In 1631 the Catholic Church in Spain placed this bawdy tale of earthly love on its Index of Prohibited Books. Victorian critics self-righteously censured it as "profligate and disgusting." No wonder: Written immediately after The Decameron, The Corbaccio (or the evil crow"), Boccaccio's final work, is a connoisseur's collection of traditional and medieval misogyny. In his introduction, Cassell situates The Corbaccio within literary, stylistic, and structural conventions, a tradition encompassing some of the most satirical, scurrilous, scatological and parodic literature ever written.