Boccaccio’s Decameron, long mainstay of Literature Humanities, is a series of stories recounted by men and women who fled the Black Plague in Florence to amuse themselves at a country estate. One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the Decameron asks us how we respond to plague, and to whom do we attribute blame? What is our duty to our society when it is in crisis, and how do we rebuild that society? Alex Cuadrado is an instructor in Literature Humanities and a PhD candidate in the Department of Italian at Columbia University. This is a Living the Core seminar.

Reading

Boccaccio, Decameron, Day 1 (p. 4-23 in the translation by Rebhorn)