The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio
In the summer of 1348, the Black Death sweeps through Florence with terrifying speed, turning the thriving city into a charnel house. Ten young nobles, seven women and three men, flee the dying city for a secluded villa in the hills, where they resolve to wait out the catastrophe by filling their days with story. Each morning they elect a king or queen to set the theme; each evening, each person tells a tale. Over ten days, one hundred stories emerge: tales of lovers thwarted and reunited, of cunning servants outwitting masters, of priests and merchants and kings revealing their moral natures in unexpected ways. Boccaccio constructs a masterwork of nested narratives, where the frame story of the plague refugees grounds the wild proliferations of tale within tale. The tone shifts constantly, from grim realism to bawdy comedy, from romantic idealism to cynical satire, yet the organizing intelligence holds it all together. What emerges is nothing less than a portrait of humanity itself: greedy, lascivious, heroic, clever, and endlessly resourceful. The Decameron invented the modern short story and established storytelling as both entertainment and survival strategy. It remains essential for anyone who believes that narrative is how we make sense of catastrophe, and how we remember what it meant to be alive when everything was ending.
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“To have compassion for those who suffer is a human quality which everyone should possess, especially those who have required comfort themselves in the past and have managed to find it in others. ””
— Giovanni Boccaccio
“Nothing is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person if the proper words are used to convey it.””
— Giovanni Boccaccio
“Kissed mouth don’t lose its fortune, on the contrary it renews itself just as the moon does.””
— Giovanni Boccaccio
“Wrongs committed in the distant past are far easier to condemn than to rectify.””
— Giovanni Boccaccio
“it is obvious that all vices have a grievous effect on those who indulge them and often on others too. But I believe that the one which can transport us with the most unbridled haste into danger is anger. This is nothing other than a sudden thoughtless impulse, provoked by some perceived offence, which banishes reason and clouds the eyes of the mind, rousing the soul to blazing fury.””
— Giovanni Boccaccio
“Let this grisly beginning be none other to you than is to wayfarers a rugged and steep mountain.””
— Giovanni Boccaccio
“The scholar, as wise as he was full of wrath, knowing that threats only serve as weapons to the person so threatened, kept all his resentment within his own breast [...]””
— Giovanni Boccaccio
“No-thing less splendid than a golden sepulchre would have suited so noble a heart.””
— Giovanni Boccaccio
“Senseless creatures, you don't see how much evil is concealed under a little good appearance.””
— Giovanni Boccaccio
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<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/the-decameron-of-giovanni-boccaccio-2939bcf3-88a9-447a-86e1-82577fb84695"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/the-decameron-of-giovanni-boccaccio-2939bcf3-88a9-447a-86e1-82577fb84695)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/the-decameron-of-giovanni-boccaccio-2939bcf3-88a9-447a-86e1-82577fb84695][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/the-decameron-of-giovanni-boccaccio-2939bcf3-88a9-447a-86e1-82577fb84695Cite this book
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Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-decameron-of-giovanni-boccaccio-2939bcf3-88a9-447a-86e1-82577fb84695.Boccaccio, G. (n.d.). The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-decameron-of-giovanni-boccaccio-2939bcf3-88a9-447a-86e1-82577fb84695Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-decameron-of-giovanni-boccaccio-2939bcf3-88a9-447a-86e1-82577fb84695.
