The Decameron | Giovanni Boccaccio | Translation and Notes by G. H. McWilliam

In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside. They amuse themselves by each telling a story a day for the ten days they are destined to remain there - a hundred stories of love, adventure and surprising twists of fate. Less preoccupied with abstract concepts of morality or religion than earthly values, the tales range from the bawdy Peronella hiding her lover in a tub to Ser Cepperallo, who, despite his unholy effrontery, becomes a Saint. The result is a towering monument of European literature and a masterpiece of imaginative narrative.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was an Italian poet, writer, and scholar. His most famous and influential work is the Decameron, completed by 1353, in which his ten characters present 100 tales of everyday life. The book covers all manner of secular themes and gives a vivid description of the Black Death, which had just hit Boccaccio's home region of Tuscany.

Writing in the vernacular and not Latin, Boccaccio, along with Dante Alighieri (1265-1321 CE) and Petrarch (1304-1374 CE), helped promote the use of Tuscan as a legitimate language for poetic literature. In the latter part of his career, Bocaccio turned more to Latin and studies of classical literature, composing an influential genealogy of Roman and Greek mythology, writing a biography of Dante and giving public lectures on that writer's works.