An Apology for Boccaccio

Christopher Darlington Morley (May 5, 1890 - March 28, 1957) was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. Author of more than 100 novels, books of essays, and volumes of poetry, Morley is probably best known today for his first two novels, Parnassus on Wheels (1917) and The Haunted Bookshop (1919).

Morley’s short essay An Apology of Boccaccio, focusing on the life and works of the great 14th-century Italian writer and humanist, was published in November 1916 on the Smart Set Magazine.

«The Decameron was written by a man of thirty-five or so who had seen much of life, a man full of humour and tenderness and ribaldry, a man who expressed as well as anyone the double attitude of the middle ages towards woman—the utmost reverence for woman in the abstract, as idealized in the Mother of Christ; combined with an unabashed willingness to kiss every pretty barmaid whom he met».