#decameron

[instructions-are-included]

Is there a reason why this show has gotten ZERO promotions, press, or hype?

The Decameron is a series about a group of nobles and their staff who have been invited to isolate from the bubonic plague with a distant cousin/acquaintance in the Italian countryside.

Except he isn’t there.

Everyone who arrives has some level of sneaky lie going on, everyone is lusting after the hot doctor, Buster Bluth is head of household, Erin Quinn from Derry girls is the handmaiden for Shosh from Girls, and everyone is moments away from being exposed as a fraud or dying, by plague or otherwise.

10% of the time, everything goes entertainingly tits up in ways you could see coming, and the other 90% is a surprise that just feels… right.

It was so consistently just… good? That I looked up yo see if it was based on a book and it is! FROM 1353 ITALY. It predates Shakespeare, but the adaptation to a limited series manages to keep the wit and clever sense of humor while having people speak in regular cadence, not iambic pentameter.

The story has been modernized in some ways, while still staying true to the historical setting - there’s queer people! And class war! And a killer soundtrack! But also dowries! And an inquisition!

If you think Bridgerton is fun but a bit too romancey, this show is probably for you. I’m really surprised it’s been so… unmentioned. It’s really smart and is kind of the Bubonic Plague edition of White Lotus.

[eirene]

Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1867 William Holman Hunt

[ulgapodatkowa]

dear tumblr what if I told you that the decameron on netflix is a show about begging to be loved, finding out that you can't force the love in the form you want but also that love, in some other form, always finds a way to you. that to love and to be loved is human. what then.

[garlandedspirits]

Isabella and the Pot of Basil

William Holman Hunt, 1868 // Arthur Trevethin Nowell, 1904 // John William Waterhouse, 1907 // George Henry Grenville Manton, 1919

[cuties-in-codices]

girolamo dies of grief as he lies next to salvestra, the love of his life, and her husband

illustration for giovanni boccaccio's "decameron" (fourth day, eighth tale), france, c. 1430-55

source: Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Ms-5070 réserve, fol. 170v

[machiavellli]

Boccaccio: “I want to give my work a university type of layout, I’ll have the text in two columns, because this is a serious text and I want to send the message across to people. those are not just silly stories.”

Netflix: some wet abs should do the job lol

[fassophy]

tanya reynolds in the decameron

[italian-lit-tournament]

The participating authors for the Italian Lit(erature) Tournament: the general list + a google form to add other proposals

Podesti Francesco - Torquato Tasso reading Jerusalem Delivered to the Estensi court

The start of the Italian Lit(erature) Tournament (first edition) is getting closer, but first I want to post the general list of the authors partecipants.

The principal issue is that every literary canon is constantly changing, with more critical studies over the years. I've thought about it, read and searched, and the solution I found has two parts:

I will take the principal authors from this list, which in turn is based from the studies of Gianfranco Contini and Asor Rosa. The list is too long and many names are only chronicles and essayists, so I'll chose the principal ones, trying to balance between north/south Italy and male/female authors (taking into account that many authors that we study are men). As you will see below under the cut, the list is already pretty long, doing some math the challenge will be 2/3 months long.

Still, I recognise that this isn't 100% unbiased and fair, so I opened a free and quick google form when you can add a maximum of two authors that you don't see in the list. This considerable limit is to avoid having too many names - if in some answers I see more than 2 names, I'll take into account only the first 2 listed.

IMPORTANT! 👇

After much thoughts, I also chose to don't include living authors or authors death only recently (before January 2023). The reason is simply to avoid potential issues in the community, like bashing between fandom or admirers of some specific author, or going too far like offending some people near the author still alive or recently deceased. Maybe if this tournament will end well, a second edition could be made next year and maybe with the addition of living authors! (I'm already thinking to do an italian or european cinema tournament in the future but this is still in the draft).

Under the cut, you will find the list of the authors already part of the challenge, name-surname with the surname in alphabetical order. If you don't see a name that you want to see, use the form to add it!

edit: I added the ones from the surbey so far, all in italics. There are names that have been sent but already on the list.

Dante Alighieri

Sibilla Aleramo

Vittorio Alfieri

Cecco Angiolieri

Pietro Aretino

Ludovico Ariosto

Matteo Bandello

Anna Banti

Giambattista Basile

Giorgio Bassani

Cesare Beccaria

Maria Bellonci

Pietro Bembo

Matteo Maria Boiardo

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giordano Bruno

Dino Buzzati

Italo Calvino

Andrea Camilleri

Giosuè Carducci

Guido Cavalcanti

Carlo Collodi

Vittoria Colonna

Gabriele D'Annunzio

Giacomo da Lentini

Caterina da Siena

Alba de Céspedes

Cielo (Ciullo) d'Alcamo

Edoardo De Filippo

Federico de Roberto

Grazia Deledda

Umberto Eco

Beppe Fenoglio

Marsilio Ficino

Dario Fo

Ugo Foscolo

Veronica Franco

Carlo Emilio Gadda

Natalia Ginzburg

Carlo Goldoni

Antonio Gramsci

Francesco Guicciardini

Tommaso Landolfi

Giacomo Leopardi

Carlo Levi

Primo Levi

Carla Lonzi

Niccolò Machiavelli

Alessandro Manzoni

Giovanbattista Marino

Giovanni Meli

Pietro Metastasio

Eugenio Montale

Elsa Morante

Alberto Moravia

Anna Maria Ortese

Giuseppe Parini

Goffredo Parise

Giovanni Pascoli

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Cesare Pavese

Francesco Petrarca

Luigi Pirandello

Angelo Poliziano

Luigi Pulci

Salvator Quasimodo

Gianni Rodari

Lalla Romano

Amelia Rosselli

Umberto Saba

Emilio Salgari

Jacopo Sannazaro

Goliarda Sapienza

Leonardo Sciascia

Matilde Serao

Gaspara Stampa

Mario Rigoni Stern

Italo Svevo

Antonio Tabucchi

Torquato Tasso

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Pier Vittorio Tondelli

Giovanni Verga

Giambattista Vico

Renata Viganò

Elio Vittorini

Giuseppe Ungaretti

[cluzi]

Some fellow italians got mad because someone took free inspiration from one of the most important works of the country's literary history, but my fellow italians can be so fucking boring and honestly pretty clueless with finding the right things to be mad about, so. Look at the widely political embarassement our government keeps carrying on, especially during the latest days. Bohoo but someone took our Decameron and didn't respect the original stories? DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER WHAT THE ORIGINAL STORIES ARE, GIANCLAUDIO??? STFU.

I know I should write this in italian but I don't want to.

Italians complain about every fucking useless thing God gave us. I would have understood the complaining a little, if the series wasn't pretty fucking brilliant and light and dumb in the most hilarious, histerical way. Fucking detach from this superiority we keep ridicule ourselves with, Boccaccio would have LOVED this Decameron. He would've also fucking fallen in love with Panfilo, AS I DID. LOOK, HE'S THE LITERAL PRINCE CHARMING:

I definitely didn't expect for it to take a deep turning point even if it makes sense, if you think about it, but I was so busy laughing at their utter inability to function and it took me a little by surprise. Definitely didn't expect to feel this sad at Panfilo and Neifile's story, but I LOVED the way these characters are written. All of them, actually. The only thing I would have changed is the number of episodes. WHY WOULDN'T YOU DO TEN EPISODES WITH A TITLE LIKE THAT????

I would have loved to see more!

[geekcavepodcast]

The Decameron Trailer

Netflix's The Decameron is inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio's novel, in which a group of nobles and their servants decide to shelter together in a grand villa outside of Florence and tell each other stories to escape the Black Death. In the Netflix series, as time goes on the social rules begin to wear thin and the party turns into chaos.

The Decameron hails from creator and showrunner Kathleen Jordan. The series stars Tony Hale, Zosia Mamet, Saoirse Monica-Jackson, Tanya Reynolds, Jessica Plummer, Amar Chadha-Patel, Leila Farzad, Lou Gala, Karan Gill, and Douggie McMeekin.

The Decameron hits Netflix on July 25, 2024.

[aphrmoosun]

The Decameron

[mini-serie] (2024)

[thesobsister]

Rockwell Kent, illustration for The Decameron (1949)

[illustratus]

Monica Vitti in On My Way to the Crusades, I Met a Girl Who... (La cintura di castità)

[vibin-in-the-void]

the end of ep6 inspired me

[i-like-rocks22]

Fuck yes to the Decameron for showing the ladies with hairy armpits.

[cuties-in-codices]

father gianni attaches a tail to gemmata as he attempts to transform her into a mare

illustration for a manuscript of giovanni boccaccio's "decameron" (ninth day, tenth tale), france, c. 1430-55

source: Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Ms-5070 réserve, fol. 347v