Decameron and Chill? Why a 14th-Century Italian Masterpiece Is on Everyone's Quarantine Reading List
The Decameron may be a foundational block of the Western canon and a staple of college lit classes, but it has not been on anyone’s “hot list” for a very long time. Giovanni Boccaccio’s 1353 masterpiece is a fictional account of a group of young Florentines who flee the city and spend ten days in a deserted villa in hopes of escaping the plague that tore through Europe in the late 1300s.
The principal characters, seven women and three men, tell each other stories each night to pass the time, and the book frames the resulting 100 tales—a kind of Arabian nights for the plague era.
Recently, however, Boccaccio's masterpiece has begun trending on Twitter, with new readers and cultural critics alike quoting daily from the text. It now ranks number one on Amazon’s Best Sellers in Italian Literature list. And Decameron Web, a scholarly digital resource curated by Brown University, has seen a sudden increase in traffic.
T&C reached out to Massimo Riva, chair of Brown University’s Italian Studies Department and co-editor of Decameron Web, to ask about the renewed popularity of the book Boccaccio completed more than 600 years ago.
Do you think the recent spike in interest in the Decameron is tied to the spread of the coronavirus?
Undoubtedly. Boccaccio's masterpiece is often quoted or described in relation to its temporal setting, the time of the great plague (a different disease, of course, albeit, coincidentally also originated in the "Far East") that wiped out half the population of 14-century Florence.
Beyond the obvious similarities of the book’s protagonists escaping to a villa and Americans holing up in their homes, what themes should contemporary readers look when reading Boccaccio's text today?
I would point to the ethical dilemma the ten young protagonists face in their decision to (temporarily) abandon the city. This decision can be interpreted in two different, and somewhat opposite ways: as an escape from the common destiny of those who can afford a luxurious shelter (similar to the doomsday bunkers that very rich people build for themselves today); and as the utopian desire to rebuild together a better, more ethical and harmoniously natural way of life, out of the ruins of the old world.
Have you seen/heard the recent coinage "Coronavirus and Chill," which describes a supposed increase of romantic activity because people are cooped up together? Is there a parallel to be drawn to the erotic stories in the Decameron?
I would caution those who think of the Decameron as the celebration of "romantic activity." The ten young storytellers who escape the city abstain from any sexual activity in order to tell their stories, including those that celebrate sex or warn about the dangerous or even lethal consequences of "mad love," jealousy and other forms of excessive erotic behavior. Much of the Decameron, of course, is written tongue in cheek, and it is up to the reader to draw the lesson. A great book can make a great companion in a semi-quarantine situation, and if you are with a small circle of friends, real or virtual, it can also be a wonderful way to play the game of sex, at a social distance…”
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