Biography Of Giovanni Boccaccio 's Magnum Opus ' The Decameron '

During the fourteenth century a disease ravaged across the middle east that calculated up to fifty million deaths and impoverished half of Europe. This disastrous disease had attained the nick-name, “Black Death”, referring to its high fatality rate. The plague, as some may call it, scattered amongst the whole world taking many lives because of the lack of medical attention or treatment and is even still around till this day. The Black Death is best understood through its symptoms, treatments, and death toll changing life in the fourteenth century.

During the late 1340’s a plague fostered in Europe and began to take effect onto the feudal system in place. This plague was known as the Black

The Black Plague (also known as the Black Death or Bubonic Plague) of the 1300s is considered by many historians to be one of the most influential events in the history of Europe. Originating in Asia, the Black Plague has three forms; Bubonic which affects the lymph nodes, pneumonic which affects the lungs, and septicemia which affects the blood. Through examining the effects of the Plague on Europe and its people, it is clear that politics, social life, and economics were all irreparably thrown off balance. Perhaps the part of Europe disturbed most by the Black Death was politics.

History reveals the mid-14th century as a very unfortunate time for Europe. It was during this period when the continent became afflicted by a terrible plague. The source of the pathogen is known today as bubonic but was colloquially known as “The Black Death” to Europeans of the day. The plague caused a tremendous number of deaths and was a catalyst of change, severely impacting Europe’s cultural, political and religious institutions.

From 1347 to 1352 a string of the bubonic plague lay waste to western Europe, killing millions. In Italy, nearly a third of the population died; in England, half. The plague was a looming presence, always in the back of people’s minds. The symptoms of the Black Death caused great strife for westerners. Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer and poet, described the symptoms he saw during the first outbreak of the plague: “Not such were they as in the East, where an issue of blood from the nose was a manifest sign of inevitable death; but in men a women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumors in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less, which the common folk called gavoccioli.” Both Italy and England desperately searched for answers, claiming that the Black Death was the cause of a higher force, but realising that the squalor of their countries also played a part in spreading the illness. Although Italy and England both had a common explanation for the cause of the plague and they both implemented better public health standards, they adopted different public health practices after the plague.

The Black Death, also known as the Black Plague, was a rapid infectious outbreak that swept over Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s resulting in the death of millions of people. Tentatively, this disease started in the Eastern parts of Asia, and it eventually made its way over to Europe by way of trade routes. Fever and “dark despair” characterized this plague. The highly contagious sickness displayed many flu-like symptoms, and the victim’s lymph nodes would quickly become infected. The contamination resulted in a colossal and rapid spread of the disease within one person’s body. Due to the lack of medical knowledge and physicians, there was little that people could do to save those dying all around them. Now that a better understanding of

End of a Paradigm, Samuel K. Cohn Jr. argues that the Black Death of 14th century Europe was not the same illness as the bubonic plague. To help illustrate his argument, Cohn compared the Black Death of 14th century Europe to the agent of the bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, which was discovered in Hong Kong

As was we all know that The Black Death is one of the tragic events in world history and it has effected many civilizations in early 1300s. This has made many devastating trends within Europe’s borders and raged with many diseases, and other infections. Not only this pandemic event has effected many people, but it has transform Europe’ political, religious, and cultural practices. The Black Death became an outbreak and painful change to western civilization in which it marked history

about a “Great Pestilence” that was carving a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and

In 542 CE an illness called, The Great Plague struck Constantinople that was so overpowering, it changed the substance of history perpetually in Eastern Europe. The malady was initially seen in Pelusium, an Egyptian harbor town. The issue with this torment was that nobody was certain of what brought on it. In later years we have discovered that the illness was brought about by microscopic organisms and parasites that utilized rats as hosts. North Africa, in the eighth century CE, was the essential wellspring of grain for the realm, alongside various distinctive wares including paper, oil, ivory, and slaves. Put away in inconceivable distribution centers, the grain gave an impeccable reproducing ground to the bugs and rats, critical to the transmission of torment. These rats would then contaminate our

The pandemic known to history as the Black Death was one of the world’s worst natural disasters in history. It was a critical time for many as the plague hit Europe and “devastated the Western world from 1347 to 1351, killing 25%-50% of Europe’s population and causing or accelerating marked political, economic, social, and cultural changes.” The plague made an unforgettable impact on the history of the West. It is believed to have originated somewhere in the steppes of central Asia in the 1330s and then spread westwards along the caravan routes. It spread over Europe like a wildfire and left a devastating mark wherever it passed. In its first few weeks in Europe, it killed between 100 and 200 people per day. Furthermore, as the weather became colder, the plague worsened, escalating the mortality rate to as high as 750 deaths per day. By the spring of 1348, the death toll may have reached 1000 a day. One of the main reasons the plague spread so quickly and had such a devastating effect on Europe was ultimately due to the lack of medical knowledge during the medieval time period.

The anticipated research paper will be taking into consideration the perspectives of the individuals that lived and died as a result of the Black Death, specifically from the year 1348 CE – 1350 CE and in the better known parts of the world during that period, the reactions, preventative measure that were taken to combat the plague, the religious and governmental response. In the collection of primary sources amassed by John Aberth in The Black Death, 1348-1350: the great mortality of 1348-1350 ; a brief history with documents1 he very succinctly provides a condensed description of each document by giving a background of the author as well as the source of the primary source. Aberth manages to do this while remaining impartial, an

The Decameron was a collection of bawdy and serious tales written by Boccaccio. Boccaccio was most likely born in Florence or Certaldo and was the illegitimate son of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Bocacino di Chellino. As a youth he was trained to follow in his father 's business but he eventually chose instead to study canon law and subsequently pursued the arts. It is a combination of Greek words for ten and day. According to Frankforter, the Decameron is a fictive record of a hundred stories that ten Florentine men and women told to entertain themselves while they hid from the plague in the comfort of a luxurious house (Frankforter, pg. 348). The one hundred allegorical stories are shared through the narrative voices of these young people as they spend their nights regaling the company with tales from the erotic, sensual, and bawdy to the intellectual, philosophical or tragic. The narrative 's fundamental theme is of struggle between life and death in the face of the Black Plague and the various ways life continues in spite of traditional moral attitudes and beliefs. While primarily a work of fiction, the Introduction to The Decameron has emerged as an important historical record of the physical, psychological, and social effects of the aggressive spread of the previously unknown Yersina pestis bacteria. It provides a significant philosophical insight into the medieval

The Decameron, by Boccaccio, is a frame story written in the mid fourteenth century. There are a hundred stories told over a span of ten days. On the second day, a man tells a story about a princess, Alatiel, who was sent away to marry a king. Before Alatiel reaches her destination, she has sexual experiences with a lot of different men. Alatiel is treated like an object and allows this objectification to happen because she is so fickle and does nothing to stop the men. The fickleness of Alatiel and the treatment of her as an object is evident throughout the story.

The Great Plague killed nearly half of the European population during the fourteenth century. A plague is a widespread illness. The Illness was also known as the “Black Death”. Most of the European people believed the plague was the beginning of the end of the world. They were scarcely equipped and unready for what was to be entailed. It was by far one of the worst epidemics yet to be seen in those times.