Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. Trans. Wayne A. Rebhorn. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013. lxxii + 948 pp. $39.95. ISBN: 978-0-393-06930-3.

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 1066-1068
Author(s):  
Elissa B. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Giovanni Boccaccio

scholarly journals Pandemic fiction as therapeutic play: The New York Times Magazine’s The Decameron Project (2020)

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2022 ◽  
pp. 072551362110694
Author(s):  
Stephanie Downes ◽  
Juliane Römhild
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Giovanni Boccaccio ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
Therapeutic Play ◽  
Narrative Framework

This article explores the therapeutic potential of narrative fiction during a global health crisis. We focus on The Decameron Project (2020), a collection of short fiction by writers from around the world, commissioned by the New York Times Magazine. The Decameron Project references the narrative framework established by Giovanni Boccaccio in the mid-14th century, when the Black Death devastated Europe. Drawing on aspects of psychoanalytic theory and principles of bibliotherapy employed since the Middle Ages, we argue that The Decameron Project offers strategies to simultaneously confront and contain the anxious mind. Storytelling, according to both Boccaccio and to the editors of The Decameron Project, is not merely a source of distraction but a means of survival.

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