Love Despite the Plague
[screenplays]
Writing about 1350 in the shadow of the devastating Black Death, Giovanni Boccaccio looked with a survivor’s warmth on humanity’s follies, passions, joys, and ennoblements, each of these variously expressed through a remarkable series of stories about love and desire in their many guises. Out of Boccaccio’s one hundred stories in his Decameron, I selected four that seem to me to represent seasons of love within a deeply challenging time of pandemic.
While Boccaccio’s collected stories have no parallel in world literature for their variety, invention, and zest for life, the originals are generally brief. These screenplay versions dramatize the original scenes and characters in their own terms and time, developing the stories from what is latent in them while staying true to their spirit. Meant for readers, Love Despite the Plague would also be enjoyable for a group to read aloud, taking on the roles of various characters.
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Published in 2020: Text & Context (Paperback and ebook).
While Boccaccio’s collected stories have no parallel in world literature for their variety, invention, and zest for life, the originals are generally brief. These screenplay versions dramatize the original scenes and characters in their own terms and time, developing the stories from what is latent in them while staying true to their spirit. Meant for readers, Love Despite the Plague would also be enjoyable for a group to read aloud, taking on the roles of various characters.
--
Published in 2020: Text & Context (Paperback and ebook).
