The Most Interior Text of the 1300s

And you’ve never heard of it…

Decameron—that’s a long book. I powered through it this past summer. I was like a self-propelled lawn mower, had to be. I had a lot of big books on my to-do list. Each one of ’em was allotted two weeks and no more.

I “had a good experience” with Giovanni Boccaccio’s , though I did not love it. I only liked the stuff where Boccaccio speaks in his own voice. That is, I liked the frame narrative and the interruptions. He does that thing medieval writers do: he plays