The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

*contains spoilers*


This bounteous collection of stories, both classical and contemporary (for the age in which it was written, which was circa 1351; their contemporary is relatively classical to us, of course), both noble and bawdy, both comedic and tragic, is one of my favourite reads to date. The Decameron takes its name from the Greek for ‘ten days’, and does what it says on the tin, in providing ten stories told by ten people over the course of ten days – notably in a pastoral landscape. Written in the Italian vernacular in prose form, which allows Boccaccio the scope to explore a wealth of tales without compromising the nitty-gritty details, it affords us readers a magnified look at the context in which the piece was written; warts and all. In the introduction, here called the ‘Author’s Foreword’, Boccaccio even begs the pardon of the faint-hearted women reading, and does so again in his closing ‘Author’s Afterword’ – but don’t worry, women are presented as both noble and strong as well as dainty, delicate and deeply flawed, as are the men of both high and low birth (particularly the friars!)


Whilst The Decameron consists of tales of the very human sort (human here is synonymous with the noble and the horrid), as stated before, it takes place in a rather pastoral setting; seven women and three men, on meeting one Tuesday in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, decide to escape the gloomy and life-threatening plague for the safe respite and cleansing setting of nature’s countryside, and set off as soon as their wits allow. On arrival at the first inn, the decision is made that in order to keep their animalistic tendencies at bay, stories of the moral and cathartic kind should appropriately entertain and thus relieve them of their unwanted urges. A new king/queen is appointed on each day, and it is their job to organise the schedule of events with the major-domo and decide on the topic of the day’s tales.


Examples of the pastoral settings are in abundance, but there is one in particular that struck me as being quite special, which takes place in the idylls of a place called Ladyglen; “…as they entered it they saw deer, roebucks, and other such animals who just stood and awaited their approach…” Whilst the storytellers are eluding their animalistic urges, they also contradictorily find a connection with their inner animal, as the creatures of the wild, who would typically be running scared at the approach of a human, are instead tame and accommodating – this, of course, is a reversion back to the days of Eden, or what might classically be referred to as The Golden Age, and this contrasts quite profoundly with the examples of the imperfections of human nature within the tales themselves. The morbid and confusing effects of the plague on Boccaccio’s views of the world must have somehow drawn out the understandable urge to escape to a higher and a better world.


A constant theme running through almost every single story contained within this wonderful collection is the patently fallible characters that operate within the purportedly infallible realm of the church, regardless of role. As Boccaccio understands it, friars take advantage of their position and the information afforded to them in confidence, and also of the money and the women they witness day after day passing in front of their supposedly chaste forms. There are countless naughty tales of this kind, the likes of which were taken and reshaped by important English literary figures such as Chaucer and Shakespeare, in the same way Boccaccio took his tales from sources preceding his years, some which will make your blood boil, others which will genuinely cause moments of laughing-out-loud. Either way, The Decameron is well worth it.

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