Giovanni Boccaccio finished The Decameron in 1353 after roughly five years of writing with the title a reference to the framing device's time — ten days — that a group of young folks shelter from the Plague and tell the 100 stories told in the book. When he adapted the work, Pier Paolo Pasolini's final cut had nine stories from the anthology to round out his film. Part of the series Learning Beyond the Classics: Early 70s Italian Cinema.