The 100 stories of his Decameron, moving through a wild array of moods and subjects, were a watershed in European literature and continue to inspire nearly seven centuries on
Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron ("Ten Days") is one of the most influential collections of short stories in European literature. To the preeminent 19th-century literary critic Francesco De Sanctis it was a "Human Comedy" to stand beside Dante's divine one. It introduced an array of literary innovations, and has provided material and inspiration for writers from Chaucer, Rabelais and Shakespeare to Keats, Molière and Mann.
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