The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio : Introduction

I love how classic literature prepares the reader, either with in-depth descriptions of the setting or clearly explaining the purpose before embarking upon the work; as if it's a scholarly approach, not leaving any detail of context to question. In this particular case Boccaccio spent most of the introduction describing the face of the plague. The details are grim and more graphic than what I was expecting. For some reason I assumed a writer from this era was going to present the ravaging sickness with a sort of distant optimistic view, but Boccaccio cut right through to the nerve, first illustrating the gory symptoms of the plague then going into depth on the response. He describes for instance the beginning of the sickness when two priests would knock on the door of those afflicted and carry the dead out one by one, to several priests and servants being dispatched to not only go to the houses reported but be prepared for any other dead they happened upon, to the ultimate depravity of mass death, mass graves, covered with a thin layer of soil; entire towns wiped out, all worldly possessions abandoned.

Then Boccaccio describes the survivors, the few who watched society crumble around them. He introduces a small group of them individually, ten in all, and it becomes obvious that these are the people that are going to act as the driving force of the work. After doling out responsibilities to sustain them for the next ten days, Boccaccio constructs a machine of storytelling. Each evening all characters are to narrate a story based on a certain theme, except for the first night, which is open to each narrators discretion.