Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” – sales of which have reportedly risen during the coronavirus – faith and religion are mocked and satirized
Current Affairs : An ongoing Pew Research survey found that strict confidence had developed for a fourth of Americans in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some may in reality take comfort in religion during a period of vulnerability, for example, a pandemic, however the artistic writings that I instruct in my college course, “Pandemics in Literature,” propose this isn’t generally the situation: Faith may extend for a few, while others may reject or surrender it by and large.
Christianity and the Black Death
In one of the most notable works of pandemic writing, Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” – deals of which have apparently ascended during the coronavirus – confidence and religion are derided and mocked.
“The Decameron” is a lot of one hundred stories told by seven young ladies and three youngsters isolated from the Black Death on the edges of medieval Florence. Strangely, “The Decameron” is the soonest and most noteworthy content that shows a dismissal of Christianity when the majority of Europe was as yet under the ground-breaking impact of the Catholic Church and its lessons.
In Boccaccio’s enormous assortment of novellas, priests and different dignitaries of the Church are scorned, derided and appeared in their human unsteadiness. For instance, in the fourth story on the primary day, an abbot and a priest plot to bring a willing little youngster into a cloister – a demonstration that is praised by the storytellers as fearless and praiseworthy, despite the fact that this conflicted with each strict and good regulation of the time.
Aditi Mehta 