The Decameron

By: Giovanni Boccaccio

Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale, Gunnar Cauthery, Alison Pettitt, Daisy Badger, Carly Bawden, Lucy Briggs-Owen, full cast

Length: 28 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2008 Oxford University Press (Translation) (P)2017 Naxos AudioBooks

Loverly

The Decameron is a bit like Metamorphosis. A very large collection of short punchy stories. The stories here are just that. No philosophy or metaphors, no language experiments. Just great fun. The cast and performances are splendid.

Wonderful translation and presentation

That is it. A very modern and approachable translation, and the readers are all superb.

Wonderful narrative!

This was such a great listen! The stories were fanciful, there was lots of humor, and it was nice that you could hear a few short stories and then come back to the book and not miss anything really. Lots of satire, commentary on society, and philosophy woven into each entertaining story grouping. I loved it!

Clearly a classic

The Decameron is bonkers. I've always heard of it, but never had the patience to sit and read it. Listening to it makes you feel like you are one of the 10 Florentine youths escaping the plague. And just like they react to some stories with disgust, boredom, or irritation, you will too. Some of the stories are truly gross for any number of reasons, and a lot of the witty repartee doesn't translate well. Still, many of the stories are truly entertaining and I'm happy I listened.

My favorite part though is that Boccaccio breaks the fourth wall. On one of the days, he just starts justifying his high regard for women and entertaining them. And he spends like 15 minutes at the end preemptively defending how crude the book was. They were some of the funniest parts of the book I thought.

The cast is solid, and I appreciated the change in narrators. The best is the guy who played Dioneo was the best. He's the character who tells the creepiest (perviest) stories. If this was a movie, the guy would be chewing the scenery. I'm not sure what the audiobook equivalent is, but I loved it.

A delightful listen!

Who would have thought that a book written in 1350 could be so much fun? The cast (British) do a wonderful job here and the stories are very funny. It gives a great feeling for life in the Renaissance. I highly recommend this recording.

Three's Company meets Medieval Times

So glad I listened to this full-cast version. The vocal performers brought the stories to life. If you like Chaucer, you'll like Boccaccio. This cycle of short stories may be crude at times but it's never boring.

Great Stories from Ages Ago

What can one say? This is a classic work, and yet one that is bawdy and timeless and of enduring value - all at the same time.

It is well performed, extremely so.

I’m not sure I gave each story its due. There are so many, and my patience was not as committed as perhaps it should have been. Plus, some stories are better than others, even much better. And, after one encounters the same plot twist more than once, surely one should be forgiven for wanting to get on to the next.

My theory is that if you can listen carefully, go deep, and appreciate many, you’ve done very well. It’s very worthwhile.

This book doesn’t live on forever for no reason.

Literature and Performance Living Happily Together

A charming set of 100 stories that seem to beg for a performance such as is given here. I think Boccaccio would have absolutely loved the treatment given here! Read 'em and Smile!

Romance, Tragedy, Comedy, Tales Eloquently Told

Having read Chaucer early on, and having just finished Apuleius's The Golden Ass, I was charmed finding some of the same elements, scenarios, and characters preserved here in distinctive detail; this work is a wellspring of sophisticated romance, and as the party travels, regailing each other with tales that end in various ways, baudy farces, passionate love, gratified in some cases, perloined in others, schemes and plots devised and documented with entertaining cunning, great and noble tragedies that give Shakespeare a run for his money. I'm not fluent enough to have read the original Florentine, but the vocabulary used here is ornate, but still timeless enough to be compelling; it's not a surprise, given his liturgical education that some phraseology used would be biblical in nature, but refreshingly feminist notions and concepts are expressed, perhaps in our study and enjoyment of a work like this, we can find a sort of equalism, and in these troubling times, much solace and wisdom can be found in these volumes. The Naxos Team did a fantastic job bringing this rich work to life in the way that they have, music, and the vibrant, theatrically trained narrators breathe youthful, soulful emotion into their roles they read, and more often than not, they achieve their transport to tell the tales as best and honestly as they could be told. It's no challenge to put yourself in the shoes of the protagonists of these tales, and their plight is felt more closely, given the candid nature of the recitations that are given. In the same way that Chaucer did, it is easy to imagine the tales told could go one way or the other, and given no assurance that one tale will lead to tragic ends or not, it's easier to witness these stories told in a mood of suspense, rather than a journey towards the inevitable as so many tales tend to be, with a happy ever after ending being assured to placate the reader. Rather, the tales that haunt are those where requited love leads to tragic ends. Though the tone of some of these stories may seem avuncular in some ways, the well intentioned heart of the author and his aims toward mercy and agency in spite of orthodoxy shine through, and it is fascinating to see such tales told from a world that has changed so much in some ways, and so little in others. Endlessly worth your time and rapt attention, the Decameron demands it on the most obliging and humble terms. I'm grateful that these stories were preserved in such cosmopolitan and articulate stories, given the opportunity to explore this world preserved for you, I hope that you may find them in the same such.

Decameron is an amazing work!

It begins with a description of the horrors of the plague in Florence and then embarks on an ambitious and rewarding series of stories that entertain, uplift, amuse and sometimes horrify the reader. Some are plain funny and some are suspenseful. Also gives a look into the lives of people in late Middle Ages/ early Renaissance.