decameron

And the Decameron is the 1001 Nights, rewritten in renaissance Italian.

Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron about people getting out of Florence because of the plague in about 1353.

For example, The Decameron and Canterbury Tales are pretty impressive and were written before the printing press.

See for example Decameron - upper class adults telling stories (many of them folktales) to each other for entertainment.

I'm a huge fan of the Decameron but I wasn't aware of the breadth of Boccaccio's work.

Have you ever considered the 100 Decameron stories, or the 24 Canterbury tales?

Take note of bocaccios decameron, which is set in the fleeing of the wealthy class to an out of the way farm during a plague.

Anyone who has read Boccaccio's Decameron or even parts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, such as the Miller's Tale, is purged of any imagined celibate medieval period.

Some stories appear in both Decameron and Arabian Nights.

I've never read the Decameron - can you suggest a good English translation?

I can't avoid mentioned Boccaccio's Decameron here.

It is based on many older folk tales of China (including many that weren't originally Chinese) and connects them with a framing story, a bit like Decameron or One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights).

The stories of Chaucer (Canterbury Tales), Dante (Inferno, etc.), and Boccaccio (Decameron) exhibit characters with a rich internal life.

On a similar theme, try A Journal of the Plague Year, The Decameron, and Plague Ship.

With others I've read (Canterbury Tales, Decameron, 1001 Nights) it was mainly the wow-this-is-pretty-different factor keeping me reading.