‘As the year turned to spring, the plague began quite prodigiously to display its harrowing effects.’

As predicted, I have struggled to finish a book a week.  Not surprising, probably, considering the books I have chosen.  I am currently reading The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio at the same time as working my way through Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light. I may give myself a break and read and review a shorter book next week while I continue to revel in reading those monsters. In the meantime, I thought I might give a little review of the beginning of The Decameron.

You may wonder how on earth I chose my ‘to read’ pile so that the third of my books is a translation of a 14^th century collection of stories from Italy. The Decameron was referred to many times in sources and comments I read both at university and since then. The two works I am most familiar with which were influenced by it are these: it was the source, and possibly the inspiration, for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Keats used one of his tales in writing Isabella: or the Pot of Basil. So, I had heard about it and never read it. “If I don’t read it now,” I thought, “when will I ever get around to it?”

In addition to having the time, the obvious reason to think of it just now is, of course, the plague.  The book is set just outside Florence during the plague of 1348.  Three young men and seven young women go to a castle outside the city to escape from the ravages of the Black Death and pass the time together telling stories to each other. It seemed to me to be appropriate that I should read the stories in my isolation too.

Boccaccio was one of the first Italians to use the language spoken by the people instead of Latin when writing his literary works. He followed in the footsteps of Dante in that regard. Both of them Florentines, it is argued that their works have affected the growth of the Italian language as we know it today. At the same sort of time, William Langland when he wrote Piers Plowman and Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales and his poetry were writing in English rather than French, which was then the language of power in England. This was the time when the language spoken by the ordinary person was first written down in a literary poetic way, giving a voice, a status and a pathos to common individuals. Their stories were written, and so all could read of their preoccupations, their hopes and dreams, their faults and foibles.  For the first time, we see society’s layers, from the nobility to the peasants in the fields and beggars on the streets. It was a time when the middle classes were gaining in power and influence, partly due to the decimation of the population as a result of the plague. For the first time, we can read – not of the noble feats of heroes and kings – but of the struggles, loves and losses of the people who made up the majority of society.

If I’m trying to persuade you to read The Decameron, that would be the first reason I would argue. My next might be the fascinating insight it gives into the human reaction to the plague. As we all struggle to hold onto our sanity in the face of global panic and personal isolation, it is interesting to see that the human beings who faced a much worse pandemic had similar reactions to ours. While we wait inside, or fight the disease on the front line, we are backed up by scientific knowledge, good remote communication and a strong governmental infrastructure – not to mention (here in Britain at least) the NHS. In those days, they had no notion how the disease worked, and therefore no idea how to combat it. In the introduction Boccaccio writes of the plague, ‘It was proof against all human providence and remedies’. However bad things seem, we cannot say that of COVID-19. 

People in 14^th century Florence reacted as many are doing now, either with extreme caution or a complete lack of it. People felt that death would come for them and there was no remedy, so they either focused on the life to come and tried for piety or did whatever they wanted knowing they would not have to face the consequences. It is so easy to see how people would fall into both of these camps. I learned at school that a third of Europe’s population died of the plague in those years; never before has that seemed to me to be more of a human and horrific disaster.

The third reason for reading Boccaccio’s Decameron is the nature of the stories themselves.  I realise that reading a modern English translation is not coming close to the tone of the actual text, but the informality and humour of the stories is charming. The familiarity of venal, greedy, lustful humanity albeit in a Renaissance setting is reassuring and almost always funny. ‘Bawdy’ is a word often used to describe these tales, but essentially that just means they are Game of Thrones level rude and violent. What the bawdiness shows, however, is the humanity, both of the characters and of the writer.

And that last point is what I want to leave you with.  People are the same now as they ever were. The fact that they wore funny clothes and spoke in a funny way does not change the fact that they had emotions, reactions, hopes and passions, just like us. Perhaps today’s Boccaccio will write a modern day version of The Decameron, an isolation diary, which will help people 700 years from now to imagine what our lives are like now. I’d like to believe that.