Abstract

CAVALLETTI, Giuditta. Classic Resonances in Decameron’s Plague Tale. Acta poét [online]. 2024, vol.45, n.1, pp.61-85.  Epub May 06, 2024. ISSN 2448-735X.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.ap.2024.1/00s231xo074.

This text proposes a reading of the plague narrated in the Decameron that examines the presence of possible stratifications or resonances of ancient and medieval sources that can be identified in the story that Giovanni Boccaccio offers at the beginning of this work when he narrates the origin and consequences of the plague that broke out in 1348, terrible success that constituted the background and mark of history. In the following pages we will examine the debt that Boccaccio owes to the Paolo Diacono’s Historia Longobardorum considered the main source from which the Florentine author drew to give voice and body to the Florentine plague of the fourteenth century, and others details that are present in the story and which seem to recall other narratives.

Keywords : Boccaccio; Decameron; Plague; Reception; Classics.