Boccaccio's *Decameron* (1348–53) frames its 100 tales as the entertainment of how many Florentines, telling stories over how many days?
Seven women (Pampinea, Filomena, Neifile, Fiammetta, Elissa, Emilia, Lauretta) and three men (Panfilo, Filostrato, Dioneo) meet at Santa Maria Novella in summer 1348 and flee plague-stricken Florence for a country villa above Fiesole. Each day one of them is appointed 'king' or 'queen', proposes a theme, and the remaining nine each tell a tale on it. Ten × ten = 100 tales. The opening plague description is the most detailed contemporary eyewitness account of the 1348 Florentine outbreak.
Read the full story →Giovanni Boccaccio's *Decameron* (composed 1348–1353) frames its hundred tales as the entertainment of ten young Florentines — seven women, three men — who flee plague-stricken Florence for a country villa and tell each other ten stories a day for ten days. The frame story is the most substantial direct literary witness to the 1348 Florentine plague.
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