The Decameron
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Literature students seeking a systematic understanding of the origins of the European short story
- Readers interested in medieval social customs and satirical narrative
- General readers who want an anthology introduction to a classic without the pressure of reading it whole
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting a continuous novel-length plot and unaccustomed to linked short stories
- Readers sensitive to content involving sexuality and religious satire
Reading tips
- Read in batches by "Day", a few tales at a time, and note the identity of the teller in the frame narrative.
- Before each tale, read the title hint first and compare your thematic expectations with the actual content.
- Pick a few tales of a type you enjoy (love, wit, satire) and compare them side by side to appreciate differences in narrative technique.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
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- 8
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FAQ
This edition contains only the first five days—will that hinder understanding?
Does the book contain explicit descriptions?
Can I understand it without medieval historical background?
Comments
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About the author
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) was an Italian writer and poet, a pioneer of Renaissance humanism, and, together with Dante and Petrarch, one of the three great literary figures of his age. His masterpiece, The Decameron, is set against the Black Death in Florence and consists of one hundred stories told in turn by ten young men and women who have fled to the countryside; its themes range over love, wit and human affairs, and its vivid language had a profound influence on European narrative literature. He also wrote works such as Filocolo and Fiammetta, as well as studies on Dante. This collection holds eleven of his works, mostly different editions of The Decameron and related writings, reflecting the humanist concerns of a period of transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era.
