Decameron

Author: Boccaccio
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: This book is a classic of world literature, consisting of one hundred vivid stories that express the demands of the emerging bourgeois class during the Renaissance for individual liberation and opposition to asceticism. The author passionately praises the sincere love between young men and women and delivers a powerful satire against the debauchery and shamelessness of the Catholic Church. The Decameron is the first realist masterpiece in European literary history. It narrates how ten young men and women, stranded in a villa during the plague outbreak in Florence in 1348, spend their days in feasts, with each person telling a story every day for ten days, totaling one hundred stories, hence the name The Decameron. Many of the stories are based on historical events and medieval legends. In The Decameron, Boccaccio celebrates worldly life, praises love as the source of intelligence and noble character, condemns asceticism, and delivers a powerful satire against the decadence of feudal nobles and the debauchery and shamelessness of the Catholic Church. The work adopts a frame structure, weaving together one hundred stories into a cohesive whole. The language is concise and humorous, with subtle and exquisite portrayals of people and things.