Boccaccio's Decameron

Timeline

1. 1348Florence · FlorenceAfter the Black Death devastated Florence, Boccaccio states directly in the introduction the city's deaths, collapse of decorum, and social panic, and frames the disaster experience as a literary structure: seven women and three men leaving the city to shelter in a villa near Fiesole, telling stories each day.
2. 1348–1353Florence · FlorenceBoccaccio continued writing and revising the hundred stories after 1348, covering street wit, love, satire, and religious criticism, written in Florentine dialect prose; a definitive text circulated around 1353, becoming a classic of Italian national literature.
3. 1350–1400Italy · ItalyManuscripts of the Decameron circulated in Italy and French courts; its frame narrative structure and worldly story patterns influenced works such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and it became one of the sources of the later European short story and novel tradition.