Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1348-1351) is a masterpiece of world literature. Boccaccio is one of the Three Crowns, the three founding authors of Italian literature (along with Dante and Petrarch). Yet his Decameron is a conundrum. Composed in the wake of the Black Plague of 1348, the Decameron presents a world populated with flesh-and-blood individuals motivated by personal desires. Often its characters are women, and their desires are sexual; Boccaccio’s female characters use their intellect to achieve personal gratification. Yet to his contemporary readership, Boccaccio did not appear revolutionary. Although he was an innovative author in many ways, Boccaccio grounded his text in the tradition of bawdy literature already well established in the Middle Ages. In this seminar we will discuss the Decameron closely, examining its links to the works that preceded it, and its impact on subsequent literary developments throughout the world.