Böcker av Giovanni Boccaccio

The availability of The Latin Eclogues in English is a major contribution to the study of the literature and history of the Italian Renaissance.

After the composition of the Decameron, and under the influence of Petrarch's humanism, Giovanni Boccaccio devoted the last decades of his life to compiling encyclopedic works in Latin. Among them is "Famous Women", the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted to women.

Boccaccio's Decameron recasts the storytelling heritage of the ancient and medieval worlds into perennial forms that inspired writers from Chaucer and Shakespeare down to our own day.

In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside. They amuse themselves by each telling a story a day for the ten days they are destined to remain there - a hundred stories of love, adventure and surprising twists of fate. Less preoccupied with abstract concepts of morality or religion than earthly values, the tales range from the bawdy Peronella hiding her lover in a tub to Ser Cepperallo, who, despite his unholy effrontery, becomes a Saint. The result is a towering monument of European literature and a masterpiece of imaginative narrative.