Boccaccio: The Decameron and "The Black Death"

In this short reading from Boccaccio's Decameron, readers will experience the horrifying, firsthand account of the Black Death and its effects on the teenagers of Florence. Boccaccio explains how these teenagers give up hope and embrace a life of pleasure and ease.

About the author: The Renaissance writer, humanist, and poet Giovanni Boccaccio was born near Florence in 1313. His most famous work is The Decameron, a collection of one hundred and one stories set against the backdrop of the Black Death. The Black Death, scientifically known as the bubonic plague, was a horrifying disease that struck much of western Europe, North Africa, and Central Asia during the High Middle Ages.

Boccaccio’s writing was so influential that, along with the poetry of Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) and Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), the Tuscan dialect in which they wrote became the chosen dialect for the Italian language spoken today. Boccaccio may be among the most significant of the Renaissance humanists, a group of scholars and academics mostly based in Florence and northern Italy. The humanists wanted to bring the Greco-Roman classics back into prominent use, perhaps even on a level equal to that of the Bible and church tradition, and they displayed a strong, nearly unshakable confidence in the powers of the human spirit. The humanist movement is typical of the broad, overarching changes the Black Death helped to bring to Europe.