Also, in the second day you'll notice a woman who goes against her father's wishes. It's all about what expectations you have of women which will depend on your interpretation of the stories.

I don't know the real reason for the 7. I'll have to reread some of the introduction. I've just forgotten.

This is just a preliminary post to let you know I haven’t fallen by the wayside – at least not yet.

I’ve now received my copy, which I note is translated by McWilliam. I’ve plowed through the introduction to the first day (which is 14 pages in my book), so I have a general sense of the situation. How depressing; I don't remember ever reading anything quite so grim. As an aside, I can’t help but wonder what cable television news would have made of the epidemic, after seeing what they did with anthrax, swine flu, and avian flu.

I’m now ready to dive into the first story of the first day, and will get back to the discussion as soon as I can.

Glad your copy has arrived! I look forward to your posts.

I have just read the first story of the first day. I should probably hold off on commenting until I’ve read at least a few others, which I hope will give me a better feel for the overall direction and meaning of these stories, but that would take time. So I’ll just go ahead and risk missing the mark, and toss out my initial thoughts, simply for the purpose of keeping the discussion moving.

At this early point in my gaining familiarity with The Decameron and its stories, I tend to believe that this story probably provides fuel for those who highlight the apparent hypocrisy of the Catholic church, and maybe the hypocrisy of all organized religion. From this story, it’s obvious that what one said carried much more weight than how one lived his life.

I’m not a student of this period in history, but I have read a little that gives me reason to think there was fairly widespread corruption in the church back then. Popes were elected more on political grounds than on religious ones, and cardinalships (if that’s the word) were often sold to the highest bidder. I guess it would be interesting to read this in conjunction with The Divine Comedy, but that might be biting off a bigger chunk than I could chew. Dante died in 1321, a little before The Decameron was written, and The Inferno section of The Divine Comedy has lots of people much less guilty than Ser Ciappelletto sentenced to some pretty gruesome punishments. I have a only a rudimentary familiarity with Dante’s work.

Well, having tossed some material out, maybe I should knock off at this point and wait to hear from others.

While it has nothing to do with our discussions, it was interesting, for me at least, to note that Ser Ciappelletto hailed from Prato, a suburb of Florence. When I was studying Italian as a college student in the US more than 40 years ago, we students were given names of kids our ages in Italy with whom we could correspond in Italian, just to practice using the language. One of my Italian pen pals was from Prato.

Now I will proceed onward to the second story.

I've never been able to get into the Canterbury Tales so I haven't tried the Decameron. Should I?
Randy

I'd say yes, because The Decameron has been translated into English, but most versions of The Canterbury Tales have not. I think most of the problems people have with The Canterbury Tales are related to reading a virtually foreign language.

I'm certainly not an authority, and I'm only up to the fifth story out of 100 so far. But they are entertaining and clever stories, and show traits that people still exhibit today, 660 years later.

As I get deeper into the tales of the first day, I’m beginning to see that the clergy provide a frequent bulls-eye for the storytellers, so I guess my initial impression about hypocrisy among those closely connected to the church was correct. In fact, the ease of hitting ‘sitting targets’ such as the clergy is mentioned in the course of telling one of the later stories on the first day. Wealthy bankers and merchants are also lampooned, just as Wall Street takes its shots today, but they don’t get nearly as much attention as the clergy.

I still think, as I near the end of the first day’s ten stories, that most of them are quite entertaining. That naturally implies that some of them are not. I understand now, in doing a little research on the internet, that there are actually editions of Decameron available which suggest which stories might be skipped over by someone who doesn’t want to read them all. I’ll still try them all, because I don’t always agree with assessments like that made by others. I might ease up on the pace, though, and maybe even start reading something else in parallel, because it will take a while to plow through all 100 stories.

I’m going on radio silence for a while as I think I’m hogging the discussion.

Hi, DickZ. I've been noticing the discussion of The Decameron and would like to join in, but first have to obtain a copy from the library. It might be of peripheral interest that there's a film in the style of Boccaccio called "Boccaccio '70" that was a favorite of mine in high school. I watched it again a couple of years ago, and I realized that it was really only one of the four stories that we were big on. That was one featuring a 50-foot Anita Eckbert on a billboard. She came to life in way very satisfying to 16-year-old boys who could never even imagine a Victoria's Secret catalog.

Yes, organized religion is made fun of quite a bit. Money lenders also take quite a beating. Boccaccio's father dealt with money... I can't recall if he was a money lender or just a merchant. I'll have to look that back up.

I've read most of the second day but I don't have time tonight to post about them. Expect something tomorrow! The great thing about this book is that you can take your own time - each story is so short that you can read another book alongside this one.

The second day is Filomena's! She represents fortitude. She chooses to have the stories told by the other 9 to be about those who, after a bit of suffering, are brought to a state of unexpected happiness.

What a great exercise in storytelling. Each story is assured of having a happy ending. This second day is all about a twist of fortune. The first day had its twists as well. Ciapelleto's , the Jew who turns Christian despite seeing what should have made him a Jew for life, the Sultan... each story has its twist. The second day's is more defined.

The first story on the second day is told by Neifile. Her story in the first day was my least favorite as I recall. Her story on the second day is pretty humorous and had me laughing - having an actor fake being retarded in order to get a special privilege and then he's beaten for it. That's slap-stick, low brow comedy at its absolute best!

Boccaccio has a way of mingling fact and fantasy - history and fiction so well as to create stories that seem very likely to be true, especially to the reader of his day. The names and dates he comes up with, and certain events, are sometimes accurate enough to make a story very plausible. My case in point would be the 5th story of the second day. Off topic, it happens to be probably the longest story so far.

I keep having to go to notes in the back of the book to find out who the people Boccaccio is writing about are. I'm amazed that so many of them are actual people! It makes a person wonder if some of these stories are inspired by actual events that Boccaccio has heard about in his life time. I don't doubt that some of them are - not to take away from his literary genius at all... it still takes a great writer to put pen to paper.

The Second story has to be my one of my favorites of the second day. Rinaldo gets a very happy ending

Third story was a dud as well as the fourth. The fifth was long but good. Now I'm on to the 6th.

Sorry I haven't been able to respond but I'm fighting a cold that just won't seem to go away.