Word: boccaccio
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Actionist Deputy Piero Calamandrei, rector of Florence University, told a Boccaccio-flavored anecdote to express his opposition to the contradictions of a Constitution which proclaimed both religious equality and the preferential position of one faith: "This reminds me of the old man in Florence who had two mistresses, one young and the other old. The man's hair was partly black, partly grey. Each of his mistresses wanted him completely for herself. So the young mistress tore out all his grey hair, while the old one tore out all the black. The poor man's head of course...
...Hoare-Laval Deal to appease Mussolini (1935) was still fresh. That of the Hitler-sweetening at Munich was even fresher. In 1940 Britain needed someone to talk straight, not sweet, to Spain's Franco. Sir Samuel hardly seemed the man. He had passed "from experience to experience, like Boccaccio's virgin," said a wag, "without discernible effect upon his condition...
...make. Joining in the merry-making--by cautious degrees, to be sure--is Addie Bemis, librarian, who swills three "Pink Ladies" and throws repression to the winds. It's the happy Birthday of her life, the day she first drops inhibition and learns sex exists outside of Boccaccio...
Ever since Boccaccio or before, Italians have had a saying: "Se non é vero, é bene trovato-It may not be true, but it's a good story." Last week, according to the A.P., Italians were telling this tale...
...Others: Voltaire's Candide, Boccaccio's De cameron, Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry, Upton Sinclair's Oil, Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks...