{"product_id":"the-illuminated-manuscripts-boccaccios-decameron-edited-by-miller-graphics","title":"'The Illuminated Manuscripts: Boccaccio's Decameron' edited by Miller Graphics","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"274\" data-end=\"685\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eA handsome and unusual Boccaccio-adjacent object rather than a standard reading edition.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"274\" data-end=\"685\"\u003eThis illustrated edition gathers manuscript images from Boccaccio’s \u003cem data-start=\"342\" data-end=\"353\"\u003eDecameron\u003c\/em\u003e, pairing scenes from the fourteenth-century tale cycle with explanatory text and reproductions of medieval illumination. Rather than presenting the work simply as literature, the book approaches \u003cem data-start=\"549\" data-end=\"564\"\u003eThe Decameron\u003c\/em\u003e as a visual and material object: a story-world copied, decorated, transmitted and reimagined through manuscript culture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"687\" data-end=\"1202\"\u003eBoccaccio’s original frame is famously bleak and alive: ten young Florentines flee the plague-struck city and retreat to the countryside, where they pass the time by telling one hundred stories over ten days. The tales move between desire, deception, fortune, clerical hypocrisy, erotic misrule, wit, cruelty, social mobility and survival. It is one of the great comic architectures of European literature: a plague book that keeps producing jokes, plots and bodies as if narrative itself were a form of quarantine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1204\" data-end=\"1697\"\u003eThis volume is especially appealing as a visual companion to the text. The manuscript images turn the stories into beds, banquets, gardens, lovers, priests, pilgrims, rooms, borders, marginalia, staged scenes of private chaos made public through painted order. A good pick for readers interested in medieval literature, manuscript art, book history, plague narratives, erotic storytelling, and the long human tradition of being appalling but decorative.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1712\" data-end=\"2141\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1978 illustrated edition produced by Productions Liber SA \/ Éditions Minerva SA, Fribourg–Geneva, printed in Spain; text by J. Peter Tallon. Hardback with illustrated wraps; visible age-toning, light shelfwear, small marks and edge\/corner wear, but internally bright with colour reproductions throughout. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44658038538323,"sku":null,"price":30.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-26T135132.741.png?v=1779767504","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/the-illuminated-manuscripts-boccaccios-decameron-edited-by-miller-graphics","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}