About the Decameron

The 'Decameron', also called 'Prince Galehaut', is a 14th-century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people.

The book's primary title exemplifies Boccaccio's fondness for Greek philology: Decameron combines two Greek words, Greek: déka ("ten") and Greek: hēméra ("day"), to form a term that means "ten-day event". Ten days is the time period in which the characters of the frame story tell their tales.