Decameron

A seminal work of European literature that has inspired writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare, the Penguin Classics edition of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron is translated with an introduction by G.H. McWilliam.

In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside. Taken from the Greek, meaning 'ten-day event', Boccaccio's Decameron sees his characters amuse themselves by each telling a story a day, for the ten days of their confinement - a hundred stories of love and adventure, life and death, and surprising twists of fate. Less preoccupied with abstract concepts of morality or religion than earthly values, the tales range from the bawdy Peronella, hiding her lover in a tub, to Ser Cepperallo, who, despite his unholy effrontery, becomes a Saint. The result is a towering monument of European literature and a masterpiece of imaginative narrative.

This is the second edition of G.H. McWilliam's acclaimed translation of the Decameron. In his introduction McWilliam illuminates the worlds of Boccaccio and of his storytellers, showing Boccaccio as a master of vivid and exciting prose fiction.

Boccaccio (1313-75) was an Italian writer of both verse and prose. He wrote The Decameron over a period of ten years, and is also the author of Teseide and Filostrato.

If you enjoyed The Decameron, you might like Dante's Inferno, also available in Penguin Classics.

'McWilliam's finest work, his translation of Boccaccio's Decameron remains one of the most successful and lauded books in the series'

The Times

Review: "McWilliam's finest work, [his] translation of Boccaccio's Decameron remains one of the most successful and lauded books in the series." --The Times (London)

"The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), made a great impression on me. . . . Ten youths--seven women and three men--take turns telling stories for 10 days. At around the age of 16, I found it reassuring that Boccaccio, in conceiving his narrators, had made most of them women. Here was a great writer, the father of the modern story, presenting seven great female narrators. There was something to hope for. . . . The seven female narrators of the Decameron should never again need to rely on the great Giovanni Boccaccio to express themselves. . . . The female story, told with increasing skill, increasingly widespread and unapologetic, is what must now assume power." --Elena Ferrante, The New York Times