The late great Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez explained how we can live our lives to tell our tales, but the first great Italian prose author, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), still shows us how telling tales can keep us alive. How? Thanks to his collection of 100 (actually 100 ¾) “novelle” called The Decameron: this all-time classic of Italian and world literature has more to teach us than ever, since its stories are told by a group of ten young storytellers, in order to help them survive the traumas of the 1348 “Black Death” pandemic. In this unique interactive event hosted by Professor Eric Nicholson, of Syracuse University Florence and NYU Florence, Boccaccio will appear before your eyes, to tell you not only of his fascinating life in 14th century Italy, but also how he learned that the art of storytelling enables us to live, and to live well.

For the past twenty years, Eric Nicholson (Ph.D., Yale University) has been teaching courses in literature and theatre studies at Syracuse University Florence, and at New York University, Florence. At both these venues and elsewhere, he has also directed numerous productions of classic plays, among them Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest. Beyond lecturing, directing, and publishing widely in his field, Eric’s professional activity extends to acting, voice work, and public presentation: credits include Oberon in the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino production of Purcell’s Fairy Queen (Teatro Goldoni Florence, 2013), and Fool/Theseus in “Promised Endings: an Experimental Work-in-Progress based on Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear” (Verona, 2018). He is the narrator of the English video documentary for the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Firenze, and of English audio guides to museums in the Tuscan cities of Grosseto, and Massa Marittima. In full historical costume, he has appeared as Lorenzo the Magnificent, Leonardo da Vinci, and others in several live performance events, videos, and broadcasts, and most recently (2021) as Dante and Boccaccio for Rocky Ruggiero: Making Art and History Come to Life.