An entertaining series of 100 stories told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble
men and women seeking to escape the plague. Vivid portraits of people from all stations in life. An Oxford University
Press World Classic.
In the early summer of the year 1348, as a terrible plague ravages the city, ten charming young Florentines
take refuge in country villas to tell each other stories - a hundred stories of love, adventure and surprising
twists of fortune which later inspired Chaucer, Keats and Shakespeare. While Dante is a stern moralist, Boccaccio
has little time for chastity, pokes fun at crafty, hypocritical clerics and celebrates the power of passion to
overcome obstacles and social divisions. Like the Divine Comedy, the Decameron is a towering monument of medieval
pre-Renaissance literature, and incorporates certain important elements that are not at once apparent to today's
readers. In a new introduction to this revised edition, which also includes additional explanatory notes, maps,
bibliography and indexes, Professor McWilliam shows us Boccaccio for what he is - one of the world's greatest masters
of vivid and exciting prose fiction.