Four hilarious and provocative stories from Boccaccio's Decameron, featuring cuckolded husbands, cross-dressing wives and very bad priests.
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.
My Rating: 3/5
This book is the first book in the Little Black Classics collection and contains four short stories taken from Giovanni Boccaccio's book The Decameron.
The first short story was entitled Andreuccio's da Perugia's Neapolitan Adventures follows a naive man named Andreuccio and his misfortunes in Naples where he gets scammed twice but recovers.
The second story is entitled Ricciardo da Chinzica Loses His Wife which follows a judge called Ricciardo whose wife leaves him when he doesn't pay her enough attention. Considering this book was written in the 14th century, I thought this story was rather modern.
The third story is entitled Mrs Rosie and the Priest and this is also the shortest story in the collection. This story follows a priest who acts nothing like how we expect a priest to act. I found this story rather crude and not at all what I had been expecting from a book from that time period.
The last story was entitled Patient Griselda and this story was one of the longer ones. This was a weird story about an old man who tests his much younger wife's patience in the most cruel and twisted ways.
I really enjoyed reading these short stories although not enough to pick up the entire book. It was enough to get a glimpse at 14th century Italian literature and life.
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