Arquivo

The first chapter of Pasolini’s “Trilogy of Life”, The Decameron is based on nine tales from the book of the same name by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), where the values of the body and of sexual vitality hold sway. Five of the nine episodes are indeed pervaded with eroticism and licentious behavior as in the tale where a peasant pretends to be a deaf-mute to work in the convent and make love to the nuns. “The Decameron purports to be sheer joy - the joy of living in Boccaccio stems from his historical optimism, for this age saw the advent of the bourgeois revolution... Boccaccio saw the dawn of a new era”, said Pasolini who was then to direct The Canterbury Tales and Flower of the Arabian Nights.