The Decameron
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Narrated by:
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Frederick Davidson
About this listen
This collection of tales is set in 1348, the year of the Black Death. Florence is a dying, corrupt city, described plainly in all of its horrors. Seven ladies and three gentlemen meet in a church and decide to escape from the charnel house of reality by staying in the hills of Fiesole; there they pass the time telling stories for 10 days.
They set up a working arrangement whereby each would be king or queen for a day; each day the ruler commanded a story be told following certain stipulations. Their existence is that of the enchanted medieval dreamworld: a paradise of flowers, ever-flowing fountains, shade trees, soft breezes, where all luxuries of food and drink abound. Virtue reigns along with medieval gentilesse in its finest sense.
The stories they weave, however, differ from their own idyllic sojourn. They tell tales about ordinary people, tales marked by intense realism in a world where dreams and enchanted gardens have little place. Boccaccio draws on the actual geography of the region to bring the stories alive; different social classes are portrayed with their own language and clothing. Within the stories told by his 10 refugees from Florence, the satire often bites deep, Boccaccio's comic mood embracing evil and holiness alike with sympathy and tolerance. Like Chaucer, he is indulgent, exposing moral and social corruption but leaving guilty characters to condemn themselves. In its frank, open-minded treatment of flesh as flesh, its use of paradox, cynicism, and realistic handling of character, this work transcends the medieval period and, going beyond the Renaissance, takes its place as universal art.
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- Unabridged
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Plagued by spiritual anguish, devout everyman Christian fears his fate in the sinful City of Destruction. He’s told that only by embarking for the Celestial City can he achieve personal salvation. After his wife and children refuse to join him, he sets forth alone into the unknown. Mocked for his faith, tempted at every turn, and heartened by fellow pilgrims, Christian’s winding journey toward grace unfolds. But as he reaches Mount Zion, his family chooses to follow the same treacherous path, hoping to join Christian in the shining light.
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Best version I have heard
- By Julie Rae Loving on 11-09-19
By: John Bunyan
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King Lear
- By: William Shakespeare
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- Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
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I am a man more sinned against than sinning.
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A true classic
- By Stanley Hauer on 07-09-08
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Oroonoko
- By: Aphra Behn
- Narrated by: Clare Wille
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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A vivid love story and adventure tale, Oroonoko is a heroic slave narrative about a royal prince and his fight for freedom. The eponymous hero, Oroonoko, deemed royalty in one world and slave in another, is torn from his noble status and betrayed into slavery in Surinam, where he is reduced to chains, fetters, and shackles. But his high spirit and admirable character will not be suppressed.
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Outstanding Narration, Story Less So
- By Carsley on 07-14-18
By: Aphra Behn
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Joseph Andrews
- The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams
- By: Henry Fielding
- Narrated by: Rufus Sewell
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
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Riotous, sexy and groundbreaking, Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews: The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, published in 1742, was one of the first English novels. Fielding was melding and parodying the two major forces battling for control of the fiction market at the time - the mock heroic, neoclassical tradition as practiced by Pope and Swift and the popular and populist fiction of the new novelists such as Defoe and Richardson.
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A perfect reader for Henry Fielding
- By TiffanyD on 07-27-17
By: Henry Fielding
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Four Arthurian Romances
- By: Chrétien de Troyes
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
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The Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes form the wellspring of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Stories of knightly valour in the Welsh Marches had existed before the 12th century, but it was the magnificent poetry and imagination of Chrétien, the 12th century French poet and trouvère, which brought alive the great characters of Arthur, his wife Guinevere, Lancelot and others.
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Ukemi Audio: Doing the Lord’s Work
- By John on 09-29-17
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The Arabian Nights
- By: Andrew Lang - translator
- Narrated by: Suehyla El Attar
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Scheherazade, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Scheherazade always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever.
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Not unabridged Burton--this is Lang
- By Richard and Diana Chicago on 06-25-12
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Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady, Volume 1
- By: Samuel Richardson
- Narrated by: Samuel West, Lucy Scott, Roger May, and others
- Length: 33 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr. Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr. Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma. Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of narrative experimentation into a gripping morality tale of good versus evil.
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Gripping Novel & Performance
- By Harold on 07-29-18
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The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
- By: Benvenuto Cellini
- Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Master Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and writer Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for his magnificent autobiography. In this work, which was actually begun in 1558 but not published until 1730, Cellini beautifully chronicles his flamboyant times. He tells of his adventures in Italy and France, and his relations with popes, kings, and fellow artists.
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The problem is with Cellini himself.
- By Leslie Ross on 06-07-10
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The Decameron
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The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.
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Composed in the early 1350s, in the wake of the Black Death, The Decameron comprises 100 short stories from all over the world, reset by Boccaccio among the flourishing merchant classes of Renaissance Italy. Their universal themes—love, sex, religion, fate, morality—resonate with us to this day, and their witty, satirical, bawdy voice sounds utterly modern. Monty Python star and medieval historian Terry Jones presents ten BBC Radio dramatisations of tales from Giovanni Boccaccio's humane and comic masterpiece
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Decameron
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Firenze, 1348. La peste nera infuria, e un gruppo di giovani sta cercando di fuggire da essa. Alla ricerca di un rifugio sicuro, si ritrovano in campagna. Nell'arco di dieci giorni, per passare il tempo, si raccontano un centinaio di storie fantastiche, tristi ed elaborate. Un ricco arazzo di tragedia e commedia, di farsa e di erotismo, "Il Decameron" è un capolavoro della prosa italiana. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) è stato uno studioso, uno scrittore e un poeta italiano.
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Decameron [Russian Edition]
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Radiokompozicija po motivam sobranija novell "Dekameron" ital'janskogo pisatelja Dzhovanni Bokkachcho, odnoj iz samyh znamenityh knig rannego ital'janskogo Renessansa, napisannoj priblizitel'no v 1352-1354 gody. Bol'shinstvo novell jetoj knigi posvjashheno teme ljubvi, nachinaja ot ejo jeroticheskogo i zakanchivaja tragicheskim aspektami. Struktura sochinenija dvojaka - ispol'zuetsja »ramochnaja kompozicija« so vstavnymi novellami.
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Decameron (Selecciones) [Decameron, Selections]
- By: Giovanni Boccaccio
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Un grupo de nobles italianos tienen que refugiarse la peste negra en una casa para pasar el rato, se cuentan el uno al otro historias. La serie de cien cuentos que se narran son divertidos por que se mofan de todas las que se supone sean buenas costumbres.
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Satisfactorio
- By Carlos Escobar on 09-19-23
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Selections from The Decameron
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Here are 16 tales from one of the great works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled for a while the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio’s answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
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Fun, fun, fun
- By Amazon Customer on 08-15-18
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The Decameron
- By: Giovanni Boccaccio
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- Length: 28 hrs and 5 mins
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The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.
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Not Up to the Usual Naxos Standard
- By John on 11-15-17
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Decameron
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Composed in the early 1350s, in the wake of the Black Death, The Decameron comprises 100 short stories from all over the world, reset by Boccaccio among the flourishing merchant classes of Renaissance Italy. Their universal themes—love, sex, religion, fate, morality—resonate with us to this day, and their witty, satirical, bawdy voice sounds utterly modern. Monty Python star and medieval historian Terry Jones presents ten BBC Radio dramatisations of tales from Giovanni Boccaccio's humane and comic masterpiece
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Decameron [Russian Edition]
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Radiokompozicija po motivam sobranija novell "Dekameron" ital'janskogo pisatelja Dzhovanni Bokkachcho, odnoj iz samyh znamenityh knig rannego ital'janskogo Renessansa, napisannoj priblizitel'no v 1352-1354 gody. Bol'shinstvo novell jetoj knigi posvjashheno teme ljubvi, nachinaja ot ejo jeroticheskogo i zakanchivaja tragicheskim aspektami. Struktura sochinenija dvojaka - ispol'zuetsja »ramochnaja kompozicija« so vstavnymi novellami.
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Decameron (Selecciones) [Decameron, Selections]
- By: Giovanni Boccaccio
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Un grupo de nobles italianos tienen que refugiarse la peste negra en una casa para pasar el rato, se cuentan el uno al otro historias. La serie de cien cuentos que se narran son divertidos por que se mofan de todas las que se supone sean buenas costumbres.
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Satisfactorio
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Here are 16 tales from one of the great works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled for a while the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio’s answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
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The Canterbury Tales
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Lively, absorbing, often outrageously funny, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is a work of genius, an undisputed classic that has held a special appeal for each generation of readers. The Tales gathers 29 of literature's most enduring (and endearing) characters in a vivid group portrait that captures the full spectrum of medieval society, from the exalted Knight to the humble Plowman. This unabridged work is based on the new translation.
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Lack of coherant "chapters"
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The Decameron Project
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In 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron: one hundred nested tales told by a group of young men and women passing the time at a villa outside Florence while waiting out the gruesome Black Death, a plague that killed more than 25 million people. Some of the stories are silly, some are bawdy, some are like fables. In March 2020, the editors of The New York Times Magazine worked to create a collection of stories written just as the pandemic first swept the globe.
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Powerful stories
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The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling
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Author Peter Ackroyd has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s immortal work, this retelling of The Canterbury Tales follows a party of travelers as they tell stories amongst themselves about love and chivalry, saints and legends, travel and adventure. Through allegory, satire, and humor, the tales help pass the time during their journey.
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WOW
- By Mitchell Drimmer on 02-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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The Canterbury Tales
- Penguin Classics
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer, Nevill Coghill (Translation)
- Narrated by: Lesley Manville, Daniel Weyman, Derek Jacobi, and others
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- Unabridged
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In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.
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Modern language retained rhyme structure.
- By Craig L. Seasholes on 11-01-24
By: Geoffrey Chaucer, and others
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The Argonautica
- Jason and the Golden Fleece
- By: Apollonius of Rhodes
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The Argonautica, also known as Jason and the Golden Fleece or Jason and the Argonauts, is the only surviving epic poem from Hellenistic Greece. It is a masterpiece whose story was well known to the audiences of the time. Virgil and other later poets were greatly influenced by it. Its author, Apollonius, was a well-known third century BC scholar living in Alexandria during the great age of Ptolomaic scholarship, and his bold attempt at writing a Homeric epic about Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece faced a daunting audience of knowledgeable contemporaries.
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No Homer, translation a bit archaic
- By Jacob Quinn on 05-19-18
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The Canterbury Tales
- The New Translation by Gerald J. Davis
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer
- Narrated by: John Hanks
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The classic collection of beloved tales, both sacred and profane, of travelers in medieval England. Complete and unabridged.
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Excellent.
- By MD on 06-29-21
By: Geoffrey Chaucer
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Decameron
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Giovanni Boccaccio può essere considerato insieme con Dante e Petrarca, il più importante scrittore del XIV secolo sia in Italia che in tutta Europa...
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The Canterbury Tales
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer
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- Unabridged
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If you want to understand the daily life and psychology of the late Middle Ages, Ronald Ecker’s classic translation of The Canterbury Tales provides one of the very best means of doing so. Within its audio is to be found a broad range of society - high and low, male and female, rich and poor - who express their innermost beliefs and extravagant fantasies in a series of stories they tell as they make their way to Canterbury Cathedral.
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The book was better
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By: Geoffrey Chaucer
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The Waves
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The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age. It was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues. By listening to these voices struggling to impose order and meaning on their lives, we are drawn into a literary journey that stunningly reproduces the complex, confusing and contradictory nature of human experience. It is read with affection and skill by Frances Jeater.
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Not an easy read but worth it
- By Lena on 03-26-16
By: Virginia Woolf
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Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained
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- Unabridged
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Paradise Lost, along with its companion piece, Paradise Regained, remain the most successful attempts at Greco-Roman style epic poetry in the English language. Remarkably enough, they were written near the end of John Milton's amazing life, a bold testimonial to his mental powers in old age. And, since he had gone completely blind in 1652, 15 years prior to Paradise Lost, he dictated it and all his other works to his daughter.
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SELL YOUR SHIRT FOR THIS AUDIO BOOK!
- By thomas on 04-23-11
By: John Milton
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Books that Matter: The Decameron
- By: Kristina Olson
- Narrated by: Kristina Olson
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
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A classic of medieval Italian literature, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron still matters for us today. And Boccaccio scholar Kristina Olson reveals why in the 10 lectures of Books that Matter: The Decameron. Here, you’ll listen between the lines of stories that range from hopeful and spiritual to cynical and bawdy. You’ll hear words turn a sinner into a saint, brutes made noble through the power of love, and riches rediscovered on the open seas.
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Great summary of themes and inquiries
- By Christina on 05-04-21
By: Kristina Olson
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The Arabian Nights (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Andrew Lang
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The vengeful King Schahriar agrees to stave off the execution of Queen Scheherazade until she finishes a particularly compelling story. Her plan? Bleed one tale into another. Through fanciful histories, romances, tragedies, comedies, poems, riddles, and songs, Scheherazade prolongs her life by holding the king’s rapt attention. With origins in Persian and Eastern Indian folklore, the stories of The Arabian Nights have been reworked, reshaped, revised, collected, and supplemented throughout the centuries by various authors and scholars.
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Very edited version
- By HDVE on 11-13-18
By: Andrew Lang
What listeners say about The Decameron
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Martha K.
- 04-06-14
The Decameron
Any additional comments?
This is a very fun book. Boccaccio brings his stories to life with wonderful dry humor, and I highly recommend it. The narrator does a beautiful job of revealing each joke that really enhances the story. I am using this book as a primary source for a paper at my school and have found it very useful. There are a few things that someone might want to know before deciding on this book however.
First this translation is possibly not the best choice. It comes from the eighteenth century, and can be hard to understand at first. I found that once I got into it that it became much easier to understand, but if you have issues with that you might want to give this book a skip. Also part of one of the stories the translator decided could not be told in English so you sit there listening to the narrator talk in Italian for several minutes.
secondly the opening might also throw you off. Boccaccio opens by explaining who he is writing for (idle women) and the background of his story (which is Florence during the first out break of plague). By modern day standards his regard for women is severely sexist. I got over this by remembering the different attitude of the time period, and that he is cynical about everything else, so why not about women? Yet again if that is not something you can get past this might not be he book for you.
Finally this book contains adult material. The author does not usually state explicit details, but it is there. I would not recommend this for kids, because they will ask you awkward questions. Boccaccio usually refers to sex as taking pleasure, which is not completely explicit in a modern context, but still it is there. Most of the stories do revolve around sex to a certain level, but no specific details are given. On the bright side of this from reading this you should get at least half a dozen sexual innuendos you can source back to medieval Italy, which as a history major I consider serious bragging rights.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Naesmile
- 08-31-21
Disappointing Translation
Frederick Davidson does the best he can with this dull translation of Boccaccio’s masterpiece. Purchase only if you are in the market for an effective soporific.
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- Anthony
- 09-03-12
Sophmoric translation, good story, faitr read
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
Interesting look into history and the lifestyles of Florence
What did you like best about this story?
Status of women
What aspect of Frederick Davidson’s performance would you have changed?
Too plumby
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
No
Any additional comments?
The tramslation is the root of the problem
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5 people found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 08-13-14
Everyone is dying: Let's bawdy!
Like 'The Canterbury Tales', 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman', 'The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights', etc., 'The Decameron' is an early masterpiece of European literature. It is one of those books I've previously avoided because I thought it would be stilted and boring. Hells NASTY Bells was I wrong. Boccaccio is funny, flippant, irreverent, libidinous, provocative, inspiring, insulting, crazy and always -- always entertaining.
100 stories told during the the summer of 1348 as the Black Death is ravaging Florence (and Europe). Ten aristocratic youths take to the country to escape the death, stink and bodies of the City and to hang out and amuse themselves on stories of love and adventure and sex and trickery. Bad priests, evil princes, saints, sinners, and various twists and turns paints a detailed picture of Italy from over 660 years ago that seems just as modern and funky as today. Things have certainly changed, but lords and ladies it is incredible just how many things have stayed the same.
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30 people found this helpful
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- Maria-Anne
- 07-03-24
Delightful stories
I enjoyed listening to this book. I have to admit that listening was easier than reading. It takes a while to get used to the this manner of writing. Remember the original was written in the 13th century.
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- W
- 06-12-07
The Decameron???
A classic selection of droll stories, gets monotonous at times but becomes a nice loooong quiet read and is interesting enough for dusty old literature. However, beware... as my title expresses; the narrator whilst reading in a nice crisp British accent puts cadence and stresses on all the wrong words, running sentences together and most annoyingly asking a question of every single line, sometimes twice in a line by using a question instead of a comma. It gets really irksome and quite nearly ruins the lyrical effect of the already difficult to follow text. Its actually the reason why I keep shutting it in exasperation and head to something easier to listen to. But the content is good and slowly I'll work through it.
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27 people found this helpful
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- chetyarbrough.blog
- 08-10-16
STORIES OF AN ERA
“The Decameron” is a series of stories about the western world’s comic/tragic society. Compiled or written by Giovanni Boccaccio in the 14th century, it recalls 100 stories told by seven women and three men over a period of ten days. “The Decameron” pictures humanity as subject to luck, avarice, and lust. Each story implies human relationship is determined by circumstance, and informed by nature. The circumstance is societal position and the moment of experience. Nature is the exigency of the emotive moment.
Written during or after the spread of the Black Death (1346-53), “The Decameron” skewers belief that God determines one’s fate. The stories range from raucous to sedate, to sinful and salacious.
Though some may be entertained by this presentation of “The Decameron”, it is not to this critic’s taste. It is too long. It is delivered monotonously. It elicits little laughter. It ponderously consumes thirty hours of a listener’s time. However, as noted above, it offers a remarkable picture of life in an era of western world’ upheaval (consequence of the black plague) and change (from God’s plan to the unpredictability of nature).
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4 people found this helpful
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- Barry
- 12-09-16
Eventually it gets better
This is, as near as I can tell, the 1886 translation by John Payne. (I do with the audiobook people would be more forthcoming with details like translators.) Payne attempted to write in an intentionally archaic idiom, and the narrator, Frederick Davidson, attempts to read it like a refugee from a Renaissance Faire. At first I found the narrator's affected mannerisms to be really offputting, but eventually I got used to it and even started to appreciate it. I think part of the problem at the outset is that Boccaccio's opening stories are pretty annoying. I felt I was going to be trapped with the most vulgar of the Shakespearian comedies. But whether it was Boccaccio warming up, or whether the stories themselves got better, or whether they just wore me down, eventually I did feel that Boccaccio deserved his reputation as a great literary figure.
The extended prologue telling of the plague that chased our storytellers out of town came as a bit of a revelation. I had not known that such a detailed and explicit account of the plague existed. The fact that Boccaccio plagiarized most of it does not detract from its visceral impact.
I never did get a sense of the ten youths as individual characters; not even the supposedly autobiographical Dioneo. The frame structure Boccaccio used was something of an innovation in its time. While it clearly suggested opportunities for further development, here it mostly serves the purpose of cleansing the palette between stories.
The stories themselves run a wide gamut, but stay within the bounds of what a group of young people would have found entertaining. All the same, they add a dimension of flesh and blood to the people of their time that is mostly lacking from the history books. Would that it were always possible to sample the literature of a time and place to give context to any study of history. Conversely, would that any study of literature be augmented by the contextual history in which it was created. With that in mind, I would merely remind the reader that this is a 14th century Italian book, translated by a Victorian Englishman into Elizabethan English, being read by denizens of the 21st century. It requires a certain amount of effort to transcend all these barriers and enjoy this book as the popular literature it was intended to be.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Laura Grey
- 10-24-12
Reader's cadence making this great book boring
The reader has a beautiful voice, but the performance is dull. He might as well be reading a phone book- there's no meaning or interest. I've read the print version (probably a different translation) & the story suffers. I'm very disappointed & will avoid this reader in the future.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Bryan
- 02-06-08
difficult to hear
I've tried listening to this several times. The translation, though is in an archaic form of English, and that combined with the narrator's form of reading -- which works well with other books I've heard, like Three Musketeers -- renders the language almost impossible to follow.
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17 people found this helpful