The film of The Decameron is not a fusion of Pasolini and Boccaccio, nor does it necessarily reflect Pasolini's view of Boccaccio; it merely reveals Pasolini's own imaginary experience derived from a particular reading. It is Pasolini who is the sole creator of his film. (p. 24)

The treatment of the subject-matter in the film attests both a desire to offer an authentic picture of man in the Middle Ages and, further, to delineate what is elementary and continuing in Man on an a-temporal level, beyond any specific historical figuration….

For Pasolini the consciousness that formulated The Decameron was inseparable from the one which composed De genealogia deorum gentilium, that huge repository of Greek and Roman mythology which is one of the monuments of early classical scholarship. It is, therefore, not surprising that in his wish to re-discover the vitality of the Middle Ages Pasolini found it necessary to...