What is the summary of The Decameron?
The Decameron is structured with a frame story containing a hundred tales told by a group of ten young men and women sheltering in a villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, which had struck the city.
What is the message of The Decameron?
Almost all the stories are about love and lust (we’ll get to lust later). The most important message seems to be that love is a natural and powerful force that can’t be denied; it overwhelms reason and common sense; it transforms people. In The Decameron, love is usually consummated in sex.
Why do they tell stories in The Decameron?
Secluding themselves in a country estate, and telling stories to keep their minds happily occupied, the young gentlefolk leave their homes in Florence, hoping to keep the deadly contagion at bay and leave their fears behind, at least for a while. Think of The Decameron as the 14th century The Walking Dead.
What was the plague in the opening of the story Decameron?
Giovanni Boccaccio introduces his acclaimed collection of novellas, the Decameron, with a reference to the most terrifying existential crisis of his time: the decimating effects of the bubonic plague in the 1348 outbreak known as the Black Death.
What is the Decameron introduction about?
This work opens with a description of the Bubonic Plague (Black Death) and leads into an introduction of a group of seven young women and three young men who fled from Plague ridden Florence for a villa outside of the city walls.
How does Gualtieri tests Griselda?
In the most famous version of the Griselda tale, written by Giovanni Boccaccio c. 1350, Griselda marries Gualtieri, the Marquis of Saluzzo, who tests her by declaring that their two children—a son and a daughter—must both be put to death.
Where was Boccaccio’s Decameron set?
Florence, Italy
Florence, Italy, 1348. The story begins in Florence, Italy, circa 1348, around the time of an outbreak of the Plague and at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance.
What disability does Masetto pretend to have?
But he knows that it’ll be hard to convince a religious order to hire a handsome and strong young man, so Masetto pretends he’s deaf and mute.