Boccaccio's best work is decameron. 1348, a terrible plague occurred in Florence, Italy (the plague referred to in this book is the plague epidemic in Europe in the forties and fifties of 14, from which the word Black Death came). Every day, even every hour, a large number of bodies are transported outside the city. From March to July, more than 654.38 million people died of illness. The beautiful and prosperous city of Florence in the past has become a place full of cemeteries and bones, which is terrible. This incident had a profound influence on Boccaccio, a great Italian writer at that time. In order to write down this human disaster, he took this plague as the background, which lasted for five years, and wrote the most famous collection of Italian short stories at that time, decameron. At that time, decameron was called "Renqu", which was a literary work as famous as Dante's Divine Comedy, and was also called the companion of Divine Comedy. Why is this novel called decameron? It turned out that one morning during the plague in Florence, seven beautiful and well-educated young women met three handsome and enthusiastic young people in the church. Three of the seven young ladies are their lovers and the others are their relatives. They are determined to leave Florence with their servants, a terrible city that is dying. The two met and two days later went to a villa on a mountain in the suburbs to escape the plague. The environment here is quiet, the scenery is pleasant, surrounded by green trees, winding cloisters, exquisite murals, clear springs, pleasant flowers and plants, and the wine cellar is full of mellow wine. These 10 young people either sing and play the piano or dance and walk every day. In the hot summer, they sat in the shade of green grass, and everyone agreed to tell an excellent and beautiful story every day and spend the most difficult time of the day happily. They told 65,438+00 days, a total of 65,438+000 stories. These stories were collected into an anthology called decameron.
Boccaccio believes that the story in decameron is well-founded. The works describe and praise secular life, praise love as a noble source of wisdom, praise the value of free love, and affirm people's intelligence and wisdom. The works also reveal the cruelty of feudal emperors, the evils of society, the hypocrisy of priests and nuns, and so on. Boccaccio grew up in Florence. He yearned for democracy and freedom since he was a child and expressed dissatisfaction with the dark rule of the church. When I grew up, I took part in political activities many times and opposed feudal autocracy. Decameron is a powerful weapon against feudalism and the church. After decameron was written, Boccaccio was persecuted and attacked by feudal forces, and was often cursed and threatened by people sent by the church. He was so angry that he even wanted to burn all his books, including decameron. Not bad, his good friend? Petrarch, a famous Italian democratic poet, tried his best to convince him that decameron has survived to this day.