The Decameron
by Giovanni Boccaccio

The stock definition of a classic book: It's a book that everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read.

However, classics sometimes have quite a lot to offer. While many classic books are indeed stultifying and incomprehensible, there are also dozens (or hundreds) that still speak to a modern audience.

Boccaccio's Decameron, little known outside of academia in general and the Italian department in particular, is one such title. Written around 1350 during an outbreak of the Plague in Florence, the Decameron is a fictional account of 10 young people who flee to a country manor, and begin telling stories to keep themselves occupied and diverted from the tragedy they have fled.

Ten days pass in the pages of the Decameron, and each refugee tells one story, every day, making a total of 100 different tales. The stories explore a wide range of moral, social and political issues, with a candor and wit that may astound the modern reader.

If history has taught us anything, it's that nothing under the sun (except, perhaps, for molecular biology) is particularly new. Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron is a terrific example: the problems of corruption in high office, sexual jealousy and the differences between the rich and the poor figure directly into a large number of the Decameron's tales.

One of the Decameron's stories is entitled: "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." This, with little else added, is a pretty good summary of the story.

Another story is blessed with the catchy title of: "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." It takes things a step further. After the cuckolded husband takes his revenge on his best friend (by sleeping with his friend's wife on top of a chest that holds his friend), the husband lets his friend out of the chest. By general agreement, the two men and their two wives agree to have open marriages and sleep with each other's spouses at will.

1350 or 1970? Who can tell? The Decameron, beyond being a mere capacitor for smut and bawdiness, is a frightening look at a society becoming unraveled by the effects of the Plague. Demoralized by the lack of help from the oft-corrupt or incompetent clergy, and abandoned by (or abandoning) close friends and family, the people of Boccaccio's era suffered greatly, a thought which is powerfully conveyed by the book's opening pages.

Students of modern social mores will find a lot of interesting tidbits and asides scattered throughout the Decameron, even as serious students of literature will find the ancestors of a number of great works of fiction among the stories spun by the 10 refugees of the Plague.

Those who wish to browse The Decameron on the web are encouraged to stop by Brown University's terrific site, The Decameron Web, which holds a complete transcript of the stories, in English and the original Italian. Despite the fact that some parts of the site are clogged with painful, highbrow Brownesque overanalysis of the book, many other parts (the historical and biographical information, and the transcript of The Decameron itself) are exceedingly useful, and nicely constructed.

In a post-modern world, the Decameron seems to work particularly well on the web. It's worth a look.

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)