Born: Florence or Certaldo between June and July in 1313. Education: Apprentice in his father’s banking business, Naples, 1327-31; studied canon law, 1331-36. Career: Worked in banking in Naples until 1341; returned to Florence in 1341 and was there during the Black Death, 1348; met Petrarch, q.v., in 1350 and thereafter devoted himself to humanistic scholarship; took minor clerical orders, 1357; active in Florentine public life, and went on several diplomatic missions in the 1350s and 1360s; lectured on Dante, q.v., in Florence, 1373-74. Died: 21 December 1375.
Publications
Collections
Opere latine minori, edited by A.F. Massera. 1928.
Opere, edited by Vittore Branca and others. 12 vols., 1964.
Opere minori in volgare, edited by Mario Marti. 4 vols., 1969-72.
Opere, edited by Cesare Segre. 1980.
Poetry through Typography, compiled by Hermann Zapf, 1993.
Fiction
Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, edited by Cesare Segre, 1966, and by Mario Marti, in Opere minori, 3, 1971; as Amorous Fiammetta, translated by Bartholomew Young, 1587, reprinted 1926; as The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta, edited and translated by Mariangela Causa-Steindler and Thomas Hauch, 1990.
Decameron, edited by Vittore Branca. 1976; as The Decameron, translated anonymously, 1620; numerous subsequent translations including by John Payne, 1866 (revised edition by Charles Singleton, 1984); Richard Aldington, 1930; Frances Winwar, 1930; G.H. McWilliam, 1972; Mark Musa and Peter E. Bondanella, 1977; J.M. Rigg, 1978.
Il filocolo, edited by Antonio Enzo Quaglio. 1967; translated in part as Thirteen Questions of Love, edited by Harry Carter, 1974.
Boccaccio’s First Fiction, edited and translated by Anthony K. Cassel and Victoria Kirkham. 1991.
Plays
L’ameto, edited by Antonio Enzo Quaglio, in Opere, 2. 1964; as L’ameto, translated by Judith Powers Serafini-Sauli. 1985.
Verse
Il filostrato, edited by Vittore Branca, in Opere, 2. 1964; as The Filostrato, translated by N.E. Griffin and A.B. Myrick, 1929; as Il Filostrato: The Story of the Love of Troilo, translated by Hubertis Cummings, 1934. Rime, edited by Vittore Branca. 1958.
Il ninfale fiesolano, edited by Armando Balduino. 1974; as The Nymph of Fiesole, translated by Daniel J. Donno, 1960; as Nymphs of Fiesole, translated by Joseph Tusiani, 1971.
La caccia di Diana, edited by Vittore Branca, in Opere, 1. 1964.
Il Teseida, edited by Alberto Limentani, in Opere, 2. 1964; as The Book of Theseus, translated by Bernadette Marie McCoy, 1974.
L’amorosa visione, edited by Vittore Branca, in Opere, 3. 1964; translated by Robert Hollander, Timothy Hampton, and Margherita Frankel, 1986.
Eclogues, translated by Janet Levarie Smarr. 1987.
Other
Le lettere, edited by Francesco Corazzini. 1877.
Trattatello in laude di Dante, edited by Pier Giorgio Ricci. 1974; translated in The Early Lives of Dante, 1904; as The Life of Dante, translated by Vincenzo Zin Bollettino, 1990.
Il commento alto Divina Commedia e altri scritti intorno a Dante,edited by Domenico Guerri. 4 vols., 1918-26.
De genealogia deorum gentilium [The Genealogies of the Gentile Gods], edited by Vincenzo Romano. 1951; section as Boccaccio on Poetry, translated by Charles Osgood, 1930; as Boccaccio: In Defense of Poetry, edited by Jeremiah Reedy, 1978.
De claris mulieribus, edited by Vittorio Zaccaria. 1967; as Concerning Famous Women, translated by Guido A, Guarino. 1963; as Famous Women, edited and translated by Virginia Brown, 2001.
De casibus virorum illustrium, abridged asThe Fates of Illustrious Men, translated by Louis Hall. 1965. Il corbaccio, edited by Tauno Nurmela. 1968; as The Corbaccio,edited and translated by Anthony K. Cassell, 1975.
Critical Studies:
Boccaccio: A Biographical Study by E. Hutton, 1910; The Life of Giovanni Boccaccio by Thomas C. Chubb, 1930; The Tranquil Heart: Portrait of Giovanni Boccaccio by Catherine Carswell, 1937; Boccaccio by Francis MacManus, 1947; Boccaccio in England from Chaucer to Tennyson by Herbert G. Wright, 1957; Nature and Love in the Middle Ages: An Essay on the Cultural Context of the Decameron by Aldo D. Scaglione, 1963; An Anatomy of Boccaccio’s Style, 1968, and Order from Chaos: Social and Aesthetic Harmonies in Boccaccio’s Decameron, 1982, both by Marga Cottino-Jones; The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the ”Decameron” by Guido Almansi, 1975; Nature and Reason in the Decameron by Robert Hastings, 1975; Critical Perspectives on the Decameron edited by Robert S. Dombrowski, 1976; Boccaccio: The Man and His Works by Vittore Branca, translated by Richard Monges, 1976, and Boccaccio medievale e nuovi studi sul Decameron by Branca, 1986; Boccaccio’s Two Venuses, 1977, and Boccaccio’s Last Fiction: Il Corbaccio, 1989, both by Robert Hollander; Studies on Petrarch and Boccaccio by Ernest H. Wilkins, 1978; An Allegory of Form: Literary Self-Consciousness in the Decameron by Millicent Joy Marcus, 1979; Boccaccio by Thomas G. Bergin, 1981; Five Frames for the Decameron: Communication and Social Systems in the Cornice by Joy Hambuechen Potter, 1982; Giovanni Boccaccio by Judith Powers Serafini-Sauli, 1982; Religion and the Clergy in Boccaccio’s Decameron by Cormac O’Cuilleanain, 1984; Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio by David Wallace, 1985; Boccaccio and Fiammetta: The Narrator as Lover by Janet Levarie Smarr, 1986; The World at Play in Boccaccio’s Decameron by Giuseppe Mazzotta, 1986; Before the Knight’s Tale: Imitation of Classical Epic in Boccaccio’s Teseida by David Anderson, 1988; The Shades of Aeneas: The Imitation of Vergil and the History of Paganism in Boccaccio’s Filostrato, Filocolo and Teseida by James H. MacGregor, 1991; Ambiguity and Illusion in Boccaccio’s Filocolo by Steven Grossvogel, 1992; The Sign of Reason in Boccaccio’s Fiction by Victoria Kirkham, 1993; Boccaccio’s and Chaucer’s Cressida by Laura D. Kellogg, 1995; Boccaccio’s Des cleres et nobles femmes: Systems of Signification in an Illuminated Manuscript by Brigitte Buettner, 1996; Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales by N.S. Thompson, 1996; Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio’s Decameron by Pier Massimo Forni, 1996; Boccaccio’s Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire by Robert Hollander, 1997; Visualizing Boccaccio: Studies on Illustrations of The Decameron, from Giotto to Pasolini by Jill M. Ricketts, 1997; The Ethics of Nature in the Middle Ages: On Boccaccio’s Poetaphysics by Gregory B. Stone, 1998; The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question, edited by Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, 2000; Fabulous Vernacular: Boccaccio’s Filocolo and the Art of Medieval Fiction by Victoria Kirkham, 2001.
Boccaccio’s literary production is characterized by an unusual versatility; his work, both in prose and verse, contains a variety of genres, many of which were pioneer ventures, destined to exercise a powerful influence on succeeding generations. His essay in the field of narrative in verse was La caccia di Diana [Diana's Hunt], an allegory of love, designed, it would seem, to memorialize the glamorous ladies of the Neapolitan court. It is a very ”Dantean” composition, written in terza rima and with numerous echoes of Commedia (The Divine Comedy); it is a trifle but a well-constructed trifle. Of the same period is Il filocolo (Thirteen Questions of Love), a prose romance of Byzantine stamp composed, the author tells us, in honour of his ”Fiammetta,” the Neapolitan siren who charmed and betrayed him. Called by some critics ”the first prose romance in European literature,” Thirteen Questions of Love is long and digressive; although the central characters are of royal blood, the peripatetic plot anticipates the picaresque. For all its rhetoric and prolixity the narrative is well told and the characters in the main believable. This cumbrous initiative was followed by Il filostrato (The Filostrato), telling in ottava rima of the ill-starred love of the Trojan prince Troiolo for the faithless Criseida. It is a skilfully planned composition, set forth with economy, and successful in its depiction of characters; the romantic prince is artfully paired with the worldly Pandaro, his friend and counsellor. Il Teseida (The Book of Theseus), which followed a few years later, is, in spite of its Greek title and background, essentially a medieval work; the ”epic” is actually a love story. All of these early productions reflect the feudal tastes of the Neapolitan court.
A change of inspiration becomes evident in the works written after Boccaccio’s return to Tuscany in 1341. L’ameto is a moralizing allegory, combining prose and verse (as had Dante’s La vita nuova) yet the use of ”frame” to serve as a background for moralizing tales (paradoxically erotic in tone) points to The Decameron. In L’amorosa visione [Vision of Love] (a somewhat confused allegory) the presence of Dante is even more patent. Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta), which follows, is by contrast, original and strikingly ”modern”—one might say timeless. The abandoned Fiammetta, who tells in her own words (in prose) of her misplaced obsession for a false lover, though somewhat prolix, wins our sympathy. In one sense the Fiammetta is a reversion, for the background is Naples. Truly Tuscan, on the other hand, is the charming idyll Il ninfale fiesolano (The Nymph of Fiesoe). With winning simplicity in ottava rima of unpretentious construction, the story is told of a simple shepherd and his beloved ”nymph of Diana” who is in effect a simple contadina.
The Decameron, Boccaccio’s masterpiece, marks a new departure in the author’s trajectory. We deal no more with Trojan princes or even woodland nymphs—we have left Naples for good, and allegory has no part in the author’s intention (though it must be conceded that in the flight of the narrators of the ”frame” from the plague-stricken city one can argue some implications regarding the relation of art to its subject matter). The essential feature of The Decameron is realism; the world of the tales is the world of here and now. The demographic range is wide: it includes not only lords and princes but merchants, bankers, doctors, scholars, peasants, priests, monks—and a surprising number of women. A token of the feminist thrust of the work may be seen in the fact that seven of the ten ”frame characters” or narrators are women. All of the actors in this extensive comedy are presented deftly, with sympathetic tolerance for their motivation and participant relish in their adventures, vicissitudes, and resourceful stratagems. If the work is without didactic intent—”Boccaccio doesn’t want to teach us anything,” the Italian critic Umberto Bosco has justly observed—yet the nature of its substance carries its own implications. The Decameron is democratic, feminist, and au fond optimistic. No doubt heaven is our destination but life can be joyous too, given a certain amount of wit and adaptability. Only in the last day does a kind of medievalism creep in, as the author sets before us a series of exempla, signifying sundry abstract virtues. Yet the narratives told even on that day are set forth with skill and verve and without undue lingering on their moralizing purpose; Griselda, for example, may seem an absurdly morbid creature (as in fact she does to some of the frame characters), but her story is told with a brio that compels the reader’s attention. As entertaining today as when it was written, Boccaccio’s great work both reflects and inspires a new appreciation of the human pilgrimage.
Save for Il corbaccio, a violent misogynistic satire, The Decameron is the last work of a creative nature to issue from Boccaccio’s pen— and the last work in the vernacular as well. Moved by the example of Petrarch, he put aside fiction and turned to exercises in erudition, notably the massive compilation of the De genealogia deorum gentilium [The Genealogies of the Gentile Gods],and the catalogue of rivers, lakes, and mountains, both composed in Latin, as were his Eclogues (Buccolicum Carmen), patently in imitation of his revered master. After The Decameron, too, a certain inner spiritual change is apparent in the hitherto worldly Boccaccio; he took holy orders, and although the instinct for storytelling was still strong—witness La vita di Dante (The Life of Dante) and De claris mulieribus (Concerning Famous Women)—it was clearly affected by his new outlook on life. A letter suggests even a repudiation of The Decameron. His last work, and one of importance to Dantists, was his exposition of The Divine Comedy, a series of lectures given in Florence.
Many of Boccaccio’s creative works are seminal: The Book of Theseus foreshadows the Renaissance epic, The Filostrato has left a trail of progeny ranging from Chaucer through Shakespeare to many contemporary writers. The Nymph of Fiesole has 15th-century echoes. And The Decameron has had many imitators. Boccaccio’s contribution to the literature of the Western world is of impressive and all but unique dimensions.
