With a new foreword. The Decameron tells a story of ten young Florentines who have fled from the Plague to live in Naples. The one hundred allegorical tales are shared through the voices of these people as they spend their nights entertaining the company with tales from the erotic, sensual, and bawdy to the intellectual, philosophical and tragic. The narrative’s fundamental theme is of struggle between life and death in the face of the Black Death and the various ways life continues in spite of traditional moral attitudes and beliefs.