Giovanni Boccaccio

The Italian poet, Giovanni Boccaccio was most probably born in Tuscany, the illegitimate son of a merchant of Certaldo, who launched him on a commercial career, during which he spent some time at Paris. As a young man, Boccaccio abandoned commerce and the study of canon law. At Naples he began to write stories in verse and prose, mingled in courtly society, and fell in love with  the noble lady whom he made famous under the name of Fiammetta. Up to 1350 Boccaccio lived at Florence and at Naples, producing prose tales, pastorals, and poems. The Teseide is a version in ottava rima of the medieval romance of Palamon and Arcite, which was partly translated by Chaucer in the Knight's Tale, and is the subject of Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen. The Filostrato deals with the loves of Troilus and Cressida, also in great part translated by Chaucer. After 1350 Boccaccio became a diplomat entrusted with important public affairs, and a scholar devoted to the new learning. During this period, in which he formed a lasting friendship with Francesco Petrarch, Boccaccio, as Florentine ambassador, visited Rome, Ravenna, Avignon and Brandenburg.

In 1358 he completed his great work, the Decameron, begun some ten years before. During the plague at Florence in 1348, seven ladies and three gentlemen left the city for a country villa and over a period of ten days told one hundred stories. In graceful Italian, Boccaccio selected the plots of his stories from the popular fiction of his day, and especially from the fabliaux which had passed into Italy from France, the matter being medieval while the form is classical. Boccaccio's originality lay in his narrative skill and in the rich poetical sentiments which adorns his borrowed materials. The two great tendencies which run through European literature, the classical and the romantic, work together in the Decameron.

The influence of the Decameron on European literature has been lasting, not merely in Italy, but in France and England. Chaucer and Shakespeare both borrowed from it. The Decameron has also been the subject of poems by Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, Swinburne and George Eliot.

During his last years Boccaccio lived principally in retirement at Certaldo, and would have entered into holy orders, moved by repentance for the follies of his youth, had he not been dissuaded by Petrarch. Boccaccio died at Certaldo, December 21, 1375.

Influence on Geoffrey Chaucer

Boccaccio is, with the older Dante and the contemporary Francis Petrarch, one of the three great poets of the Italian fourteenth century. Geoffrey Chaucer knew the works of all three, and it has been speculated that he may even have met both Petrarch and Boccaccio

Of the three, Boccaccio was the one on whom Chaucer drew most heavily, and in some sense strove to emulate; Chaucer based Troilus on Boccaccio's Il Filostrato and his Knight's Tale on Il Teseida, and Chaucer's elaborate high style owes something to Boccaccio's attempt to emulate the classics in his own vernacular. In his Monk's Tale Chaucer drew on Boccaccio's Latin works, his account of the falls of famous men and his book of illustrious women. A number of the Canterbury tales tell stories that also appear in Boccaccio's Decameron.

There is a slim possibility that Chaucer met Boccaccio, who was living in Certaldo, just south of Florence, in the 1370's when Chaucer was in Italy. Donald Howard, in his biography (Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World, New York, 1987 [PR1905.H58 1987]), speculates that the two did indeed meet in Certaldo; Derek Pearsall (The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, A Critical Biography, Cambridge, MA, 1992 [PR 1905.P43 1992]) is more cautious.

Chaucer must have known about the Decameron, though there is no proof of this, since he never quotes it directly. Most likely, he knew the work, had even read it, but did not own a copy. Yet comparing Chaucer's and Boccaccio's treatments of the same traditional stories yields interesting contrasts in their views of literature and of the world.

Boccaccio's Life and Works

1313
Boccaccio is born (June or July) in Certaldo or in Florence to an unknown woman and Boccaccino di Chellino, a wealthy merchant who officially and without hesitation recognizes him.

1319-20
Boccaccino marries Margherita de' Mardoli, noblewoman. Birth of Boccaccio's step-brother, Francesco.

1327
Boccaccio travels to Naples with his father, agent of the Bardi Bank.

1330
Possibly attends lessons of Cino da Pistoia, jurist-poet and friend of Dante and Petrarch, and takes up the study of canon law.

1332
Boccaccino moves to Paris. Giovanni, with greater freedom, pursues his humanistic interests in literature as is attested by his first essays in Latin (the Elegia di Costanza and the Allegoria mitologica, both certainly composed before 1334) and his first vernacular poetry.

1333-34
Boccaccio's first exposure to the poetry of Petrarch.

1334-37
Composition of La caccia di Diana.

1336-39
Boccaccio finishes the Filocolo. During this time, he ends his period of study.

1339
Giovanni writes the following Latin epistles: The Crepor celsitudinis, dedicated to Carlo, duke of Durazzo; the Mavortis milex, dedicated to Petrarch; the Nereus amphitribus and the Sacre famis, to unidentified friends.

1339-40
Composition of the Teseida.

1340
The Filostrato is completed (other scholars fix the date as circa 1335) between fall and winter.

1340-41
Boccaccio returns to Florence.

1341-42
Composition of the Comedia Ninfe (also known as the Commedia delle ninfe fiorentine and later with the uncertain title Ninfale d'Ameto) dedicated to Niccolò di Bartolo Del Buono. First draft of De vita et moribus domini Francisci Petracchi.

1342-43
First version of the Amorosa visione.

1343-44
Composition of the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta.

1344-45
Composition of the Ninfale fiesolano.

1347-48
Boccaccio travels to Forlì and resides at the court of Francesco Ordelaffi where he exchanges sonnets and carmina with the grammarian Checco di Meletto Rossi. It is during this period that Boccaccio first learns news of Dante's last years. Composition of the first eclogues which will later be collected in Buccolicum carmen.

1348
Florence suffers the initial effects of the Black Death which takes the lives of his father, step-mother and numerous friends.

1349-51
Composition of the Decameron...

1350
First meeting with Petrarch in Florence. Work begins on the Genealogia deorum gentilium, a work which is not finished until 1374.

1351
Boccaccio moves to Padua where he again meets Petrarch. He joins the court of Louis of Bavaria as embassador from the city-state of Florence. The first draft of the Trattatello in laude di Dante reaches completion.

1355
Boccaccio returns to Naples. Earliest feasible date of the second draft of the Amorosa visione which is definitively completed in 1360. Work begins on the De casibus virorum illustrium and the De montibus, silvis, fontibus et de nominibus maris liber finished respectively in 1363 and 1364.

1357
Boccaccio, in Ravenna, probably receives the Invective contra medicum from Petrarch.

1359
Third meeting with Petrarch, this time in Milan. Boccaccio named ambassador to Lombardy, perhaps at the court of Bernabò Visconti.

1360
First complete version of the De casibus and first abridged edition of the Trattatello. Pope Innocent VI inducts Boccaccio into the clergy. In an aborted coup d'état in Florence, several of Boccaccio's friends and acquaintances are implicated, some of whom (including Niccolò di Bartolo Del Buono and others) are subsequently executed. For the next four years, Boccaccio receives no further official Florentine appointments.

1361
Boccaccio withdraws to Certaldo. Work begins on De mulieribus claris.

1361-62
Return, for unidentified reasons, to Ravenna. Here he collects information regarding San Pier Damiani for Petrarch who is working on De vita solitaria.

1362
Definitive version of the De mulieribus. Composition of Vita sanctissimi patris Petri Damiani.

1363
Following a serious crisis of faith, Boccaccio dedicates himself exclusively to spiritual pursuits. He travels again to Naples but stays there only for a relatively short period on account of his luke warm reception. After returning to Florence, he goes to Padua to see Petrarch but eventually meets him in Venice where the latter had moved. In July Boccaccio proceeds to Certaldo. The final version of the Genealogie is brought to its conclusion.

1364-65
Boccaccio engages in an enduring epistolary debate with Petrarch on compositions in the vernacular.

1365
Travels to the papal court of Urban V in Avignon as Florentine ambassador. Composition of the Corbaccio. Boccaccio dedicates himself to the second abridged edition of the Trattatello.

1367
Visit to Venice where Boccaccio does not have the opportunity to meet with Petrarch but does find Petrarch's daughter and son-in-law. Boccaccio takes ambassadorship to the papal court in Rome.

1368
Meeting with Petrarch in Padua around whom many intellectuals and literary figures have gathered.

1369-70
Boccaccio oversees the publication of the Buccolicum carmen.

1370-71
After a last trip to Naples, Boccaccio retires to Certaldo.

1372
Boccaccio is increasingly troubled by obesity, and also by a form of dropsy which impedes his movement, together with attacks of scabies and high fevers.

1373
Dedication of the definitive version of the De casibus to Mainardo Cavalcanti. Continuation of revisions of the Genealogie. Boccaccio is entrusted by Florence to conduct a series of readings and lectures on the Divina Commedia.

1374
In a state of financial troubles and ailing health, Boccaccio returns to Certaldo where he learns of Petrarch's death. The passing of his long-time friend inspires the last sonnet of his mature poems. Work continues on the Genealogie.

1375
Boccaccio dies on December 21 at his home in Certaldo.

(G.M., M.P.) Adapted from: Muscetta, Carlo. "Giovanni Boccaccio". Letteratura italiana Laterza. Bari: Laterza, 1989. Ferroni, Giulio. Storia della letteratura italiana vol. I "Dalle origini al Quattrocento" Turin: Einaudi, 1991.

13th Century

In the 1200s the Italian peninsula was divided into numerous autonomous states with an extreme variety of political institutions and juridical structures, particularly manifest in the relationships between city-states and surrounding territories. (Florence, for example, which possessed the greatest political and financial strength, controlled a rather limited region and was in constant strife with neighbors such as Arezzo, Pistoia, Lucca, Pisa and Siena.) Indeed, areas of influence and jurisdiction often overlapped in the same centers. Even the smallest social groups had their own specific identity and a certain measure of autonomy. What is more, each individual political entity tended to create its own institutions and acted in accord with or aggressively against other groups. The extreme complexity of such relationships makes it difficult to extrapolate any general socio-political reality of thirteenth-century Italian city-states as a whole. The wars and skirmishes between city-states, individual factions and feudal powers were innumerable. The parties which were in contention over power centers often tended toward mutual annihilation: the losers were exiled, their goods confiscated, their homes destroyed; but in exile, in order to recuperate their power, they made alliances with parties of nearby cities and waged war against their own fatherland. Such behavior created incessant chains of violence and cruelty.

In the first phase of conflict between Frederick II and the Church, two parties formed throughout Italy. These two parties, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, extensively influenced European policy and helped to characterize the whole of the century's history. The motivations underlying the formation of alliances within the two groups, however, cannot be easily summarized due to the idiosyncratic and often contradictory motives of the combatants which ranged from dynastic pride to personal desire for revenge, from economical reasons to political strategies. Often, in the centers in which one of the factions was beaten and utterly destroyed, new factions would spring up among the winners and the fighting would break out anew, bringing even further destruction.

In addition to the Church-Empire dichotomy, the struggle between the classes contributed to foster antagonism between rivals as well. In these confrontations, the established nobility (the magnati, or the grandi ) was pitted against the emerging class of artisans and merchants (the popolo ) who aimed to do away with the privileges and institutions of the nobles and to assume full political power to the complete exclusion of the landed aristocracy. Moreover, the division between merchants and nobles does not wholly coincide with any specific factional lines given the highly heterogeneous nature of ambitions and aspirations. The groups which fought against one another did so largely within the sphere of the feudal tradition and aligned themselves according to shared goals, traditions and hierarchies considered by the participants to be indisputable. In late thirteenth-century Florence, where social mobility was markedly healthier, these divisions lent particular strength to the nascent popolo which consequently elaborated innovative institutions.

The 14th Century

In this period, Europe underwent a ruinous economic and social depression which arrested the development of urban progress and imposed new forms of organization in social life. This process is exceedingly tortuous: it varies from nation to nation and presents complications and contradictions which are particular to Italy. Numerous famines interrupted the rhythm of agricultural production and the general state of resultant malnutrition and physical weakness facilitated the diffusion of illnesses and epidemics. The first wave of the Black Plague, carried to Europe from the East by rats stowed away on merchant ships, lasted from 1348 to 1351. Successive waves of the plague took the lives of roughly one third of the population in Southern Europe.

From the middle of the century onward, this significant reduction in the number of laborers and professionals occasioned a severe collapse in the financial structure of the region. In fact, the state of general economic insecurity was accentuated by wars which added their destructive effects to those brought on by famine and plague. The recession struck Italy just when the urban and mercantile civilization had reached its highest point of development and the merchants of the principal cities of the peninsula had acquired control of the most important international markets.

The result of this series of catastrophes was, however, less a complete collapse than it was the onset of a period of relative stagnation which provided the merchants with a more energetic consciousness of their capability to survive in the face of grave misfortune. They began to consider themselves more and more as a fundamental part of the social fabric, maintaining at once privileged relationships with the aristocracy and the city nobility.

From the local wars and epidemics that continued one on the heels of another throughout the century, a new system of government was born. The formation of this original institution advanced in equal measure with the progressive decline in the city-state system in Northern and Central Italy and with the diffusion of Signorie, regional governing bodies. This process had already taken shape in the previous century but was accelerated by the economic depression which rendered the city-state structure increasingly more fragile. These new governments grew up around wealthy, landed individuals and soon expanded to include the neighboring countryside.