Giovanni Boccaccio is best known for being the author of the Decameron, an enormously influential collection of short stories written in Florence ca. 1348-52. He was born in Certaldo (or perhaps Florence) to a banker usually called Boccaccino di Chelino who was employed by the Bardi family. Although we cannot be absolutely certain regarding the year of his birth, Petrarch's mention of being nine years older (Seniles 8.1) would allow us to use 1313 as a reliable hypothesis. In his Amorosa visione (14.42-46), Boccaccio tells us that he was legitimized by his father probably in 1319 or 1320. Of his mother, however, we know next to nothing. The myth of a noble Parisian mother was begun by Boccaccio himself (Filocolo 5.9 and Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine [Comedy of the Florentine Nymphs] 23) and promoted by Filippo Villani in his biography of Boccaccio, but scholars today tend to dismiss the idea as pure legend. While still a young boy, he began his studies with Mazzuoli da Strada, the father of Zanobi da Strada, a classmate and friend who was later to play important roles in the author's life. With Mazzuoli, he learned the rudiments of Latin grammar and came to know the verses of Ovid, a poet who always served as a particular point of reference for him even though his level of admiration was less than constant. Boccaccino also paid for and encouraged his young son to study what amounts to accounting in preparation for his proposed career as a merchant-banker. Boccaccio, however, considered this period of study to have been “six years of unrecoverable wasted time” because he felt he was born to pursue literary endeavours rather than economic successes. During his youth in Florence, Boccaccio's father married Margherita de' Mardoli who, despite not being an ideal step-mother, was a relative of the Dantean Beatrice and likely contributed to our author's fascination with Dante from a young age.
In 1327, Boccaccio left with his father for Naples, which was not only the Angevin capital but also the centre of a culturally lively and enlightening society that left an enduring impression on him. He probably served there as an apprentice to one or more merchants of the Bardi and/or Acciaiuoli clans. More important still was the fact that the successive fourteen years provided Boccaccio with a wide range of experiences upon which he was later to draw in the composition of the Decameron. On account of the Angevins' dependence upon Florentine funds, bankers of his circle were permitted remarkable access to the royal family and the highest levels of society. Consequently, and thanks to his friendship with the influential Niccolò Acciaiuoli, Boccaccio was able to witness first-hand the interaction of all sorts of characters, from prostitutes, sailors and merchants to well-placed clergymen, diplomats and royals. During these years of unprecedented intellectual growth, Boccaccio's father ultimately allowed him to take up the study of canon law, a subject that, though not being much to his liking, proved especially useful because it was at this time that he made the acquaintance of Cino da Pistoia, a renowned lawyer and friend of Dante. Shortly thereafter, Boccaccio began to frequent the Royal Library where he became familiar with the work of the Provençal and French poets, classical authors (especially Vergil, Statius, Apuleius and the historians) and significant medieval writers (such as Bernard Silvestris, Guido delle Colonne and Walter Burley). He additionally deepened his knowledge of vernacular literature, including the Siculo-Tuscan school, the Stil Novo poets (doubtless influenced directly by Cino), Dante and Petrarch. Essential to his academic formation were the years he spent in Naples studying with some of the most eminent scholars of the times: Paolo da Perugia (the royal librarian whose encyclopaedic studies, now lost, were fundamental to Boccaccio's later encyclopaedic studies), Paolo dell'Abaco (renowned for his scientific contributions), Andalò del Negro (esteemed astrologer) and Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro (a master of rhetoric who perhaps introduced Boccaccio to Valerius Maximus and provided his primary Augustinian influence). He also then met Graziolo dei Bambaglioli, whose commentary on Dante's Inferno was certainly to have been a mainstay in Boccaccio's personal library, as well as Barlaam, a Calabrian monk who seems to have been the first to intrigue Boccaccio with the mysteries of Greek language and literature. Boccaccio described this period of assiduous study in an epistle to Franceschino de' Bardi (1340), in which he playfully imitates the Neapolitan dialect and thereby furnishes scholars with one of the earliest extant records of its linguistic characteristics.
Perhaps not coincidentally, it was after Boccaccio's father had departed for business in Paris in 1332 that he began to write in earnest. It is probable that some of his earliest efforts were undertaken at this time, including the Latin Allegoria mitologica (an abbreviated series of Ovidian metamorphoses) and Elegia di Costanza (epitaphs) as well as some lyric poems in Italian. Around 1334 – and certainly no later than 1339 – he wrote the Caccia di Diana [Diana's Hunt], a poem made up of eighteen cantos written in hendecasyllabic terza rimathat tells the story of numerous young ladies from the highest levels of Neapolitan society who are called to join Diana's court but who, at last, select Venus as the object of their light-hearted veneration. While not particularly noteworthy in itself, the Caccia already showcases several characteristic interests of the author that will be revisited and refined in later works, among which the civilizing nature of Love, literature written ostensibly for a feminine audience, references to and adaptations of classical models, meticulous concentration on allegory and persistent attention to realism. His first great prose piece, the Filocolo, was also begun in this period, perhaps as early as 1336. It is a lengthy composition of five books containing in all more than 450 chapters in which are recounted the ill-omened adventures of Florio and Biancifiore, lovers taken from Byzantine and Old French romance. Into the basic fabric of his tale, Boccaccio weaves elements adapted from Ovid, Vergil, Statius, Plautus, Valerius Maximus, Apuleius, Dante, hagiography and contemporary chronicle, all set against the backdrop of Christian vs. pagan culture. The “Questions of Love”, interpolated into book 4, neatly foreshadow the narrative structure of the Decameron and provide abundant inspiration for several later writers including Chaucer, Ariosto and Milton. The Filostrato, a narrative poem written in stanzas of ottava rima [octaves] (widely considered to be Boccaccio's invention), was presumably written about this time as well. Drawn like the Filocolo partially from Old French traditions, the story is set at the time of the Trojan War and relates the tale of Troilo and Criseida. Much of the background material is taken from Guido delle Colonne and Benoît de Sainte-Maure but its elaboration is far more fluid and compelling than its sources. Among those most notably influenced by the Filocolo is Chaucer, who made profound use of it for his Troilus and Criseyde. The last work whose inception (if not entire composition) can be attributed to Boccaccio's early years in Naples is the Teseida delle nozze di Emilia. Intended to be the first epic poem in Italian, the Teseida is based chiefly upon Statius' Thebaid but is widely considered to be vastly inferior. If this literary experiment cannot be said to have enjoyed unique success in the epic genre, it remains nonetheless quite valuable for two aspects in particular: its use of the self-gloss in which Boccaccio helps his readers to understand important allusions and references (much as he will do three decades later for Dante's Inferno) and the lasting influence produced directly upon Chaucer's “Knight's Tale” and indirectly upon dozens of others. These last three books were the first to contain references to Fiammetta, the senhal of the woman calqued upon Dante's Beatrice and Petrarch's Laura.
Only months before Petrarch was crowned poet laureate in 1341 (an event Boccaccio commemorated in a short Latin biography), Boccaccino was recalled to Florence and took his son with him. The first of Boccaccio's Tuscan compositions, written in 1341-42 or so, is the Commedia delle ninfe fiorentine. This book, also known as the Ameto, is heavily indebted to Dante. Like the Vita nova, it contains a mixture of poetry and prose and, like the Divina Commedia, presents complex allegorical material intertwined in terza rima with references to historical events and with multiple plot lines. The Amorosa visione, next in chronological order, was written before 1343 and was even more thoroughly steeped in elaborate allegorical intricacy. In some ways, this work may be considered to feature the very best results of Boccaccio's studies. Though relatively short, the especially erudite poem constructed in terza rima is fashioned from a wide range of sources, most notably Dante, Boethius, Ovid and the Roman de la Rose, and includes the first appearance in literature of the motif of the “triumph” (a parade of historical, literary and mythological personages that lends contextualization to the protagonist's moral journey). This technique, later taken up by Petrarch in his own Triumphi, allowed Boccaccio to employ his encyclopaedic learning as an effective canvas upon which to depict with wide strokes the drama of human experience. The Elegia di madonna Fiammetta, written about the same time, is a remarkable departure in tone and purpose from Boccaccio's earlier efforts. This relatively brief piece of prose, set in contemporary Florence, is the realistic and comparatively earthy first-person narrative of the amorous travails and ultimate disappointment of a woman named Fiammetta. His principal sources, the minor works of Ovid and the tragedies of Seneca, are utilized in such a natural and unaffected manner that the sad story has often been considered the first psychological novel of European letters.
By 1345, Boccaccio, still unable to find suitable employment in Florence, moved on to Ravenna and two years later to Forlì where he finally managed to secure a position of prestige under Francesco Ordelaffi. It was at this time that his relationship with Acciaiuoli began to deteriorate and that he assumed the pro-Hungarian stance illustrated in his third eclogue, known as Faunus. During these years, he wrote the Ninfale fiesolano, a bucolic story of a young shepherd who falls in love with an enchanting nymph. By the spring of 1348, Boccaccio, disillusioned by political events, had returned to Florence in time to witness the wrath of the Black Death in full force. This catastrophic event gave rise to the composition of his masterpiece, the one hundred tales known as the Decameron. In the fiction of the frame, ten young Florentines set out from the city for the countryside where they distract themselves from the disastrous effects of the plague with ten days of storytelling. Arguably the most influential collection of novelle (short stories) in European literature, the Decameron portrays the full spectrum of human experience in a remarkably persuasive and entertaining style. Before the completion, probably in 1352, of his masterpiece's first draft, Boccaccio began his monumental encyclopaedia of mythology known as the Genealogie deorum gentilium [Genealogies of the Gentile Gods], upon which he laboured until his final months, as well as his biography of Dante, commonly called the Trattatello. The year 1350 saw a significant confluence of events; Boccaccio, as the Florentine representative, returned to Ravenna with the city's gift of ten gold florins to Dante's daughter and only a few months later received Petrarch, whom he had for so long admired, as the latter made his way to Rome on his jubilee pilgrimage. These two experiences in a way united the three most important authors of medieval Italian literature and profoundly influenced the remainder of Boccaccio's literary career.
In the course of the following few years, Boccaccio carried out several high-level political missions on behalf of the Florentine commune and enjoyed an unprecedented measure of professional success. At some point around 1355 (though some scholars put the date a decade later), Boccaccio completed the Corbaccio, his fiction in the vernacular. The highly enigmatic prose work, deeply indebted thematically to Ovid's Remedia amoris, was Boccaccio's contribution to the widely popular misogynistic genre known as the Querelles des femmes. Oddly enough, despite its ambivalent modern reception, the text enjoyed notable popularity and diffusion throughout the fifteenth century. During this period, the friendship he established with Petrarch continued undiminished, but he was profoundly affected by the decay of his relationship with his childhood friend, Zanobi da Strada, and the loss in 1355 of his daughter Violante (none of his five children survived to adulthood), touchingly remembered in his eleventh eclogue, Olympia. Around 1357, Boccaccio took religious orders, but we do not know of precisely which sort. It was at approximately this time that he began to write two Latin studies of a scholarly nature: the De casibus virorum illustrium (a history of illustrious men) and the De montibus, silvis, fontibus et de nominibus maris liber (a geographical dictionary), finished respectively in 1363 and 1364.
In 1360, Boccaccio helped Leontius Pilatus to be appointed professor of Greek at the newly-established University of Florence and, despite his personal dislike for the man, hosted him in his own home while he strove to learn as much about ancient Greek language and literature as possible. In December of the same year, an unsuccessful coup in Florence brought the execution or exile of several of Boccaccio's friends and temporarily ended his political career. He returned then to Certaldo and dedicated himself to the second draft of the Trattatello and to the perfection of the Amorosa visione. In 1362, Boccaccio returned to Ravenna, a trip that was exceedingly distressing for reasons that remain unknown, and encountered Gioacchino Ciani, a monk entrusted with a message from the Carthusian Pietro Petroni who warned that Boccaccio and Petrarch would soon die if they persisted in their humanistic studies. While there is no reason to believe, as some scholars have asserted, that this event occasioned a long-lasting spiritual crisis, the omen and Boccaccio's reaction to it (cf. Petrarch's Seniles 1.5) do help us to understand the forcefulness behind the anti-humanistic movement directed against men like Boccaccio, Petrarch and Albertino Mussato as well as the humanists' own retaliation against what they felt were dangerous, regressive intellectual currents, examples of which we find both in the final two books of the Genealogie and the first canto of the Esposizioni sopra la Comedìa di Dante. Later in 1362, Boccaccio was pleased to receive an invitation to return to Naples where he hoped finally to receive a position and the recognition that had always eluded him there. He straightaway set out, carrying not only his newly-completed De mulieribus claris (a catalogue of notable women that produced lasting effects on several later authors) and the Vita sanctissimi patris Petri Damiani (a biography of Peter Damian), but also his entire library, in itself a reflection of his optimism. Once again, however, he was treated with disdain (if we are to believe his 1363 letter to Francesco Nelli). The next year, he completed the final version of the Trattatello.
By 1365, Boccaccio's political reputation had been restored and he was again given several notable charges, including an ambassadorship to Urban V in Avignon. In 1366-67, Boccaccio carried out another ambassadorship to the Papal See and in 1368 visited Petrarch in Padua, the last time the two would meet in person. By 1372, he had begun substantial stylistic revisions to the Decameron and, by 1374, had given final form to his Buccolicum carmen. In October of 1373, the city of Florence awarded Boccaccio the first position of lector Dantis, a responsibility whose duties consisted in the delivery of public readings and interpretations of Dante's Divina Commedia. These lengthy lectures, which were interrupted the following year by illness at the beginning of the seventeenth canto of the Inferno, came to be known as the Esposizioni sopra la Comedìa. Though written over the course of only a few months and never revised, they were in some ways the crowning achievement of Boccaccio's intellectual career, inasmuch as in them he combined, in a style often reminiscent of the prose of the Decameron, his lifelong love for Dante with the fruit of more than four decades of erudition. He passed away on December 21, 1375, and was buried in Certaldo.
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Citation: Papio, Michael. "Giovanni Boccaccio". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 January 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=460, accessed 01 April 2025.]
