Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch were the leading lights in a century that
is considered the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. The Decameron, or Ten Days'
Entertainment, is his most famous work, a collection of stories considered representative of
the Middle Ages, as well as a product of the Renaissance. The work is both, as it not only
encompasses literary legacies of the medieval world but also goes far beyond Boccaccio's own
time, transcending in tone and style artistic works of previous as well as later periods.

This collection of tales is set in 1348, the year of the Black Death. Florence is a dying, corrupt city,
described plainly in all of its horrors. Seven ladies and three gentlemen meet in a church and decide
to escape from the charnel house of reality by staying in the hills of Fiesole; there they pass the time
telling stories for ten days.

They set up a working arrangement whereby each would be king or queen for a day; each day the ruler
commanded a story be told following certain stipulations. Their existence is that of the enchanted
medieval dreamworld: a paradise of flowers, ever-flowing fountains, shade trees, soft breezes, where
all luxuries of food and drink abound. Virtue reigns along with medieval gentilesse in its finest sense.
There is no cynicism or lust in the various garden settings, where the pastimes are strolling, weaving
garlands, or playing chess. Even Dioneo, who tells the most salacious stories, is as chaste in his
conduct as Pampinea, Filomena, Filostrato, and the others. One critic has even seen in these frame
characters a progression of virtues, their stories groups of exempla praising such qualities as wisdom,
prudence, or generosity.

The stories they weave, however, differ from their own idyllic sojournthey tell tales about ordinary people,
tales marked by intense realism in a world where dreams and enchanted gardens have little place.
Boccaccio draws on the actual geography of the region to bring the stories alive; different social classes
are portrayed with their own language and clothing. Within the stories told by his ten refugees from Florence,
the satire often bites deep, Boccaccio's comic mood embracing evil and holiness alike with sympathy and
tolerance. Like Chaucer, he is indulgent, exposing moral and social corruption but leaving guilty characters
to condemn themselves. In its frank, open-minded treatment of flesh as flesh, its use of paradox, cynicism,
and realistic handling of character, The Decameron transcends the medieval period and, going beyond
the Renaissance, takes its place as universal art.. Their use and adaptations in literature, plays, operas, and
paintings attest to their popularity throughout the ages.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Italian writer, most probably born in Tuscany, was the illegitimate son of a merchant of Certaldo, who launched him on a commercial career, during which he spent some time in Paris. But the young Giovanni abandoned commerce and the study of canon law. At Naples he gave himself to story writing in verse and prose, mingled in courtly society, and fell in love with the noble lady whom he made famous under the name of Fiammetta. Boccaccio lived alternately at Florence and Naples, producing prose tales, pastorals, and poems until 1350. After that time, he became a diplomat entrusted with important public affairs, and a scholar devoted to the cause of the new learning. During this period, in which he formed a lasting friendship with Petrarch, Boccaccio, as Florentine ambassador, visited Rome, Ravenna, Avignon, and Brandenburg. In 1358 he completed his greatest work, the Decameron, begun some ten years before. Boccaccio for some time held a chair founded for the elucidation of the works of Dante, on whose Divina Commedia he produced a commentary. During his last years he lived principally in retirement at Certaldo, and would have entered into holy orders, moved by repentance for the follies of his youth, had he not been dissuaded by Petrarch. He died at Certaldo in December 1375. The Decameron has had a lasting influence on European literature; Chacer borrowed largely from it, as did Shakespeare to a lesser degree. Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, Swinburne, and George Eliot are among those who have turned for their subjects to the Decameron. In this work, the two great tendencies which run through European literature—the classical and the romantic—are seen working together as they are hardly to be seen elsewhere.

Frederick Davidson is a recipient of the Golden Voices Award and numerous Earphones Awards. After performing for years in many BBC radio plays, he came to America in 1976. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks.