Decameron Themes

The Decameron operates in a world with a complex understanding of what it means to love and be loved. It's also a world that allows for the truly cruel and perverse, the sinful and the merciless al...

Some commentators think that at its heart, The Decameron is a story of how priests and women use their wits to get sexual satisfaction from the people they're in lust with. Despite the fact that t...

As you read the story of Alessandro and the Abbot (II.3), you might think Alessandro's an idiot to be surprised that the Abbot's invited him to share a bed. But you'll have to go easy on Alessandro...

Boccaccio proves to us that deception in its many forms makes for great stories. He's given us two full days dedicated to lies and pranks and has created an entire comedic cast of characters dedica...

Boccaccio claims in his introduction that he's creating this work for the ladies—whom he loves and has been dedicated to since his youth. He feels sorry for those lovelorn ladies who have no way...

Once you've become involved in the lively stories of The Decameron, it's easy to forget the intense suffering that led the brigata to leave Florence and retreat into a parallel universe. If you c...

Medieval Christian philosophers struggled to reconcile the idea of free will with the existence of a God who ultimately controls everything. The storytellers in The Decameron have a lot of names f...

There's no way to overestimate the centrality and omnipresence of religion in medieval Europe (for the record, we're talking about Catholicism here). Although it's clear from the introduction to th...

The mid-14th century was a time of change—a transitional time between medieval society and the new values and interests of the Renaissance. The feudal economic system of lords and serfs was givin...