The Black Death is killing everyone in Florence. Seven young women and three young men leave the town to seek refuge in the Tuscan countryside. Every night, to pass the time, everyone shares a tale. With one day devoted to chores and the holy day when no one does anything, they will spend ten days telling these tales, totalling a hundred short tales. Most days, there is a theme: misadventures that end happily, stories about lovers whose relationship ends in disaster, and stories about wives playing tricks on their husbands. The stories have a similar feel to the Arabian Nights, but they are much more funny, often cheeky, and satirically describe religion and priests and mock lust and ambition of both men and women. These tales inspired Shakespeare, Moli\u00e8re, Chaucer and many others. This was a very pleasant reading that made me laugh more than once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He began by delivering a long speech in which he showed her how powerful an enemy the devil was to the Lord God, and followed this up by impressing upon her that of all the ways of serving God, the one that He most appreciated consisted in putting the devil back in Hell, to which the Almighty had consigned him in the first place. The girl asked him how this was done, and Rustico replied: \u2018You will soon find out, but just do whatever you see me doing for the present.\u2019 And so saying, he began to divest himself of the few clothes he was wearing, leaving himself completely naked. The girl followed his example, and he sank to his knees as though he were about to pray, getting her to kneel directly opposite. In this posture, the girl\u2019s beauty was displayed to Rustico in all its glory, and his longings blazed more fiercely than ever, bringing about the resurrection of the flesh. Alibech stared at this in amazement, and said: \u2018Rustico, what is that thing I see sticking out in front of you, which I do not possess?\u2019 \u2018Oh, my daughter,\u2019 said Rustico, \u2018this is the devil I was telling you about. Do you see what he\u2019s doing? He\u2019s hurting me so much that I can hardly endure it.\u2019 \u2018Oh, praise be to God,\u2019 said the girl, \u2018I can see that I am better off than you are, for I have no such devil to contend with.\u2019 \u2018You\u2019re right there,\u2019 said Rustico. \u2018But you have something else instead, that I haven\u2019t.\u2019 \u2018Oh?\u2019 said Alibech. \u2018And what\u2019s that?\u2019 \u2018You have Hell,\u2019 said Rustico. \u2018And I honestly believe that God has sent you here for the salvation of my soul, because if this devil continues to plague the life out of me, and if you are prepared to take sufficient pity upon me to let me put him back into Hell, you will be giving me marvellous relief, as well as rendering incalculable service and pleasure to God, which is what you say you came here for in the first place.\u2019 \u2018Oh, Father,\u2019 replied the girl in all innocence, \u2018if I really do have a Hell, let\u2019s do as you suggest just as soon as you are ready.\u2019 \u2018God bless you, my daughter,\u2019 said Rustico. \u2018Let us go and put him back, and then perhaps he\u2019ll leave me alone.\u2019 At which point he conveyed the girl to one of their beds, where he instructed her in the art of incarcerating that accursed fiend. Never having put a single devil into Hell before, the girl found the first experience a little painful, and she said to Rustico: \u2018This devil must certainly be a bad lot, Father, and a true enemy of God, for as well as plaguing mankind, he even hurts Hell when he\u2019s driven back inside it.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Original title : Decamerone Read and listened to as an audiobook<\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Black Death is killing everyone in Florence. Seven young women and three young men leave the town to seek refuge in the Tuscan countryside. Every night, to pass the time, everyone shares a tale. With one day devoted to chores and the holy day when no one does anything, they will spend ten days […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[255],"tags":[47,19,21],"class_list":["post-15947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2024","tag-humour","tag-love","tag-sex"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/flo-p-26s3FCtvQ7s-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15947"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16047,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15947\/revisions\/16047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Translated from vernacular Florentine language<\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n