me after reading this work that many translations on the market would be just as good.

Thoroughly recommended and thoroughly entertaining!

'The Decameron' is a fascinating example of classic literature that remains fresh and entertaining today. Written in the mid-14th century, it concerns the first major outbreak of the black plague in Europe, which first emerged in Italy in approximately 1347. Boccaccio begins, in the prologue, by stating his purpose for writing the book - namely, to entertain literate women with nothing else to do with their time. The story itself concerns ten young Florentines (seven women - Pampinea, Filomena, Neifile, Fiammetta, Elissa, Lauretta, and Emilia; and three men - Panfilo, Dioneo, and Filostrato) who flee the city in hopes of escaping the plague. To occupy themselves during this time, they tell each other stories, with each person telling one story per day to make a total of 100 stories over the course of the entire book. At the beginning of the first day, Boccaccio provides an excellent and detailed description of the plague itself. The book ends with the refugees returning to their homes, and a closing epilogue from the author.

I very much enjoyed 'The Decameron.' It is interesting and easy to read. The characters in the various stories are ordinary people and this makes them seem very real. Many of them actually are based on real people. Some of the stories, too, are inspired by actual events, though not all. This particular edition is an excellent translation. It is very user-friendly while still retaining the 14th century 'feel' of it. I also liked the organization of the book, as it was always very easy to find a 'stopping place.' With some novels, it's hard to set them down, but since The Decameron is a collection of short stories, one can always stop at the end of any particular story and come back later.

Boccaccio claims that his goal in writing 'The Decameron' was to entertain and 'provide succour and diversion' (Prologue 3) to young women who are in love - presumably those whose love lives are not going well at the moment. He says he wishes to 'offer some solace' (Prologue 2) to these women, and also 'some useful advice' (Prologue 3). While this sounds like a noble aim on first glance, I have to wonder about his sincerity. A good many of the stories involve characters who go to rather immoral ends to achieve their aims, and I find it odd that such examples would be given in a book intended to instruct a young lady.

Nevertheless, the book is great fun to read. The stories are lively and colorful, and often quite humorous. It provides an excellent insight into the everyday lives of people during this time period. I will caution, however, that most of the stories involve sexuality in some way, and many revolved around it completely. If you are easily offended by bawdy humor, this may not be the book for you. Nearly all the characters of the various tales are sexually active, most with more than one partner. There are also homosexual and bisexual characters. Sexual infidelity is treated here as not only acceptable, but widely encouraged. Characters who cheat on their spouses regularly come out on top, while those that are cuckolded are laughed at and made to look like fools. The unfaithful partner is rewarded and the faithful one shamed and called a prude.

The one thing I do wish Boccaccio had talked more about is the ten people who were actually telling the stories. There are hints of Filostrato having a romantic interest in fellow-storyteller Filomena, but this is never followed up on, except to hint that Filomena is herself interested in someone else not of the company. I would like to know if anything more ever came of Filostrato's interest. I would also have liked to know more of what happened to the ten storytellers upon returning to Florence at the end of the book. Had the plague passed? What had happened to those they left behind? Did any of the ten themselves catch the plague? All of this is left out and I found the ending to be somewhat abrupt.

Perhaps most unclear to me, however, is how the ten were even able to flee the plague as they did. There is no talk of preparation, and it seems that they just dropped everything and left. The places they stayed were abandoned estates that they simply happened upon. Boccaccio says of the second place they stayed, 'she brought them [. . .] to a most beautiful and ornate palace. [. . .] They explored it from end to end and were filled with admiration for its spacious halls and well-kept, elegant rooms, which were equipped with everything they could possibly need, and they came to the conclusion that only a gentleman of the highest rank could have owned it' (Introduction, Third Day, 189). Why were places such as this abandoned? Had its owner/s died of plague? Or if the owners were not dead but had instead fled from the plague, why did they not take some of their things with them? Why was everything left in these places as if nothing was amiss? It all seems a bit unreal to me.

Overall the book is written very well for what it is - a collection of short stories. It is, however, lacking in character development. Most of the storytellers were very flat emotionally, and it would have been nice to see them fleshed out a little more. But in the context of a short story or group of short stories this lack of depth is more forgivable than it would be in a novel. With the exception of Dioneo, who seems to be the most creative and fun-loving of the ten, and Filostrato, who seems absorbed in moping and self-pity for much of the book (presumably over his unrequited interest in Filomena), I found it hard to distinguish one storyteller from another. But the focal point of the book is the stories themselves, and these are all highly entertaining. Though the frequent sexual references may make the book inappropriate for younger audiences, I would highly recommend it for any mature reader.

The grim, solemn portrayals of humanity in most medieval art would lead us to think of the Middle Ages as a harsh, heartless time of disease, ignorance, oppressive piety, and puritannical drudgery, but "The Decameron" shows that people back then did indeed have a sense of humor, and they needed it more than ever during the Black Plague of the mid-14th Century. Boccaccio's intention is to present a lively diversion to the reading public of the time, and he makes no apologies to those who would be easily offended by silliness, sexual innuendo, or unflattering portrayals of hypocritical, licentious clergymen.

The book's background is an eerie reflection of the time in which it was written. Seven young ladies and three young men from Florence, Italy, depressed and frightened about the plague that is currently sweeping throughout the lands and taking large chunks out of the population, decide to escape to the countryside, camp out in vacant castles, and tell each other stories to distract themselves from the horrors of the plague and bide their time until it passes.

Each of them tells a story per day for ten days -- one hundred stories total -- and each day has an established theme which the stories told that day must follow. The stories are simple fables about love, adultery, deception, generosity, and fortune, in which stupid or gullible people are fooled, selfish people are cheated, arrogant people get their comeuppance, and smart, honest, or virtuous people are rewarded. Running the gamut from farcically ridiculous to decadently ribald to melodramatically sad, they are apparently the kinds of stories people back then probably would have found entertaining.

Because of the unifying daily themes, the stories on any given day can start to seem homogeneous after a while, so it would not be unreasonable to skip some. Don't take that comment as a slight against Boccaccio's accomplishment, though. If we must look to the ages for wisdom, we should be pleased and grateful to find this 700-year-old pre-Renaissance book, which serves as a reminder that humor is, and always has been, an effective drug to numb the pain from even the worst tragedies and catastrophes.