The Decameron/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Esoteric Happy Ending: (Day 5, story 1), (Day 5, story 8).
  • Fair for Its Day: Treated women as much more willful and independent than its contemporaries, and Jews as generally greedy but not actually evil.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop
  • Genius Bonus: The work is subtitled Prencipe Galeotto (Prince Galehaut), the go-between of Lancelot and Guinevere, a reference to the many go-betweens in Decameron and also a reference made by Dante in Inferno V.
    • Boccaccio was actually a huge admirer of Dante and incorporates a number of references to Dante in the Decameron and elsewhere in his work; for instance, on the first day, the courtier-diplomat who serves as a hero of sorts for one of the stories is mentioned in the Comedy as being damned to Hell for being an unrepentant "sodomite" (whether this means "homosexual" or "pedophile/pederast" is unclear) despite being an otherwise honorable and upstanding gentleman.
  • Older Than They Think: Most of the stories come from sources way older than the book; Boccaccio just brought them to his time.
  • Values Dissonance