The Decameron

Rating:
Summary: You can read it in 10-minute chunks
Review: Don't be intimidated by this medieval masterpiece. It is actually just a collection of very loosely related short stories, most of which are rather comical. You need not read them in one sitting and you need not read them all. In fact, the editors provide a list of their favorite stories (an alternative view is that they are telling you which ones to skip).

Great modern translation.

Rating:
Summary: You can read it in 10-minute chunks
Review: Don't be intimidated by this medieval masterpiece. It is actually just a collection of very loosely related short stories, most of which are rather comical. You need not read them in one sitting and you need not read them all. In fact, the editors provide a list of their favorite stories (an alternative view is that they are telling you which ones to skip).

Great modern translation.

Rating:
Summary: Which Translation?
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Italy's Canterbury Tales
Review: This is an awesome collection of a hundred stories told over ten days, by the young people Fiammetta, Dioneo, Filostrato, Neifile, Emilia, Elisa (or Elissa), Filomena, Panfilo, Pampinea, and Lauretta, who have temporarily left Florence because of the scariness of the Plague. Each of them also brings also a servant. The introductory chapter is really gripping, told from the pov of someone who actually lived through that devastating and frightening time when this mysterious deadly disease was sweeping through Europe, killing nearly everyone, devastating families and churches, destroying morality, and generally creating a very terrifying atmosphere. The young people spend more than ten days on hiatus from Florence, taking some of the days off for religious purposes, but most of the time is spent telling stories. Most of the days have a theme to be followed, like love stories that began sadly but ended happily, though Dioneo gets to tell a story on whatever topic he likes. Because of this privilege, he always must tell his story last.

This came before the Canterbury Tales, and I consider it a lot better. Chaucer seems to have been greatly influenced by it in that a number of his own tales are suspiciously similar to stories in here; one is admittedly even a practically word-by-word retelling of the final Decameron story. There are all sorts of people in these stories, from all walks of life, doing all kinds of things, things which many people would never think of people of this time period doing. Nearly everyone commits adultery or has premarital sex, people deceive priests and friars with false confessions, women are just as sexually demanding as the men, people cheat one another out of goods and money, women get rid of unwanted suitors, monks, nuns, friars, and priests violate their vows of chastity, even a (for the time) very risqué tale about a gay man who marries a woman as a cover for his ongoing affairs with other men. A lot of the stories are also very funny, like the priest who makes a vain woman believe the Angel Gabriel is in love with her and is using the priest's body to sleep with her every night, or (my favourite) the tale about how to put the Devil back into Hell. Women were second-class citizens and property at this time in history, yet there are plenty of spirited female characters who get what they want and are smarter than the men in their lives.

There are only a few stories in here I would consider dated doozies. The story where the moral is to learn to beat your wife so she won't assert herself and disobey her husband's every last word is repugnant, and I hate the eighth story of the fifth day. Nastagio has spent nearly all of his money trying to court a woman who doesn't like him, and after seeing a bizarre supernatural scene involving a man in his same position, a man who killed himself, he decides to invite the woman and some friends and family over to lunch the next time this scene occurs. Because he threw his weight around, this poor woman was terrified she would end up in Hell and be chased by a phantom knight and mauled by phantom dogs every Friday, and so gave in to this bully. The first story of the fifth day, about Cimone, also is very dated...how is it a happy ending to a love story when the man throws his weight around and bullies the woman into being with him? The second story in the book is also way dated and offensive-a merchant bullies his Jewish friend (typically only called by his name thrice during the story) into converting to Christianity, and the man makes a pilgrimage to Rome and comes back convinced he must convert, since Christianity thrives despite the corruption of the Vatican. That's pure Christian fantasy and just historical inaccuracy; the huge majority of Jews who changed religions in that era of time did not do so out of conviction but rather for improved social, business, or educational status. Though in the second of the stories where Saladin, the legendary Muslim ruler, appears, he is treated as one of the two heroes of the story, not some "heathen" who has no virtues and who must be converted asap.

A lot of books written during the Middle Ages are no longer remembered or in print today. There's a reason why this has stuck around for hundreds of years and is regarded as a timeless classic.

Rating:
Summary: a mammoth collection of medieval tales
Review: This mammoth collection of short stories was written in the wake of the Bubonic Plague which killed a third of the population of Europe back in the 14th century. The stories are for the most part really good narratives, and they're told through ten young noblemen who are trying to hide out from the plague to save themselves and tell these stories to pass the time. Written in a clear, classical, controlled, strongly plotted style, these are tales about sex, violence, intrigue... but nothing gratuitous of course. Good, easy-to-read translation!

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"

Rating:
Summary: What a book!
Review: Unlike a lot of the writers who sprung out of the medieval period, the Decameron is extremely readable. 100 stories organized into 10-day chunks makes this book a classic piece of literature... and unlike Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, you don't have to wade through the language to get at the meaning (part of this has to do with the translation of Italian into modern English).

During the Plague of the mid-14th century, ten people (7 women and 3 men) escape the city of Florence to the then-countryside of Fiesole. Each day they elect a king or queen, who dictates the theme of the day's stories. Centering around love, lust, sex, and relationships between people, the stories in the Decameron transcend stereotypes of the middle ages and created a scintillating and fresh approach to the art of storytelling. The Decameron is one of my favorite novels; this is the second time I've read it, and it never ceases to amaze me by the depth of human life represented.

In addition, this is an excellent translation of the original; the translators manage to get at Boccaccio's meaning without destroying his prose.