Trying to read Decameron and Canterbury Tales. Off to a slow start. These Ancient Authors were really long-winded.
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I don’t know that I’ll get very far. I have very low patience for archaic literary works. Did power through Dante at one point. These two feel apropos given tail-end-pandemic mood.
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7 stories into the Decameron. It’s not very good, but the references to real history and real/realistic people is kinda fun.
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These stories are like r/relationships or r/amitheasshole
This is a compilation of 14th century Reddit threads basically
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These people are exhaustingly concerned with dignity and virtue. And half the stories seem to be about people saying clever mic drop things to each other that I don’t quite get, which seem to transform the targets.
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Day 2 stories are slightly better. About people who had bad luck but it works out in the end. These really aren’t proper stories in the modern sense. More like incidents.
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Story 2.4 was not bad. Merchant wants to 2x wealth, but risky trading voyage goes bad, so he turns pirate to recoup losses, then has booty stolen by another ship. Then that ship is wrecked but he survives by clinging to a chest containing jewels. Reminds me of Sinbad.
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On 2.6. Something striking about these old stories is how frequently people get caught on ships in storms or robbed on travels. Sinbad was the same. Weird to think of a default-unsafe world of travel. And all this is mostly local to Italy and eastern Mediterranean.
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Another thing that strikes me is how much of the travel is trading business, political refuge, or pilgrimage. Today most travel is managerial business or pleasure. Pilgrimage as a category is a minority. The Canterbury Tales is entirely built around a pilgrimage frame story.
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Makes me think: when travel is uncomfortable and dangerous, mere pleasure or business travel as an agent rather than as principal is rarely worth it. But religious travel is still worth it. We may be in such a world again now.
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2.6 was a very good story, though with a few loose ends and implausible character pivots. But much better than first 15 stories. Almost fully modern in dramatic structure. Proper 3 acts with a B-plot and even a C-plot. Nice background in Guelph-Ghibelline wars too. Movie-worthy.
