This new edition of The Decameron is the first modern English rendering of the authoritative and complete text of this ravishingly rich and robust work. Set against the background of the Black Death of 1348, the hundred linked tales in this wonderful masterpiece are peopled by nobles, knights, abbots, nuns, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, students, artists, tradesmen, troubadours, peasants, pilgrims, servants, spendthrifts, thieves, parasites, gluttons, gamblers, police - and lovers both faithful and faithless. Unabashedly earthy in its sensuality, The Decameron recaptures both the tragedies and the comedies of life. Now contemporary American readers can savour these tales once again in this unexpurgated translation which, in the words of the noted Boccaccio biographer Professor Thomas Bergin, "is remarkably faithful to the original in both letter and spirit... swift-paced and buoyant... smooth, graceful and eminently readable... The reader may be assured that he is... truly reading The Decameron."
