Decameron
Century of tales
The Decameron is a collection of one hundred tales by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in the mid-fourteenth century.
The frame narrative has ten young Florentines fleeing plague-stricken Florence, each telling one story per day over ten days—hence the title, from Greek for "ten days." The tales range from bawdy to tragic, and the work influenced Chaucer and shaped European storytelling tradition.
Italian masculine given name
- FlorenceTuscan capital city
- humanismPhilosophy prioritizing earthly reason
- PetrarchMedieval Italian lyric poet
- DanteItalian epic poet
vernacular · authorship · prose · allegory · satire · morality · biographer · poet
Short fictional book
- proseUnversified language
- narrativeAccount of events
- classicOf lasting excellence
- manuscriptOriginal text before publication
vernacular · canon · Renaissance · anthology · genre · influence · Chaucer · Canterbury Tales
Short fictional book
- talesSpoken or written narratives
- narratorsThose who relate tales
- EmiliaFeminine name, Latin-derived
- ElissaFemale given name
Lauretta · themes · days · gardens · storytellers · oral tradition · raconteur · episodes
Giovanni
Italian masculine given name
- FlorenceTuscan capital city
- humanismPhilosophy prioritizing earthly reason
- PetrarchMedieval Italian lyric poet
Dante · vernacular · authorship · prose · allegory · satire · morality · biographer · poet · novella
novella
Short fictional book
manuscript · vernacular · canon · Renaissance · anthology · genre · influence · Chaucer · Canterbury Tales · frame tale
novella
Short fictional book
Lauretta · Elissa · themes · days · gardens · storytellers · oral tradition · raconteur · episodes · wit
Black Death
Medieval bubonic plague pandemic
- pandemicGlobal disease outbreak
- FlorenceTuscan capital city
- quarantineIsolation preventing disease transmission
pestilence · mortality · contagion · outbreak · epidemic · bubonic · infection · death · isolation · transmission
Florence
Tuscan capital city
- merchantsThose who conduct commerce
- clergyOrdained religious officials collectively
- nobilityTitled ruling class
peasants · nuns · friars · tricksters · cuckolds · lovers · adultery · fortune · wit · satire
Decameronnovel
New and unusual
epic · War and Peace · Ulysses · Don Quixote · epic poem
DecameronDivine Comedy
Italian allegorical verse trilogy
Summa Theologica · hagiography · sacred texts · morality play
- The DecameronFourteenth-century Italian novellas