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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
Phew! This was one hell of a book...32 hours long! I laughed and laughed at some stories and could barely stay focused on others, and in the end was glad to be done with the book. There's lots to unpack and I could see someone spending a lifetime shifting through all of the layers and nuances within the 100 stories. I'm glad I've checked it off my list but am definitely ready for something contemporary!
Everyone's read the Canterbury Tales (except me), but have you read The Decameron?
dark
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Okay technically I only read the first day, but I call that enough to say that yes, I have read the Decameron, thank you (onto my grueling paper now!)
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Let Giovanni get medieval on your ass! In the best possible way, yo.
Seven ladies and three gentlemen flee plague-infested Florence for the surrounding hills, where they promptly decide to live it up in abandoned palazzos and tell each other stories. Ten days, ten stories per day, one hundred stories in all. Most are clever, a lot are bawdy, several are wildly and unabashedly implausible, and almost all are guaranteed to rankle a contemporary reader's sensibilities. In spades.
(Just wait until you get to the last tale. Or just skip ahead to it, and finish up with something more appealing. Yuck.)
But that, I feel, is at least the part of the point of reading this book. It's medieval. Its values, ethics and sense of morality are medieval. Filtered through Boccaccio's distinct perspective, but thoroughly medieval. Did I repeat that enough?
This is Medieval Italy in technicolor, rather than the sometimes indifferent black and white of history books. It's not a substitute for those; more like the messy, unruly and very necessary other half of the stereotypical odd couple. There's the serious, straight-laced academia, and then there's the often wild-and-crazy reality of history. The Decameron is a work of fiction, but all its parts, from the improbable to the offensive to the salacious, are firmly grounded in the sensibilities of its time.
Seven ladies and three gentlemen flee plague-infested Florence for the surrounding hills, where they promptly decide to live it up in abandoned palazzos and tell each other stories. Ten days, ten stories per day, one hundred stories in all. Most are clever, a lot are bawdy, several are wildly and unabashedly implausible, and almost all are guaranteed to rankle a contemporary reader's sensibilities. In spades.
(Just wait until you get to the last tale. Or just skip ahead to it, and finish up with something more appealing. Yuck.)
But that, I feel, is at least the part of the point of reading this book. It's medieval. Its values, ethics and sense of morality are medieval. Filtered through Boccaccio's distinct perspective, but thoroughly medieval. Did I repeat that enough?
This is Medieval Italy in technicolor, rather than the sometimes indifferent black and white of history books. It's not a substitute for those; more like the messy, unruly and very necessary other half of the stereotypical odd couple. There's the serious, straight-laced academia, and then there's the often wild-and-crazy reality of history. The Decameron is a work of fiction, but all its parts, from the improbable to the offensive to the salacious, are firmly grounded in the sensibilities of its time.
My feelings about Decameron seemed to shift at different times. Reading it with a partner, we'd approached the book in a traditional sense, reading sequentially, front to back. The Decameron is a long book. Ten days, ten stories to a day. One hundred stories totalling 1000+ pages. I enjoyed some of the stories from Day 1 immensely, especially the one with the scoundrel conning the priest on his deathbed. However, somewhere within Day 2, my patience began to wane. Each day being themed meant each block of ten stories started to meld together for me, with some stories so similar it felt like just the names had changed. Part of the problem for me was the summary at the start of each short story telling us what the story was going to be about. I find that works fine as chapter headings on long chapters of novels, but for short stories it made reading the actual story feel somewhat pointless.
So, having spat out the proverbial dummy, it was back to the drawing board. This time we were selective, choosing the stories that inspired Pasolini, Botticelli and Shakespeare, for their works 'Decameron', 'Nastagio degli Onesti', 'All's Well That Ends Well', 'Cymbeline' and 'Two Gentlemen of Verona', respectively. What a difference it made to read the stories non-sequentially! Not knowing the theme for each story ahead of time, dipping into different days, made the stories feel fresher, and kept me interested.
What I found so alluring about The Decameron was just how modern it felt. Completed in 1353, its narrators artfully recount tales of love, lust, treachery, desire, avarice, honour, friendship and nobility with such panache and flair, sometimes evoking moralistic conclusions, other times delighting in the cunning cleverness of some reprehensible character duping the good (Odysseus' legend springs eternal, from The Decameron to the Beano's 'Roger the Dodger'!). Other times, the stories were so despicably bawdy (some of my favourites!) that a copy of Fifty Shades of Gray sat beside it would undoubtedly blush itself off the bookshelf.
Back to its modernity, when placed next to the Italian plays of the 16th century, such as Machiavelli's 'The Mandrake Root'... Well, it makes the latter feel almost primitive. Bocaccio knew how to spin a yarn, that's for sure.
To anyone struggling to get through the work, I heartily recommend to read out of sequence!
So, having spat out the proverbial dummy, it was back to the drawing board. This time we were selective, choosing the stories that inspired Pasolini, Botticelli and Shakespeare, for their works 'Decameron', 'Nastagio degli Onesti', 'All's Well That Ends Well', 'Cymbeline' and 'Two Gentlemen of Verona', respectively. What a difference it made to read the stories non-sequentially! Not knowing the theme for each story ahead of time, dipping into different days, made the stories feel fresher, and kept me interested.
What I found so alluring about The Decameron was just how modern it felt. Completed in 1353, its narrators artfully recount tales of love, lust, treachery, desire, avarice, honour, friendship and nobility with such panache and flair, sometimes evoking moralistic conclusions, other times delighting in the cunning cleverness of some reprehensible character duping the good (Odysseus' legend springs eternal, from The Decameron to the Beano's 'Roger the Dodger'!). Other times, the stories were so despicably bawdy (some of my favourites!) that a copy of Fifty Shades of Gray sat beside it would undoubtedly blush itself off the bookshelf.
Back to its modernity, when placed next to the Italian plays of the 16th century, such as Machiavelli's 'The Mandrake Root'... Well, it makes the latter feel almost primitive. Bocaccio knew how to spin a yarn, that's for sure.
To anyone struggling to get through the work, I heartily recommend to read out of sequence!
Reading it for the 2nd time actually: 1st time was during my university years. Back than I probably would have raited it like 2 stars. However now, when years have passed and I am wiser & more mature (hopefully! lol), I believe this is an amazing example of 14th century literature that tells us more than 100 tales of that time. "Dekameron" gives us a sneak pick into the lives of people, and if not telling us exactly what was happening back than (because it's not a chronicle), at least gives us a view on what made them laugh and what made them sad, and what made them feel shameful or uncomfortable. Which - compared to today's life - is not exactly the same stuff. All in all, recommended as an enjoyable read!