Author of the Decameron, herald of the modern European novel
An Italian writer, ranked with Dante and Petrarch as one of the "three crowns of Florence." As the Black Death raged, he wrote the Decameron: ten young men and women flee to a country villa and over ten days tell a hundred tales — of love, of trickery, of biting mockery of the clergy. He boldly wrote worldly desire and human wit, pulling literature down from the holy heavens back to the steaming human world — regarded as the founding work of the modern European short story.
The frame of the Decameron is itself a metaphor: when death stalks the city, a group of people use storytelling to resist fear and hold onto their love of life. Boccaccio lets his characters make love and unmask hypocrisy to their hearts’ content, answering the heaviest death with the most worldly joy.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.