Tales We Tell Ourselves - A Selection from The Decameron

Carlo Gébler

Summary

 I n a villa hi g h above  F lo r ence a  gr oup o f  seven women and  t h r ee men a r e cocoonin g ,  seekin g  shel t e r fr om  t he epidemic ,  sca r ed b y  r epo rt s o f  dea t h comin g  nea r e r t o  t hei r  own doo r s t ep b y t he da y . 
 S ound  f amilia r ?  
It should, as the above text describes Boccaccio's fourteenth-century masterpiece the Decameron. At once bawdy, witty, tragic and ever-topical, this selection of stories demonstrates how great literature survives a fast-forward to the twenty-first century.
Carlo Gébler has now re-imagined twenty-eight of the original stories, drawing out the essence of the tales in order to let their true genius and wit shine. Over nearly seven hundred years, the Decameron has established itself as a form of literary self-therapy. This is a text for troubled times, which will continue to resonate and provide solace for years, if not decades to come.

Available since: 12/05/2020.

Print length: 376 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. It is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and part of the Western canon. The story tells of Charles Marlow, an Englishman who took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Heart of Darkness exposes the myth behind colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist, Marlow, encounters--the darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the European's cruel treatment of the natives, and the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil. Although Conrad does not give the name of the river, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver. However, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization, in a cover-up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region. This symbolic story is a story within a story or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts from dusk through to late night, to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary his Congolese adventure. The passage of time and the darkening sky during the fictitious narrative-within-the-narrative parallel the atmosphere of the story.

Show book

The Shepherd of The Hills

Harold Bell Wright

Originally published in 1907, The Shepherd of the Hills is Harold Bell Wright's most famous work. In The Shepherd of the Hills, Wright spins a tale of universal truths across the years to the modern-day reader. His Eden in the Ozarks has a bountiful share of life's enchantments, but is not without its serpents. While Wright rejoices in the triumphs, grace, and dignity of his characters, he has not naively created a pastoral fantasy-land where the pure at heart are spared life's struggles and pains. Refusing to yield to the oft-indulged temptation of painting for the reader the simple life of country innocents, Wright forthrightly shows the passions and the life-and-death struggles that go on even in the fairest of environments that man invades. The shepherd, an elderly, mysterious, learned man, escapes the buzzing restlessness of the city to live in the backwoods neighborhood of Mutton Hollow in the Ozark hills. There he encounters Jim Lane, Grant Matthews, Sammy, Young Matt, and other residents of the village, and gradually learns to find a peace about the losses he has borne and has yet to bear. Through the shepherd and those around him, Wright assembles here a gentle and utterly masterful commentary on strength and weakness, failure and success, tranquility and turmoil, and punishment and absolution. This tale of life in the Ozarks continues to draw thousands of devotees to outdoor performances in Branson, Missouri, where visitors can also see the cabin where the real Old Matt and Aunt Mollie lived.An EChristian, Inc production.

Show book

Anthony Hope - A Short Story...

Anthony Hope

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins was born on 9th February 1863 in Clapton, London.

He was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead, Marlborough College and Balliol College, Oxford. Hope trained as a lawyer and barrister and was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1887. Despite what was thought to be a promising legal career he had literary ambitions and wrote in his spare time.

His early works appeared in various periodicals of the day but for his first book ‘A Man of Mark’ (1890), with no publisher interested, he published with his own resources.

More novels and short stories followed, including the mildly successful ‘Mr Witt's Widow’ in 1892. Hope even found time to run as the Liberal candidate for Wycombe in the election that same year but was unsuccessful.

His first major literary success came with ‘The Dolly Dialogues’, a collection of previously published magazine pieces followed very quickly by his instant classic, ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’. He now gave up the vestiges of his legal career to pursue writing full-time.

Despite never again reaching the same pinnacle of success he was popular and wrote prolifically across novels, plays and of course, short stories though his writing output rapidly diminished after the war.

In 1918 he was knighted for his contribution to propaganda efforts during World War I.

His short stories are delicate, mannered and often surprising with their wit, humour and interplay of characters who say one thing and usually mean another. He was very definitely a writer of escapist rather than serious fare but they are no less enjoyable for that.

Anthony Hope died of throat cancer on 8th July 1933 at his country home, Heath Farm at Walton-on-the-Hill in Surrey. He was 70.
1 - Anthony Hope - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction
2 - Foreordained by Anthony Hope
3 - A Little Joke by Anthony Hope
4 - A Guardian of Morality by Anthony Hope
5 - Lucifera by Anthony Hope
6 - A Sucessful Rehearsal by Anthony Hope
7 - Middleton's Model by Anthony Hope
8 - How They Stopped the 'Run' by Anthony Hope
9 - My Astral Body by Anthony Hope

Show book

Mosses from an Old Manse -...

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Many of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse are allegories and, typical of Hawthorne, focus on the negative side of human nature. Hawthorne's friend Herman Melville noted this aspect in his review about Hawthorne and His Mosses: "This black conceit pervades him through and through. You may be witched by his sunlight,—transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds over you; but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his bright gildings but fringe and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds." William Henry Channing noted in his review of the collection, that its author "had been baptized in the deep waters of Tragedy", and his work was dark with only brief moments of "serene brightness" which was never brighter than "dusky twilight".

Show book

So Big

Edna Ferber

The Pulitzer Prize–winning “masterpiece” by the acclaimed author of Giant follows the life of a farming woman on the Illinois prairie (The Literary Review).   In the small Dutch community of New Holland, Illinois, Selina DeJong dedicates herself to her passion for learning by becoming a schoolteacher. But as life progresses, she finds other loves: first, her husband, Pervus, a Dutch farmer; and then her son, Dirk, whom she nicknames “So Big” in reference to the common refrain: “How big is baby? So big!”   Throughout her life, Selina never loses her fondness for learning and art—even as tragedy, loss, the realities of hard work, and the necessity of money threaten to eclipse all else. But as her son grows up to pursue his fortune in Chicago, can she help him retain those same values?  So Big is the story of both a woman and her son, and a country in the midst of profound cultural transition. The winner of the 1925 Pulitzer Prize, it is widely considered author Edna Ferber’s masterpiece.   “It has the completeness, [the] finality, that grips and exalts and convinces.” —The Literary Review

Show book

Someone at a Distance

Dorothy Whipple

Someone at a Distance was Dorothy Whipple’s last book, hailed by many as her best. The story charts the gradual breakdown of a marriage through the eyes of those involved. Whipple deftly and persuasively explores the minds of her characters, particularly the two women. This audio edition is read by Susan Wooldridge.Ellen and Avery North share a stable and secure life. Everything is well looked after: their teenage children, their garden, and Avery’s elderly mother who lives nearby. In time, old Mrs North decides she is in need of a live-in companion, and Louise Lanier arrives after responding to a newspaper advert. When Louise sets out to seduce Avery for the fun of it, her behaviour threatens to destroy Ellen and Avery’s peaceful life together. Someone at a Distance is part of the Persephone Audiobook Collection, a series of forgotten classics including neglected fiction and non-fiction by women writers. First published in 1953, this edition includes a preface by author Nina Bawden.

Show book