Roses are Red, Violets are Not ...

The Eaten Heart: Unlikely Tales of Love

Giovanni Boccaccio

Penguin Books

In honour of St. Valentine's Day, I figured I should post an entry about love. Don't laugh -- I know I'm not exactly considered an authority on the subject (can you say disaster with boys?) Thankfully, Boccaccio was an Italian living on the verge of the Renaissance and as such, I'd say that he knew all about the painful, beautiful, exciting, dreadful, angst-ridden, most joyful of all emotions.

The Eaten Heart is a series of tales excerpted from Boccaccio's Decameron. The year is 1348 and ten very witty and charming Florentines flee their plague-filled city and retreat to the country where they tell each other tales to pass the time. Unlike his literary predecessor, Dante, Boccaccio is no moralist and his stories are filled with humour, bawdy language, sex and intrigue. A lot of really good aphorisms have come out of this text, but my favourite has to be, "One woman could exhaust many men, whereas many men can't exhaust one woman." So who cares if it is a little anti-feminist? It's pretty funny and the fact that it said by an old woman encouraging a young wife to cheat on her husband makes me laugh even more. Three point five cupids out of five.

And oh, the title for this week's entry? I'll buy dinner for the person who comes up with the most creative/funniest completion to the poem.