The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio

The Decameron is written as framed narrative which is a literary compositional technique that allows various different stories to be related within a previously introduced main story. The Decameron tells a story of ten young Florentines who have fled from the Black Plague to reside in Naples. The one hundred allegorical stories are shared through the narrative voices of these young people as they spend their nights regaling the company with tales from the erotic, sensual, and bawdy to the intellectual, philosophical or tragic. The narrative's fundamental theme is of struggle between life and death in the face of the Black Plague and the various ways life continues in spite of traditional moral attitudes and beliefs.