The Decameron is “probably the dirtiest great book in the western canon,” according to one critic. Giovanni Boccaccio invented all sorts of cleverly euphemistic ways of describing sexual activity: “grinding at the mill” “giving the wool a good whacking” “making the nightingale sing”. But the evocations of the pleasures of the flesh are life-affirming in the face of all the surrounding death. Many of the stories, of randy nuns, conniving and corrupt clergy and all sorts of schemers and tricksters, are outrageously bawdy. Barry McCrea well described The Decameron (in The Ticket, May 16th, 2020) as “a strategy for psychic survival”. Storytelling offers them a break from the harsh reality and also reinforces the durability of life. In it, 10 Florentine aristocrats – seven women and three men – narrate 100 stories over 10 days to while away the time in a countryside villa to which they’ve fled to escape their plague-ravaged city. This is one of the great plague narratives (the plague in question being the bubonic one, better known as the Black Death).
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