The Decameron. The greatest prose work of the Early Renaissance, 100 short stories, loosely united by a framing plot about young Italian gentlemen and their ladies, fleeing the plague to a country estate and while away their time with engaging stories. And what stories! It seems as if 14th-century Italy itself, with its mischievous humor, its mixture of sincere faith and daring freethinking, its enterprise and cunning, its fiery temperament and insatiable thirst for life and love, happiness and all manner of pleasures, seethes, breathes, laughs, and cries.