The Decameron

This weighty but attractively designed volume, whose publication coincides with the celebrations of the seventh centenary of Giovanni Boccaccio's birth, presents the first new translation of his Decameron by an American in nearly 40 years. (Interestingly, no fewer than four such have appeared in the UK during the same period.) A distinguished early modernist, Rebhorn (Univ. of Texas, Austin) offers a lively and readable translation, which responds deftly to the many subtle variations of tone in the original and steers safely between the twin perils of unduly self-conscious aestheticism and overly programmatic colloquialism. He also provides a lengthy and informative introduction to the Decameron itself, its place in Boccaccio's career, and its reception history, along with a useful guide to such significant features of the work's framing device as the identities of its ten storytellers, the chronological and ritual structuring of the ten days into which their sojourn is divided, and the basics of polite forms of address in Trecento Italian society. Endnotes, striking a skillful balance between the differing needs of students and general readers, round out this appealing version of a still often undervalued masterpiece. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. S. Botterill University of California, Berkeley

In time for Giovanni Boccaccio's 700th birthday, Wayne A. Rebhorn, professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and translator of The Prince and Other Writings by Machiavelli, has provided a strikingly modern translation of Boccaccio's medieval Italian classic. Fleeing Florence and the plague of 1348, 10 young men and women retreat to a country estate, "surrounded by meadows and marvelous gardens," where they spend their days in leisure while the Black Death ravages the city. To fill their time, and affirm life in the face of death, they tell stories: on each of 10 days, every character spins a tale on a theme. Thus, there are 100 stories in total, which range in tone from tragic to triumphant and from pious to bawdy, and which serve as monuments to the rich medieval life and society that the plague was to fundamentally alter. Rebhorn's translation is eminently readable and devoid of the stilted, antiquated speech associated with the classics. Indeed, at times the translator's rendering of Boccaccio's Italian into contemporary idiomatic American English feels jarring: "my cheesy-weesy, sweet honeybun of a wife." But on the whole, his translation's accessibility allows for the timeless humanity of the work to shine through. The Decameron affords a fascinating view into the lost world of late-medieval Italy, and the variety and volume of tales offers us a refuge and relief from the tragedies that haunt our own world. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A much-translated tale of plagues, priestly malfeasance, courtly love and the Seven Deadly Sins finds a satisfying new version in English. The Decameron, as its Greek-derived name suggests, is a cycle of stories told over a period of 10 days by Florentines fleeing their city for the countryside in order to escape the devastating Black Death of 1348. Perched at the very point of transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the author of those stories, Giovanni Boccaccio, was a narrative innovator: As translator Rebhorn notes in his long, circumstantial introduction, medieval readers were fond of grab bags of stories, but "there is no precedent in Italian literature for Boccaccio's use of a frame narrative to unify his collection." Boccaccio borrowed liberally from previously published anthologies, but as Rebhorn also shows, he added plenty of new twists and arranged his material to form a thematic arc: Day 1, for instance, centers on characters who got out of trouble thanks to their native wit, while Day 4 centers on the character flaws that keep people from getting what they want. What so many of his characters want, it happens, are things frowned on in polite society, as his ribald tale of the poor cuckolded owner of a conveniently large barrel so richly shows. Rebhorn's translation of Boccaccio's sprawling narrative, accompanied by informative endnotes, is sometimes marked by odd shifts in levels of diction, often within the same sentence ("That's when I felt the guy was going too far...and it seemed to me that I should tell you about it so that you could see how he rewards you for that unwavering fidelity of yours"); it is otherwise clear and idiomatic, however, and Rebhorn capably represents Boccaccio's humor and sharp intelligence. A masterpiece that well merits this fresh, engaging translation, which marks its author's 700th birthday.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.