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ismemestar's review against another edition
5.0
Beautiful prose. Boccaccio certainly knew how to tell a fine tale, and the translation is gorgeous, brimming with life. This is the first series of biographies in the Western tradition dedicated solely to women, and Boccaccio should get credit for that. But don't get me wrong, this is by no means a feminist work of literature. Boccaccio's stance on women is clearly that, by and large, they are devoted to vice and sillyness, hardly worth considering, but that when virtue does appear, it is all the more valuable for being present in one of the weaker sex. The women he chooses to include are interesting, telling us more about the preoccupations of his time than anything else. The women represented are famous, not necessarily virtuous, and there are plenty of "bad" women as moral examples to avoid, complementing the "good" women upheld as paragons. Most of the women are pagan and ancient examples, though a few are modern and Christian, and the list starts off with Eve. Above all, he praises women most when they embody the "manly" virtues of bravery and so forth. These stories are fun to read, and important to keep in mind when doing historical research, but the underlying implications are strongly those of a medieval society and not something we should strive to carry forth today. Warning for content of stories, including but not limited to rape, murder, and suicide, but such is par for the course when, for instance, such Roman women as Lucretia and Portia are held upon a pedestal.
hoperu's review against another edition
3.0
Primarily of interest to historians and scholars of the Renaissance. The moralizing about chaste women gets old pretty quickly.
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