Written by Giovanni Boccaccio in the 1350s, this collection of stories deals with sexuality in a way that can still make readers blush – and it has now inspired a Netflix comedy. Quiz question: which work was described by The New Yorker as "probably the dirtiest great book in the Western canon"? Is it James Joyce's Ulysses perhaps? After all, that novel was banned for obscenity. Maybe Lady Chatterley's Lover , also banned? Or the perennially problematic Lolita ? Nope, nope and nope.
Not even close. How about a collection of short stories written in the 14th Century in the aftermath of the Black Death? For sheer eye-popping smut The Decameron, written in Italian by Giovanni Boccaccio in the early 1350s, leaves its rivals in the shade. It has even left its mark on the Italian language, where the word boccaccesco (we might say "Boccaccio-esque") can be used to describe something salacious or lewd.
We’ll come back to the ribaldry in a moment, but The Decameron has far more to recommend it than just its dirty stories. Here is how Boccaccio introduces his greatest work: "My plan is to recount one hundred stories, or fables, or parables, or histories, or whatever you wish to call them. They were told over 10 days, as will be seen, by an honourable company made up of seven ladies and three young men who came together during the time of the recent plague.
" The plague, though barely mentioned after the first chapter, provides the backdrop to The Decameron and gives the work its str.