The Decameron
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Publisher Description
According to Wikipedia: "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. Many notable writers such as Chaucer are said to have drawn inspiration from The Decameron...structured in a frame narrative, or frame tale. Boccaccio begins with a description of the Black Death and leads a group of seven women and three 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."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In time for Giovanni Boccaccio's 700th birthday, Wayne A. Rebhorn, professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and translator of The Prince and Other Writings by Machiavelli, has provided a strikingly modern translation of Boccaccio's medieval Italian classic. Fleeing Florence and the plague of 1348, 10 young men and women retreat to a country estate, "surrounded by meadows and marvelous gardens," where they spend their days in leisure while the Black Death ravages the city. To fill their time, and affirm life in the face of death, they tell stories: on each of 10 days, every character spins a tale on a theme. Thus, there are 100 stories in total, which range in tone from tragic to triumphant and from pious to bawdy, and which serve as monuments to the rich medieval life and society that the plague was to fundamentally alter. Rebhorn's translation is eminently readable and devoid of the stilted, antiquated speech associated with the classics. Indeed, at times the translator's rendering of Boccaccio's Italian into contemporary idiomatic American English feels jarring: "my cheesy-weesy, sweet honeybun of a wife." But on the whole, his translation's accessibility allows for the timeless humanity of the work to shine through. The Decameron affords a fascinating view into the lost world of late-medieval Italy, and the variety and volume of tales offers us a refuge and relief from the tragedies that haunt our own world.
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