Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Italian poet and humanist, a great author of lasting importance.

Boccaccio was probably born in Tuscany, either in Certaldo or Florence, the illegitimate son of a Florentine merchant and a French noblewoman. Reared in Florence, he was sent to study business in Naples about 1323. He abandoned these studies for canon law and gave that up for classical and scientific studies. He took part in the life of the court of Robert d'Anjou, king of Naples. The king is supposed to have had an illegitimate daughter, Maria de Conti d'Aquino. Although proof of her existence has not been established, she is said to have been Boccaccio's mistress and to have inspired a great deal of his work. She is, perhaps, the Fiammetta immortalized in his writings.

Returning to Florence in about 1340, Boccaccio performed various diplomatic services for the city government, and in 1350 he met the celebrated poet and humanist Petrarch, with whom he maintained a close friendship until Petrarch's death in 1374. In 1362 Boccaccio was invited to Naples by a friend, who promised him the patronage of Queen Joanna of that city. A cold reception at the court of the queen led him to seek the hospitality of Petrarch, who was then in Venice (1363). Rejecting Petrarch's offer of a home, however, he returned to his estate in Certaldo (near Florence). Boccaccio's last years, in which he turned to religious meditation, were brightened by his appointment in 1373 as lecturer on Dante. His series of lectures was interrupted by his illness in 1374, and he died the next year.

Boccaccio's most important work is Il Decamerone (Ten Days' Work), which was begun in 1348 and completed in 1353; it was first translated into English, as The Decameron, in 1620. This collection of 100 witty, high-spirited stories is set within a framework: a group of friends, seven women and three men, all “well-bred, of worth and discretion”, to escape an outbreak of the plague have taken refuge in a country villa outside Florence. There they entertain one another over a period of ten days (hence the title) with a series of stories told by each member of the party in turn. Each day's storytelling ends with a canzone, a song for dancing sung by one of the storytellers; these canzoni represent some of Boccaccio's most exquisite lyric poetry. At the conclusion of the 100th tale, the friends return to their homes in the city. The Decameron is the first and finest prose masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance. It is notable for the richness and variety of the tales, which alternate between solemnity and earthy humour, for the brilliance of the craftsmanship, and for its penetrating character analysis. In this work Boccaccio gathered material from many sources: the French fabliau, Greek and Latin classics, folklore, and observations of contemporary Italian life. The Decameron broke away from literary tradition in that, for the first time in the Middle Ages, Boccaccio presented man as the shaper of his own destiny, rather than at the mercy of divine grace.

Boccaccio's other writings include three works thought to be inspired by his love for “Fiammetta”: his first long prose romance Il filocolo (c. 1336), L'amorosa Fiammetta (Amorous Fiammetta, 1343-1344), both stories of rejected lovers; and Il corbaccio (The Old Crow, c. 1354). His Il filostrato (c. 1338) and Teseida (1340-1341) are poems in ottava rima, a verse form he brought to perfection (see Versification). He also wrote a life of Dante, with a commentary on the Divine Comedy, and a number of scholarly, scientific, and poetic works in Latin, including De Claris Mulieribus (Concerning Famous Women, 1360-1374). Among illustrious English writers who were influenced by Boccaccio's works and used them as source material are Geoffrey Chaucer, Shakespeare, and John Dryden. The structure of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, for example, which also employs the frame story device, is modelled on that of The Decameron.