brought chaos to Florence's social order and eventually stripped the city of nearly half its population and most traces of normal daily life. Law and the vast majority of normal social relations broke down under the widespread devastation and, in the midst of these conditions, Boccaccio composed his greatest work. Most of the anchors that had held society in place throughout history, including the church and its adherence to a strict moral code, could not protect the city or its people against the ravages of war, disease, famine or economic crisis.
The nearness and indiscriminate nature of death shocked the city and Boccaccio's characters into an awareness of and appreciation for life on this earth that may not have been possible otherwise. These characters are brought together under unusual circumstances and, along with the readers, come to some unusual conclusions about man's goal on earth. The Decameron, then, is a book that is representative of humanism because it accepts and embraces all of human life, excluding nothing and no one.
The Decameron took its contemporary readers into a new world--the land of things as they are, wherein the citizenry is varied and calculating, where there are no illusions about the seamy side of things, and where laughter is not out of place. The structure of Boccaccio's story is fairly simple. The Decameron opens with a prologue and an introduction. In the introduction, Boccaccio gives a detailed and realistic account of the plague, from its physical effects to its effects on society. Some people, he notes, chose to lock themselves in their houses and avoid all contact with the citizenry, while others chose to flee the city in an effort to escape certain death. He goes on to describe a certain group of ten young people that chose the latter.
Boccaccio tells his readers that seven young women and three young men decide to leave the city and travel to a country villa until the plague h...