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/lit/ - Literature

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12856104 No.12856104 [Reply] [Original]

How is the Decameron not a /lit/ staple?
This book is incredible. Infinitely superior to The Canterbury Tales. Bocaccio’s sense of humor was great and this book is as easily readable as any classic literature I’ve come across, even though it was written in the 1300s. There is just so much to discuss here

>> No.12856200

>>12856104
The Decameron is one of the greatest books of all time, and Boccaccio was arguably a genius, considering no one had ever written anything similar before him. As it often happens, the first work of a kind is also the best.

>> No.12856251

>>12856200
I didn’t even think about its importance in that manner Bhutto that’s an interesting point. It’s like 300 years older than Don Quixote which is generally considered to be one of the first novels (as we think of novels today) right?

>> No.12856260

>>12856104
based chad and stacey picnic party

>> No.12856308

>>12856251
Yes right, and Cervantes was influenced by Boccaccio to some degree. Even if Decameron is basically a series of novellas, Boccaccio was able to build an external narrative that links them together in a unitary whole. Which is pretty brilliant, if you consider that no one used to write novels at the time.

>> No.12856341

Shakespeare stole a bunch of plots from it, Keats used some too. It's so readable, stories about cucking and fucking will always be timeless

>> No.12856360
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12856360

>>12856104
Unironically I find the courtly romance to be the most obnoxious parts of Middle Age literature so I try to steer away from stuff that focuses on it. It's fine when it serves to buoy the characters as they're doing their own fantastical feats, but I don't know how much Italian Il Cortegiano shit I can tolerate.

>> No.12856406

>>12856341
Cervantes in Don Quixote also has an interlude where the characters gather in an inn just to pass the time and tell a story about cucking, but not sure if it's taken from somewhere

>> No.12856442

>>12856251
The Tale of Genji was the first novel.

>> No.12856485

>>12856104
I read it for the plague description at the beginning. The stories became monotonous for me. It's definitely best in small doses, probably as a bedtime book. Otherwise, I found nothing that I didn't already know about human behavior and our biases.

>> No.12856638

>>12856104
In third reign rn
all they do is talk about sex fucking baka

>> No.12856911

>>12856104
Do Americans not read this in HS?

>> No.12857572

bump

>> No.12857593

>>12856911
>americans
>reading in high school

>> No.12857653

>>12857593
kek

>> No.12857831
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12857831

What do you think of Pasolini's adaptation?

>> No.12857851

What proves that this board is only about anglo cultural masturbation

>> No.12857861

>>12857851
Yeah, fucking hilarious isn't it

>> No.12857865

>>12856911
i spent two years abroad in europe, one in wales one in sweden and as far as i can tell nobody actually reads ever

>> No.12857880

>>12856200
>no one had ever written anything similar before him
I'd argue that Ovid's Metamorphoses are similar in general thrust (though lacking the framing narrative).

>> No.12857887

>>12857880
More than a thousand years separate Boccaccio from Ovid. That's the point.

>> No.12858707

bumpeth

>> No.12858747
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12858747

>>12856911
I'm American and I read it in middle school

>> No.12858809

yeah its a good book

>>12856360
really cuz to me thats the most annoying part of 18/19th century british literature

>> No.12858971

>>12856360
It's really more of a parody of courtly love. Decameron does for courtly love what Quixote does for chivalry: they are both parodies, but somehow also the paragon example of what they're parodying.

>> No.12859027

So which translation?

>> No.12859171

>>12859027
Rebhorn

>> No.12859203

>>12856104
You cast a vote for Decameron as a /lit/ staple you say?
>I’ve been trying to get /lit/ to recognize it for years.
>Where there’s two there’s more let’s consider it done.

>> No.12859210

>>12856251
The Japanese are credited with the invention of the novel.

>> No.12859236

>>12856200
>>12856251
>>12857880
>Way way out of their depth
>>12856360
>>12856485
>Academics in disguise

TLDR
Decameron is an example of framing fiction written in Medieval Italian.
Chaucer wrote an early English work called The Canterbury Tales sourced from Decameron. The writing of early English works helped establish the language as the spoken tongue in the English Isles.
Cervantes wrote in Spanish nearer to the time of Shakespeare than the time of Chaucer or Bocaccio.
>I feel like I’ve eaten a whole can of troll bait even writing this.

>> No.12859268

>>12856104
probably the most fun I had in my first year literature class

boccaccio is incredibly based

>> No.12859369
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12859369

>>12856104

Based.

What was everyone's favorite story?

Mine was the one with the monk and the young female he tricked into having sex. He exclaimed that his dick was the devil and her pussy was hell and that he needed to put the devil back into hell where he belonged.

>> No.12859444
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12859444

>>12858971
It was parody in a lot of the stuff from the same time period. Both Parzival and Chretien de Troyes were court entertainers who were specifically calling out their local patrons out for wasting vast amounts of money on pointless shit and acting like petty children. The original Launcelot story by Troyes was specifically commissioned by the kings' wife, and the story is entirely about how a queen wasting her time courting ends up ruining the kingdom.

I forget exactly which collection it was in, but there was one where Arthur was playing chess with some other guy and the game lasted five years while the kingdom withered around them, and all the while he kept saying what a wise and good king Arthur was. It's a pretty modern idea, to turn the Greatest King of All Time into a backhanded insult to lords who didn't have a leadership bone in their body.

>> No.12859742

>>12859369
>The Marquis’s Tale
Gotcha wife!

>> No.12859779

>>12857831
I love it a--- WHAT THE FUCK HW ATI ISHWAT IS THIS LIKE JBUTTON WHAT THE FUCK[

>> No.12859799
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12859799

>>12857831
Anyway, getting serious: his three adaptations (Arabian Nights, Canterbury and Decameron) are pretty lovely, and they work extremely well, which is very rare with literary adaptations to cinema, because Pasolini only used the stories, and instead of emphasizing words (there's very little dialogue in these as in his other films), he emphasized imagery instead, and, using the influenced of Renaissance painting (as well as some other stuff - Bosch, for instance) managed to create some pretty unique scenes. I love those movies and they made the very joy of my teenage years, back when I was 15 and a Pasolini fan.

>> No.12860526

fucking and cucking; the book.