Boccaccio's Decameron

Giovanni BoccaccioProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.5

Word count: 1.5M words
Chapters: 154

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.De Decamerone van Boccaccio by Giovanni BoccaccioAuthor: Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375,Language: Dutch, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Oct 20, 2006

Editor's review

This is the Dutch translation of Boccaccio's Decameron, released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook. A milestone in European literary history, the Decameron frames one hundred tales told over ten days by ten young people who have fled the plague to the countryside; its subjects range from love and wit to religious satire and everyday life, and it has had a profound influence on later narrative literature. The value of this edition lies first in its language: the Dutch translation gives readers who know Dutch direct access to the classic and offers a point of comparison for comparative literature research. Second, the electronic format makes searching and excerpting easy, suiting classroom or reading-group use. Note that some stories deal with love and sharp satire of the Church in the blunt style of late medieval secular culture; read them in historical context rather than judging them by contemporary standards.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who know Dutch and want to read the classic directly
Scholars in comparative literature or translation studies who need a translation for reference
Teachers and students of medieval and Renaissance European literature

Not a good fit for

General readers who know only Chinese and need a Chinese translation
Readers sensitive to depictions of love and religious satire
Readers expecting a continuous novel-length narrative

Reading tips

You need not read straight through; start with a group of stories on a similar theme (such as tales of wit).
After each day's stories, briefly note the themes and narrative techniques to grasp the overall structure.
Read alongside background on the medieval Black Death and urban society to understand the purpose of the frame story.
For language study, compare with the Italian original or an English translation and note the translator's choices.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

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.

FAQ

Can I read this book without knowing Dutch?

Not directly. The text of this edition is in Dutch, with no Chinese parallel text. Readers who know only Chinese should choose a complete or selected Chinese translation; if you want to learn Dutch, you can use it as advanced reading, but you need a good foundation in Dutch first.

Are all the stories in the Decameron original?

Not all. Boccaccio drew widely on medieval fables, folk tales, Eastern narratives, and anecdotes circulating at the time, reshaping and organizing them into a unified frame. This borrowing and transformation is itself an important feature of the work.

Why is it called the Decameron?

In the frame story, ten young people flee the plague to the countryside and tell one story each per day for ten days, a hundred stories in all; the title comes from this. The structure makes the book both a set of independent tales and a mutually echoing whole.

Does the ebook have notes?

Project Gutenberg public-domain ebooks usually provide only the text, generally without modern scholarly notes or an introduction. For historical figures, place names, and allusions, consult reference materials separately.

Comments

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About the author

Giovanni Boccaccio Author · Italian · 1313–1375

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.