For a book to be even considered to a classic; then it, i.e., the book has to stand the test of time (and by so been read, pondered on and enjoy by several generations). The Decameron (Oxford World's Classics) by Giovanni Boccaccio, et al is one of these few books, e.g., The Odyssey, Thus Spoke Zarathustra et al. The story follows a plethora of storytellers whom all have gone to the countryside to escape the plague. The stories are filled with bravura, vigor, fortitude, a bit of sex and many other subjects (that are all written with an uncanny ability). If one considered oneself to be a scholar or a learned man then this book, i.e., The Decameron (Oxford World's Classics) by Giovanni Boccaccio, et al, is a must have; since not owning or having read it, then one as a person/scholar/learnedman must be considered less then civilized.

Any book defined as a true classic is likely to be thought of as stultifying and incomprehensible...at best. Yet, there are dozens and dozens of books that are true classics and still manage to speak to today's modern audience. Boccaccio's Decameron is one such book.

The Decameron was written around 1350 during an outbreak of plague in Florence. It is the fictional account of ten young people who flee the city to a country manor house and, in an effort to keep themselves occupied and diverted, begin telling stories.

Ten days pass in the pages of the Decameron (hence its name), and each person tells one story per day, making a total of one hundred stories. These are stories that explore a surprisingly wide range of moral, social and political issues whose wit and candor will probably surprise most modern readers. The topics explored include: problems of corruption in high political office, sexual jealousy and the class differences between the rich and the poor.

The titles themselves are both imaginative and fun. One story is titled, "Masetto da Lamporecchio Pretends to be Deaf and Dumb in Order to Become a Gardener to a Convent of Nuns, Where All the Women Eagerly Lie With Him." And, although the title, itself, is a pretty good summary of the story, even a title such as this cannot adequately convey Boccaccio's humor and wit.

Another story that seems surprisingly modern is, "Two Men are Close Friends, and One Lies With the Other's Wife. The Husband Finds it Out and Makes the Wife Shut Her Lover in a Chest, and While He is Inside, the Husband Lies With the Lover's Own Wife on the Chest." A bit long for today's modern world, perhaps, where popular books are dominated by titles such as John Grisham's The Firm, but the outcome of this story is as socially-relevant today as anything that happened in fourteenth-century Florence.

The Decameron, however, goes far beyond plain, bawdy fun and takes a close look at a society that is unraveling due to the devastating effects of the plague. The people in Boccaccio's time suffered terribly and the book's opening pages show this. The clergy was, at best, inept and, more often than not, corrupt. Those who had the misfortune to fall ill (and this includes just about everyone) were summarily abandoned by both their friends and family.

Those looking for something representative of the social ills of Boccaccio's day will find more than enough interesting tidbits and asides in these stories. Serious students of literature will find the ancestors of several great works of fiction in these pages and readers in general cannot fail to be entertained by the one hundred stories spun by these ten refugees on their ten lonely nights.

Giovanni Boccaccio THE DECAMERON. Second Edition. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by G. H. McWilliam. cli + 909 pages. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Books, 1995. ISBN 0-14-044629-X (Pbk).

Second-hand opinions can do a lot of harm. Most of us have been given the impression that The Decameron is a lightweight collection of bawdy tales which, though it may appeal to the salacious, sober readers would do well to avoid. The more literate will probably be aware that the book is made up of one hundred stories told on ten consecutive days in 1348 by ten charming young Florentines who have fled to an amply stocked country villa to take refuge from the plague which is ravaging Florence.

Idle tales of love and adventure, then, told merely to pass the time by a group of pampered aristocrats, and written by an author who was quite without the technical equipment of a modern story-teller such as Flannery O'Connor. But how, one wonders, could it have survived for over six hundred years if that's all there were to it? And why has it so often been censored? Why have there always been those who don't want us to read it?

A puritan has been described as someone who has an awful feeling that somebody somewhere may be enjoying themselves, and since The Decameron offers the reader many pleasures it becomes automatically suspect to such minds. In the first place it is a comic masterpiece, a collection of entertaining tales many of which are as genuinely funny as Chaucer's, and it offers us the pleasure of savoring the witty, ironic, and highly refined sensibility of a writer who was also a bit of a rogue. It also provides us with an engaging portrait of the Middle Ages, and one in which we are pleasantly surprised to find that the people of those days were every bit as human as we are, and in some ways considerably more delicate.

We are also given an ongoing hilarious and devastating portrayal of the corruption and hypocrisy of the medieval Church. Another target of Boccaccio's satire is human gullibility in matters religious, since, then as now, most folks could be trusted to believe whatever they were told by authority figures. And for those who have always found Dante to be a crushing bore, the sheer good fun of The Decameron, as Human Comedy, becomes, by implication (since Boccaccio was a personal friend of Dante), a powerful and compassionate counterblast to the solemn and cruel anti-life nonsense of The Divine Comedy.

There is a pagan exuberance to Boccaccio, a frank and wholesome celebration of the flesh; in contrast to medieval Christianity's loathing of woman we find in him what David Denby beautifully describes as "a tribute to the deep-down lovableness of women" (Denby, p.249). And today, when so many women are being taught by anti-sex radical feminists to deny their own bodies and feelings, Boccaccio's celebration of the sexual avidity of the natural woman should come as a very welcome antidote. For Denby, who has written a superb essay on The Decameron that can be strongly recommended, Boccaccio's is a scandalous book, a book that liberates, a book that returns us to "the paradise from which, long ago, we had been expelled" (Denby, p.248).

The present Penguin Classics edition, besides containing Boccaccio's complete text, also includes a 122-page Introduction, a Select Bibliography, 67 pages of Notes, four excellent Maps and two Indexes. McWilliam, who is a Boccaccio scholar, writes in a supple, refined, elegant and truly impressive English which successfully captures the highly sophisticated sensibility of Boccaccio himself. His translation reads not so much as a translation as an original work, though his Introduction (which seems to cover everything except what is most important) should definitely be supplemented by Denby's wonderfully insightful and stimulating essay, details of which follow:

Chapter 17 - 'Boccaccio,' in 'GREAT BOOKS - My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World'
by David Denby. pp.241-249. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83533-9 (Pbk).

Caddie Woodlawn is a fun and exciting story about an adventurous young girl during the pioneer days. Caddie is a very mischevious, at times and is often seen as a tomboy. As a young girl, her family had moved from Boston to Wisconsin, and she was very sick at the time. Her father had asked to "try an experiment" with Caddie and let her run wild with her brothers. His "experiment" worked and she quickly gained her health back.

Although Caddie is a girl, that does not stop her from going on many adventures with her two brothers. Throughout the story, their adventures keep the readers interested, and if you read closely enough, you can almost feel that you are inside the story watching them.

I truly enjoyed this book. It was very humourous, exciting, interesting, and yet it seemed quite lifelike. This story does a very good job showing its readers how life may have been like during those times, since it was based on the story of the writer's grandmother. Overall, I think the book is a very easy-to-read story and is suitable for readers of all ages.

I had to read this book this summer and believe me, I wasn't thrilled. But when I was done with "Caddie Woodlawn" I had to pick up "Magical Melons" right away. This is a really awesome book. Those who love Laura Ingalls Wilder's works will love this as well.

Caddie Woodlawn is a twelve year old tomboy living in western Wisconsin during the Civil War. Her large family is always around to provide entertainment and adventure. Caddie, who is afraid of being a lady, gets into as many spills as her brothers. She nearly drowns on a raft, discovers secrets about her father's childhood, plays mean tricks on her city-girl cousin, saves her town from an Indian threat, and manages to make new friends and learn truths about herself in the process.

If you love close enough, I would recommend visiting "Caddie Woodlawn Country" near Durand, WI. See Caddie's real house, not a replica, and other things from the book. Be sure to check out this book as it is a great historical true story for any age!

The most remarkable thing about the book Caddie Woodlawn is that it is a true story! The real-live person named Caddie Woodlawn was 82 when the book was published by her grand-daughter in 1935. By writing down the stories told to her as a child, Carol Ryrie Brink captures her grandmother's life as a girl growing up on the Wisconsin frontier in the 1860's. Caddie Woodlawn is a tomboy and likes nothing better than to go on adventures with her brothers Tom and Warren. She comes from a large pioneer family of seven children. Her older sister Clara is always acting more lady-like than she, and her younger sister Hetty is always tattling on her. Caddie has a fierce independent streak, and we discover what life was like on the frontier as we accompany her to school, and on visits to the neighboring Indian village. The book reveals the often tense relations between Native Americans and the European settlers. Because of her friendship with Indian John, Caddie alone is able to restore peace to her settlement by taking action before the frightenend white settlers attack the Indians. By the book's end, Caddie's refined cousin Annabelle comes from Boston, and Caddie the tomboy learns that maybe a few lady-like activities such as quilting aren't so bad after all. Any teen today will look up to Caddie for her self-confidence and bravery, and see their own rites of passage reflected in Caddie's experiences.

E' un libro che ci viene dal Medioevo e ci testimonia una leggerezza di scrittura notevole. Ho letto questo libro perchè sono appassionata di medioevo ed amo scavare nel passato dell'umanità , poichè questo mi fa sentire tutt'uno con il passato il presente il futuro. Adoro la letteratura italiana e ne sono una profonda conoscitrice , non solo per letture personali , ma proprio per gli studi che svolgo da molti anni. L'elegia di Madonna Fiammetta è dedicata alle donne innamorate , straziate da passione e tradimento dell'amante . In questa opera Boccaccio inizia il tema che sarà uno dei filoni portanti del Decameron.Ciò che colpisce del libro è il sommesso parlare interiore del personnaggio e l'abilità narrativa di Boccaccio.