The narrative’s fundamental theme is of struggle between life and death in the face of the Black Plague and the various ways life continues in spite of traditional moral attitudes and beliefs. The one hundred allegorical stories are shared through the narrative voices of these young people as they spend their nights regaling the company with tales from the erotic, sensual, and bawdy to the intellectual, philosophical or tragic. The Decameron tells a story of ten young Florentines who have fled from the Black Plague to reside in Naples. The Decameron is written as framed narrative which is a literary compositional technique that allows various different stories to be related within a previously introduced main story (Rimmon-Kenan, pg 123-129). The earthiness of human experience expressed in an accessible style of Italian vernacular prose was a significant divergence from the formulaic models for plot and character and transcendental idealism that dominated European writing during this period. The Decameron is viewed as Boccaccio’s masterpiece and is generally regarded as the work that cemented his reputation as the founder of Italian prose literature. As a youth he was trained to follow in his father’s business but he eventually chose instead to study canon law and subsequently pursued the arts. Boccaccio was most likely born in Florence or Certaldo and was the illegitimate son of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Bocacino di Chellino. The Decameron is a collection of one hundred allegorical short stories written around 1353CE by Italian author, poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio (c.1313 - 1375).

How Historically Significant is the Introduction to Boccaccio’s The Decameron?

Decamerone by Giovanni Boccaccio