An Apology of Boccaccio

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».