The story is well known: in 1348, during the plague strikes cruelly Florence (the introductory chapter is apocalyptic), seven ladies and three young people find refuge, surrounded by their servants in succession two luxurious properties, almost heavenly, somewhat remote from city. To enhance their stay, they decide that each of them will tell others new every day except Friday and Saturday, respectively dedicated to the memory of the sufferings of Christ and rest. So during this total of fourteen days, it is a hundred news that will be told, one hundred remarkable stories by their characters and especially their outcome.
These new, three have been adapted for film by Pasolini, are for the most lightweight, swarming obscene déquivoques (when there is question of plowing a field, this is rarely related lagriculture) and lending to laugh it is never far from stuffing, almost contemporary, for this trick side played as a fool dautant if faith in God is never questioned, by the clergy against both male and female, takes for his grade and sees her every vice, real or supposed unveiled (the first news of the third day and see a young man being literally exhausted by the occupying of a convent). But it is the same for almost all social classes, especially the rising bourgeoisie increasingly in the flourishing cities from Italy, but never narrive ankle dune little nobility present in The Decameron but still celebrated for his virtues.
There lies the other great theme of this collection after lérotisme ribald: the celebration of a number of virtues, which the foreground friendship, sometimes tragic mode, which provides a pleasant tone alternation in the collection, which would be boring wasnt sil as playful. This virtuous celebration occurs mainly during the tenth and final day of the stories, the one whose theme is "Those who have done some gesture full of liberality or magnificence actually damoureuses prowess or anything else" - as it should be clarified that each day is under the dune queen reign (or of a king) who decides the object to be addressed by new narrated during the day in question. This system gives the Decameron a relative coherence in diversity, broken only by the privilege accorded to Dione, one of the three young men, who have the right to conclude the day, what quen be the theme on a new jokes.
This thematic and tonal variety, coupled with the wise alternation mentioned above, prevents fatigue of the player (or rather, the reader, stating that he Boccaccio wrote primarily for women), which nevertheless welcomes the occasional return characters jesters, Calandrino laughable as this hero of four or five new; anyway, the reader is carried away by a lively style, pleasing, served beautifully by the enlightened translation Giovanni Clerico, which modernized the text while maintaining many dexpressions and medieval terms (quexpliquent the needs of endnotes volume). And if lon will not play a big dune book one go, The Decameron is also the perfect book for the summer: day by day or even by new news, he leaves also relish at the risk of giving ideas during some hot days
