Boccaccio’s Decameron in the Age of Coronavirus
Currently topping the charts in the West, composed 1348-50 at end of the Black Plague, Boccaccio’s Decameron returns to relevance as it engages the issues and threats we are living internationally today: social distancing (or ignoring it), privilege and radical social inequality, financial ruin, scarcity and hoarding of necessary resources, exploitation of others, religious crisis, and self-protective survialism. The work encodes privilege in its frame story: escaping infected Florence, the lieta brigata pass ten days focused on the telling of the one hundred novelle, most often reputed to be bawdy and comic. We will challenge this popular stereotype of the work. As an early humanist, via the frame and the novella, Boccaccio proposes the making of literature as a complex and responsible act, creating an essential space of reflection, dialogue, critique, and polemic concerning the society that is passing rapidly away. It proposes alternatives, particularly with regard to religion, gender, and class, that remain foundational to secular Western society. Parallel to discussing and understanding the original text and its historical and social circumstances, we will also consider Italian contemporary essays and media that engage and critique the Decameron and its mentality as a viable cultural example for today.