The Decameron First Day in PerspectiveGiovanni Boccaccio's Decameron is the best known and most read work in Italian literature next to Dante's Divine Comedy. In the tradition of Lectura Dantis, the practice of story by story critical readings of Dante's work, Elissa Weaver has collected essays from some of the most prominent American Boccaccio scholars to provide critical readings of the Decameron Proem, Introduction, and the ten stories that constitute the first of the ten 'days' of