Six from the hundred stories told by the 7 women and 3 men who fled from the Black Death in Florence. With a bonus story, the most famous, at the end.
Decameron
The 101st story, buried in the start of the fourth day, about a father who turns hermit with his young son after his wife’s early death, and a derived fable told by La Fontaine.
The tenth story on the tenth day, Griselda suffered a harrowing life with her husband, with mock killings of their children and a feigned divorce before they’re reconciled.
A faithful wife is being pestered by another man. She sets him an impossible task, of creating an enchanted Spring garden in the January snow.
Cimon is a problem child until he sees Iphigenia. He reforms, but her parents refuse his proposal. When he abducts her as she is being taken to be married off, everything goes wrong.
Three brothers discover their unmarried sister’s secret lover. They take him to the country, kill him and bury his body. She exhumes him, and takes his head away to hide in a pot of basil.
A gruesome tale of a daughter’s lover killed by her father, and his heart cut out. Also of one of Hogarth’s few failed paintings.
A bizarre story of a ghost who repeatedly kills the ghost of the woman who spurned his love, and how it leads to a successful marriage. Illustrated by Botticelli.
Written by Giovanni Boccaccio by 1352 and revised in 1370-71, it consists of a hundred stories told by 7 women and 3 men who fled Florence during the Black Death. Some of those tales have been extensively painted.
A popular theme for paintings only after Keats’ poem was published shortly after his death in 1821. A gruesome love tragedy beloved of the Pre-Raphaelites.
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