Boccaccio’s Decameron in Translation

Catalog description

Written just a few years after the Black Death swept through Florence in 1348, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron offers poignant testimony to the resilience of the human spirit in the wake of immeasurable loss. In this class we will follow Boccaccio’s troupe of 10 young men and women as they fill their days singing, dancing, playing games, and telling tales. We will analyze Boccaccio’s stories in terms of gender, class, and authorship, and see if his crafty wives and hypocritical clerics still have the power to shock and delight their modern readers.