Decameron: "A Plain Most Fair and Delectable"

Illustration from Le Décameron, published  in 1432, in a Flemish edition.

Many thanks to the 20 participants in our group's first-ever virtual book discussion. It was necessitated by the coronavirus outbreak, and we held it via Zoom video conferencing last Tuesday.  In keeping with the zeitgeist, the spirit of this terrifying time, the subject of our discussion was Boccaccio's Decameron.  

The Decameron was written in the mid-14th century, and its introduction gives Boccaccio's reportage on an outbreak of bubonic plague in his home city of Florence in the year 1348. Ten different narrators, quarantined in a country villa, recount ten stories a day for ten days.

I suppose the Decameron is best known for its bawdy tales.  One we looked at, the tale of Nathan and Mitridanes from Day 10, in contrast is a deeply philosophical reflection on how and why the kindest souls among us strive to the nth degree to be generous to others.

Participants wondered why Boccaccio chose to narrate gory details of suffering and death. In fact, he explains his motive at the very beginning of his introduction:

This horrid beginning will be to you even such as to wayfarers is a steep and rugged mountain, beyond which stretches a plain most fair and delectable, which the toil of the ascent and descent does but serve to render more agreeable to them; for as the last degree of joy brings with it sorrow, so misery has ever its sequel of happiness.