The Decameron (Gothic Fantasy)

Giovanni Boccaccio, Dr Susanna Barsella (Foreword by)

$30.00

Publication Date: June 13th, 2023

Publisher:

Flame Tree Collections

ISBN:

9781804173442

Pages:

480

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Description

Beautiful collector's edition of the famous Decameron: one hundred fables and fairy tales with the universal wisdom of great literature...

With a new foreword. Written in the fourteenth century by Italian author, poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio, the Decameron contains stories told by ten young Florentines who have fled the city to escape the Plague. Presented within the sophisticated structure of a surrounding frame story, the one hundred allegorical tales are shared through the voices of these people as they spend their nights regaling the company with tales intended to guide and comfort, from the erotic, sensual, and bawdy to the intellectual, philosophical and tragic. The work’s fundamental purpose is one of ethical instruction through the means of beautiful and entertaining prose, touching on themes of morality, fortune, human will, wit, virtue, female agency, and love won and lost. This is Boccaccio's masterpiece and is generally viewed as the work that confirmed his reputation as the founder of Italian prose literature. It is also one of the world's great literary masterpieces.

About the Author

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was one of the most important figures in the European literary scene of the fourteenth century. Some regard him as the greatest European prose writer of his time.

Dr Susanna Barsella is Professor of Italian at Fordham University, NYC. Her main area of research is in Italian Medieval literature and Early Humanism. She has published on Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michelangelo and the idea of work from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Her books include The Decameron Ninth Day in Perspective (as co-editor).