The Decameron’s Big Idea is to create an endless pretext for people to tell each other tales (true or false), not just to pass the time but also to outdo one other in narrative brilliance. Boccaccio’s biography reads like one of the tales: he might have been born in Florence, or in rural Tuscany at Certaldo, or in Paris to a French noblewoman, from whom he was snatched by his Florentine banker father, or was he? Chaucer lapped up Boccaccio. So did Shakespeare. And Keats. And painters and illustrators a-plenty, whose canvases and illustrations bring Boccaccio’s stories to exciting non-verbal life head to head with his narratives on Powerpoint throughout each session.