Biography of Giovanni Boccaccio
Boccaccio was an Italian
poet and scholar. He is best remembered as the author of the Decameron.
He laid the foundations for the humanism of the Renaissance. He also
raised vernacular literature to the level and status of the classics of
antiquity. Boccaccio was the son of a Tuscan merchant. His
name was Boccaccio di Chellino and he was called Boccaccino. Boccaccio’s
mother was probably French. When he was a child he lived in Florence.
His father had no sympathy for his interests in writing and sent him to
Naples to learn business in about 1329. Boccaccio also studied canon
law. He mixed with the learned men of the court and the friends and
admirers of Petrarch. Through them, he came to know the work of Petrarch
himself. In Naples were the years of Boccaccio’s love for Fiammetta.
The character of Fiammetta appears in the Decameron and who somewhat resembles
Fiammetta herself. Probably in 1340, Boccaccio was recalled to Florence
by his father. His father was involved in bankruptcy of the Bardi.
Boccaccio brought a store of literary work already completed with him from
Naples. La caccia di Diana (“Diana’s Hunt”) was his earliest work.
It was a short poem in terza rima and had no great merit. Two more important
works are Il filocolo and Il filostrato. Il filocolo was a work in
five books on the loves and adventures of Florio and Biancofiore.
Il filostrato was a short poem in ottava rima telling the story of Troilus
and the faithless Criseida. The Teseida is a poem in which the wars of
Theseus are a background for the love of two friends. The ten or
twelve years following Boccaccio’s return to Florence are the period when
he fully matured. From 1341 to 1345 Boccaccio worked on Il ninfale
d’Ameto (“Ameto’s Story of the Nymphs”) which was prose and in terza rima.
L’amorosa visione (“The Amorous Vision”) was a mediocre allegorical poem
of 50 short cantos in terza rima. Boccaccio wrote many more wonderful pieces.
He was at Ravenna between 1345 and 1346, at Forli in 1347, in Florence
during the ravages of the Black Death in 1348, and in Florence again in
1349.