The Decameron - Easton Press Collector's Edition Genuine Leather Bound Book | Classic Literature, Luxury Gift for Book Lovers, Home Library Display

Watching medievalists fight is not a pretty sight, even though it is a funny oneTo prompt the brawl, ask a bit too loudly who was the first great national poet.Watch as Green King Abbot Ale and Moretti bottles are smashed, fail to break like in the movies and a bunch of guys in tweed look around for something bigger than a bar napkin to stop the blood flow. Teaching assistants will enter with towels, bandages, and the hope their mentor lasts long enough for a good letter of recommendation.Once the prof's are stabilized the cases for England and Italy will be phrased.Britain gets Chaucer whose wit, use of irony in irony, is remarkably fresh even today. There is a humanity found in his characters—the most vile prejudice in the work comes from a nun, who given her airs, reveals the heart of darkness in us all.Italy gets Dante, a writer who appears to have known more even than Borges, who created a new poetic form, and sustained intellect and near perfection in three volumes. His effort would be the equivalent of walking into a dojo and fighting every master but downing each in the sequence for mastering each step of the many katas.Nobody is going to mention Boccaccio and nobody is going to fight for the poet who wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.Sir G’s poet made the mistake in writing in the wrong dialect.Boccaccio wrote the first book made up entirely of short stories. He pulled together snippets from earlier stories and his efforts were pillaged by later writers (Shakespeare, chief among them).Skillful, occasionally elegant, hilarious, engaging, and with a very high ratio of great to so-so stories, Boccaccio might be viewed as we do Stephen King, a masterful artist who is grotesquely undervalued.Great story tellers of their times often fade more completely than do old soldiers.