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Title: Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, Stephen Thorne, Nickie Rainsford, Alison Pettit, Teresa Gallagher, Polly Hayes, Siri O'Neal, Jonathan Keeble, Daniel Philpott, James Goode ISBN: 9-6263470-9-0 Publisher: Naxos Audio Books Pub. Date: December, 2000 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 4 List Price(USD): $22.98 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.79 (29 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A True Classic
Comment: Any book defined as a true classic is likely to be thought of as stultifying and incomprehensible...at best. Yet, there are dozens and dozens of books that are true classics and still manage to speak to today's modern audience. Boccaccio's Decameron is one such book.
The Decameron was written around 1350 during an outbreak of plague in Florence. It is the fictional account of ten young people who flee the city to a country manor house and, in an effort to keep themselves occupied and diverted, begin telling stories.
Ten days pass in the pages of the Decameron (hence its name), and each person tells one story per day, making a total of one hundred stories. These are stories that explore a surprisingly wide range of moral, social and political issues whose wit and candor will probably surprise most modern readers. The topics explored include: problems of corruption in high political office, sexual jealousy and the class differences between the rich and the poor.
The titles themselves are both imaginative and fun. One story is titled, "Masetto da Lamporecchio Pretends to be Deaf and Dumb in Order to Become a Gardener to a Convent of Nuns, Where All the Women Eagerly Lie With Him." And, although the title, itself, is a pretty good summary of the story, even a title such as this cannot adequately convey Boccaccio's humor and wit.
Another story that seems surprisingly modern is, "Two Men are Close Friends, and One Lies With the Other's Wife. The Husband Finds it Out and Makes the Wife Shut Her Lover in a Chest, and While He is Inside, the Husband Lies With the Lover's Own Wife on the Chest." A bit long for today's modern world, perhaps, where popular books are dominated by titles such as John Grisham's The Firm, but the outcome of this story is as socially-relevant today as anything that happened in fourteenth-century Florence.
The Decameron, however, goes far beyond plain, bawdy fun and takes a close look at a society that is unraveling due to the devastating effects of the plague. The people in Boccaccio's time suffered terribly and the book's opening pages show this. The clergy was, at best, inept and, more often than not, corrupt. Those who had the misfortune to fall ill (and this includes just about everyone) were summarily abandoned by both their friends and family.
Those looking for something representative of the social ills of Boccaccio's day will find more than enough interesting tidbits and asides in these stories. Serious students of literature will find the ancestors of several great works of fiction in these pages and readers in general cannot fail to be entertained by the one hundred stories spun by these ten refugees on their ten lonely nights.
Rating: 5
Summary: My favorite-- best book yet written!
Comment: It seems almost redundant that I bother to rate this with yet another 5-star review (especially since I didn't buy it from Amazon-- Sshhhh, don't tell anyone), but this is one of the books that changed my life.
As a mind struggling to repair the damage caused by the American education system, I set out to follow other curriculums from times when learning was actually valued. Since many of the so-called "classics" American students today are forced to read in school are thinly-disguised socialist propaganda, I chose to look to much earlier times. I picked up The Decameron by chance, having remembered it from an off-hand statement a high school history teacher had made once. The book had everything, exalting adventure, romance, heroism, virtue, and other things I had been taught were subjective and dangerous. I found it the most refined and tastefully deviant book I had ever read and I have never been able to understand why students are not exposed to it as the basis for the study of literature.
Boccaccio's stories (told one per day, by each of the ten characters over ten days) give great insight into the midieval paradigm while poking fun at its obvious problems. The tales cover the whole of Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor, which was very unique for their time. The rolls of heroes involve characters of every culture, race, religion, and background in the known world-- something unheard of before this book. Boccaccio's great love and understanding of women also shines through, the expression of which tops the list of reasons as to why he was exiled from Florence! Most of the stories are based on actual people and events, though the author takes a great deal of artistic license in some cases. A great many little-known facts can be learned by reading the historical notes (one reason why I chose the Penguin Classic version). Boccaccio surpasses every other man of letters (before him or since) in ability and creativity and will no doubt do so for centuries to come.
Rating: 5
Summary: Forget everything you learned in catechism...
Comment: ...that is if you don't want to go to bed feeling extremely guilty every night. I had to read this over 6 weeks while studying in Tuscany. It is quite humorous and interesting, however it goes against everything that I learned in Catholic school. Ironically most of the dirty deeds being done are by those who've been chosen to "spread the good word."
It is fabulous however when reading it one must forget their background and dive in over the top to be able to move through the book.
Are the stories in the Decameron true? I hear the sequel is being relived right now all over the country.
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Title: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer ISBN: 0553210823 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 February, 1982 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Michelangelo : Life, Letters, and Poetry (Oxford World's Classics) by George Anthony Bull, Peter Porter, Michelangelo ISBN: 0192837702 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Confessions (OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS) by Saint Augustine, Henry Chadwick ISBN: 0192833723 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Jacques the Fatalist and His Master (OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS) by Denis Diderot, David Coward ISBN: 0192838741 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Invectives : by Francesco Petrarca ISBN: 0674011546 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: February, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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