A Rogue's Decameron
- Publisher
- Guernica Editions
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2018
- Category
- Literary, Short Stories (single author), Satire
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771831055
- Publish Date
- Oct 2018
- List Price
- $20.00
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
A Rogue's Decameron consists of ten stories - tales - that loosely follow the fabliaux style and are based within the spirit of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio's The Decameron: extravagance, joy and ribald humour around sex, lust, vice, death and other “hungers' of human beings. Using similar framing technique as these works - a prologue, a short description of each story and an epilogue, the stories explore themes such as social commentary and satire aimed at personal politics, societal mores and customs, hierarchies, and religious beliefs. All with Toronto as a backdrop and brought up to date for the sensibilities of a 21st century audience.
About the author
Born in Vancouver, Stan Rogal now lives in Toronto. He ran the popular Idler Pub Reading Series for ten years, was co-creator of Bald Ego Theatre, and is now the artistic director of Bulletproof Theatre. He is the author of the novel, The Long Drive Home (Insomniac, 1999), and numerous poetry collections, including Geometry of the Odd, (Wolsak & Wynn, 1999), In Search of the Emerald City (Seraphim, 2004) and Fabulous Freaks (Wolsak & Wynn, 2005). Lines of Embarkation is Stan's fifth book of poetry.
Excerpt: A Rogue's Decameron (by (author) Stan Rogal)
Rosa arched her broad back against the cushioned arm of the couch. She stretched her plump left leg across the worn leather and ground her French heeled shoe into the pine floorboards. Her equally plump right leg hung quivering in the air, a slight pair of damp pink lace panties dangling from a surprisingly delicate ankle. Her dress was unbuttoned at the neck and a pair of exquisitely large breasts danced half-in, half-out of an industrial wired bra. Two clumsy hands--not her own--grappled with the breasts, rolled the flesh and pinched the nipples.
Editorial Reviews
[Rogal's] short stories are jewels of literature: highly polished, bright flashes of insight in a compact form, sharing the intensity of concise language with poetry, following a well-constructed narrative that highlights a single event, crisis, or surprising dénouement
Hamilton Art and Letters