Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian poet, writer, and scholar of great relevance during humanism in the 14th century. Writing in the vernacular - vulgar language - and not in Latin, Boccaccio, together with Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca, helped to promote the use of Tuscan as a legitimate language for poetic literature.
Humanism was a literary movement of transition between troubadourism and classicism that marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age in Europe. It brought ideological, social, cultural, and psychological transformations.
The language of humanism is rational, historical, political, and theatrical. It is based on the appreciation of human beings and the psychological universe of the characters. Palace poetry, historical chronicles and theatrical texts were the themes most used by humanist writers.
Boccaccio and the Renaissance
When Boccaccio was born, Dante Alighieri, despite being exiled since 1300, already dominated the culture of Florence, the city that was the cradle of the Renaissance. Dedicating himself to the composition of the Divine Comedy, Dante would only finish it in the year of his death (1321). Boccaccio's origins lie with Florentine merchants, and his first language is vulgar Tuscan.
Boccaccio was a Renaissance person in almost every way. His humanism comprised not only classical studies and the attempt to rediscover and reinterpret ancient texts, but also the attempt to elevate literature in modern languages, leveling it with classical literature.
He advanced further than Petrarch in this direction, not only because he sought to dignify prose and poetry, but also because he ennobled everyday experience, tragic and comic. The same attention to popular and medieval themes characterized Italian culture in the second half of the 15th century; without Boccaccio, the literary peak of the Italian Renaissance would be historically incomprehensible.
Boccaccio's interest in the ancient world came to the fore with his collection of biographies about notable women of antiquity, De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women), compiled from 1360 to 1374. The search for "lost" Latin manuscripts in obscure monastic libraries, his interest in human affairs in Decameron, his innovation using ottava rima, and his promotion of the vernacular (vulgar language) in prose, were all reasons why he came to be considered one of the founders of Renaissance Humanism and one of the Three Crowns of Florence (Dante and Petrarch the other two).
The Black Death as inspiration for Decameron
In 1348, the Black Death swept through Florence. Thousands of people died, including Boccaccio's seven-year-old daughter Violante. In The Decameron, Boccaccio gives a famous and lengthy description of the Black Death that took the lives of his daughter, her father, her stepmother, and many of her friends. The narrative provides valuable contemporary information about the symptoms of the plague victims and the social and health consequences of a pandemic that devastated many European cities, towns, and villages. |
The work became the standard by which all subsequent prose literature, in Italy and abroad, was judged. There were certain critics who found some of the stories narrated in the book very vulgar. For this reason, it was placed on the Catholic Church's list of prohibited books in the mid-16th century. However, talking about its most obscene elements did not diminish interest in it.
Decameron is a collection of one hundred stories spread across a group of ten friends, seven women and three men. To escape the plague outbreak, they flee to a charming village near Florence. There, each member of the group can become king or queen for a day and dictate how others spend their leisure time for ten days in a row.
Both the king and queen decide the theme of the ten stories that each member must tell. At the end of each day, one of the accountants sings a dance canzone. The songs include some of Boccaccio's best lyrics. There is also an expert theme, centered on the way of life of the refined bourgeoisie, which combines respect for convention with an open-minded attitude to personal behavior.
The mix of comedy and tragedy shows people who follow certain conventions but who do not judge personal lifestyle choices. The characters like an obscene story, for example, but they are not immoral.
Many of the stories in the Decameron derive from medieval folklore (from Europe and the Islamic world). It is humans overcoming the whims of fate and moving on with their lives in the best way possible. This theme can explain the timeless aspect of the literary work. All human life, with its disagreements, feelings, death and overcoming, is narrated there, as in a fresco. We go from degradation to elevation. Nothing human is foreign to him. A new world is born, and a new life.
There is the love of the knight condemned to pursue, kill, and eviscerate (remove or take out the viscera) the woman who had despised his enthusiastic advances. In the 15th century, this story would serve as a theme for the painter Sandro Botticelli. Combined with realism and the often licentious and sensual tone, it motivated the harshest criticism from religious authorities and all types of censorship.
The prefaces to the individual days and stories and certain passages of special magnificence based on classical models, with their select vocabulary and elaborate periods, attract the attention of literary critics.
[The plague] showed its first signs in men and women alike by swellings in the groin or armpits, some of which grew to the size of a common apple, and others to the size of an egg (about), and the people called them gavoccioli (bulbous). And from the two parts of the body already mentioned, in a very short time the said deadly gavoccioli began to spread indiscriminately over all parts of the body; so after this the symptoms of the disease changed into black or livid spots appearing on the arms and thighs, and on all parts of the body - sometimes there were large ones, and at other times several small ones scattered all over. And just as the gavoccioli were originally, and still are, a very definite indication of impending death, so in like manner these spots came to mean the same thing to those who contracted them. Neither doctor nor medicine could do anything to cure this disease... So many corpses arrived in front of a church every day and every hour the amount of sacred ground for burials was certainly insufficient for the ancient custom of giving each body its individual place. (Decameron, trans. Musa & Bondanella) |
But there is also another Boccaccio: the expert in the spoken word and of fast, vivid, tense narrative, free from the proliferation of ornaments. These two aspects of the Decameron made it the source of Italian literary prose for centuries to come. Due to its style, it is the most perfect example of classical Italian prose. His influence on Renaissance literature throughout Europe was enormous.
Relevant Decameron reviews
The influential 19th-century critic Francesco De Sanctis considered the Decameron to be a “Human Comedy” in succession to Dante's Divine Comedy and classified Boccaccio as the pioneer of a new moral order supplanting that of the European Middle Ages. However, this view is no longer tenable since the Middle Ages can no longer be presented as having been mystical or concerned with God and heavenly salvation in contrast to a Renaissance concerned only with the human.
Furthermore, Boccaccio's work is medieval in matter, form, and taste, at least in its starting point. What is new is the spirit with which Boccaccio treats his themes and forms. Deliberately, for the first time in the Middle Ages, Boccaccio shows man struggling with fortune and learning to overcome it.
To be truly noble, a man must accept life as it is, without bitterness. He must accept the consequences of his own actions, however contrary to his expectations or even tragic they may be.
Man, to realize his own earthly happiness, must limit his desire to what is humanly possible and renounce the absolute without regret. Boccaccio insists on both man's powers and his inescapable limitations, without reference to the possible intervention of divine grace.
A sense of spiritual realities and an assertion of moral values underlying the frivolity of even the most licentious passages are features of his work that modern criticism has brought to light and that make it impossible to regard him merely as an obscene scoffer or a sensual cynic.
Is the author presenting his own points of view in his characters, in his fictional stories, in both, or in neither? This is a complicated and age-old question of fiction writing.
Decameron - Structure of the work
Opening and Day 1 - The somber tones, in which the plague and the moral and social chaos that accompanies it are grandly described, contrast sharply with the sparkling vivacity of the first day, spent almost entirely in wit, contention, and the playful atmosphere of intrigue that characterizes the tales of adventure or disappointment related on Days 2 and 3. Day 4 - The somber note returns, with stories of unhappy love. Day 5 - Brings some relief, though it does not entirely dispel the echo of solemnity, by giving happy conclusions to love stories that do not go well at first. Day 6 - The gaiety of Day 1 is reintroduced and forms the opening to the great comic score, on Days 7, 8, 9, which are given over to laughter and trickery. Finally, on Day 10, all the themes of the previous days are raised to a high note, the impure made pure and the commonplace made heroic. |
The meeting between Boccaccio and Petrarch
Of far more lasting importance than official honors were Boccaccio's first meeting with Petrarch in Florence in 1350. This meeting helped to bring about a decisive change in Boccaccio's literary activity. He revered the older man as his master. Petrarch proved to be a calm advisor and a dependable helper. Together, through the exchange of books, news, and ideas, the two men laid the foundations for the humanist reconquest of classical antiquity.
They did not always agree on every issue. Boccaccio, for example, criticized Petrarch for working with city-state rulers who were politically against Florence. Boccaccio was also genuinely concerned with creating a partially fabricated Florentine tradition of new literature with Dante Alighieri at its heart, a project that did not interest Petrarch, who did not get along very well with Dante.
While the themes of chivalry and love in these works had long been familiar in court circles, Boccaccio enriched them with the fruits of his own acute observation of royal life and sought to present them nobly and illustriously by a display of learning and rhetorical ornament to point of making his Italian worthy of comparison with the monuments of Latin literature.
He was also the one who elevated the ottava rima, the verse meter of popular minstrels, to literary dignity, which would eventually become the characteristic vehicle of Italian verse.
Literary focus in humanist scholarship
After Decameron, Boccaccio changed his literary focus to subjects considered more important. In fact, he tended to downplay his achievement, preferring to follow the trends of what became known as Renaissance Humanism, which is the study of classical texts and their relevance to contemporary life.
Fiammetta, the idealized muse
Fiammetta, Giovanni Boccaccio's muse, is an idealized figure present in works such as Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta and Decameron. The name, which means "little flame", symbolizes the passion that inspired the author. It is believed that she represents Maria d'Aquino, the supposed illegitimate daughter of King Robert of Anjou, with whom Boccaccio may have had a real or platonic affair. Described as beautiful, intelligent, and captivating, Fiammetta embodies the ideal of courtly love. In Elegia, her anguish over a lost love highlights innovative emotional aspects. She symbolizes romantic love and suffering, which profoundly influenced Renaissance literature. |
Focused on Latin, he devoted himself to humanist scholarship rather than imaginative or poetic creation. His encyclopedia De genealogia deorum gentilium (On the genealogy of the gods of the Gentiles) with 728 entries, was completed in the 1360s. It was the first text of the Classical Renaissance to give weight to Greek literature and the Greek language and was widely used by later Renaissance writers. Medieval in structure, but with a humanist spirit, the work was continually corrected and revised until the author's death.
This shift from writing works of fiction to educational works was probably due to his correspondence and friendship with Petrarch. Boccaccio once sent him a letter saying that he had burned some of his own poetry after comparing it unfavorably to his friend's.
The exact sources of Boccaccio's knowledge of the ancient Greek world are unknown, but it is likely that he acquired the knowledge through his close friendship with Paolo of Perugia, a medieval collector of ancient myths and tales.
Profound personal and literary changes
The meeting with Petrarch, however, was not the only cause of the change in Boccaccio's writing. A premature weakening of his physical strength and disappointments in love may also have contributed to this. Some of these occurrences would explain how Boccaccio, having always written in praise of women and love, suddenly came to write the bitterly misogynistic Corbaccio.
Furthermore, there are signs that he may have begun to feel religious scruples. Amid the Chartreuse mountains, in the French Alps, lies the Grande Chartreuse monastery. There live Catholic monks of the Carthusian order who avoid contact with the outside world and focus on contemplation and prayer. Petrarch describes how, in 1362, the Carthusian monk Pietro Petrone, on his deathbed, sent Gioacchino Ciani, another Carthusian monk, to urge Boccaccio to renounce worldly studies.
Other works by Giovanni Boccaccio
La Caccia di Diana - an allegorical poem for young people, celebrating love in a pastoral setting with mythological figures, highlighting the author's lyrical sensibility. Il Filocolo - the first novel in Italian prose, narrating the story of Florio and Biancofiore, mixing adventures and philosophical reflections. Il Filostrato - an epic poem about the tragic love of Troilus and Chryseis, combining classical myths and deep feelings, influencing authors such as Chaucer. Il Corbaccio - presents a bitter satire on female customs, revealing an ironic and controversial side of Boccaccio. Teseida - explores the romantic conflict between Palemone and Arcita in a mythological context, uniting heroism, and emotion. De Claris Mulieribus - a collection of notable women, combining celebration of virtues and prejudices, contributing to the debate on gender in Renaissance literature. |
It was Petrarch who then prevented Boccaccio from burning his own works and selling his library. Furthermore, as early as 1360, Boccaccio's way of life was considered austere enough to justify his being entrusted with the pastoral care of souls in a cathedral. He had received smaller orders many years before, perhaps at first only in the hope of receiving benefits.
Boccaccio's circle in Florence was vitally important as the nucleus of early Humanism. Leonzio Pilato, whom Boccaccio hosted from 1360 to 1362, made the rough Latin translation through which Petrarch and Boccaccio were introduced to Homer's poems—the starting point of Greek studies by humanists.
Even so, he did not neglect Italian poetry, his enthusiasm for his immediate predecessors, especially Dante, being one of the characteristics that distinguished him from Petrarch. His Vita di Dante Alighieri, or Trattatello in laude di Dante (Short Treatise in Praise of Dante), and the two abridged editions he made show his devotion to Dante's memory.
From 1373, Boccaccio studied Greek and gave a series of public lectures in the church of San Stefano di Badia in Florence on Dante's work. This was the first time that university-level students studied a non-classical writer.
The Life of Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313, in Tuscany (or in Paris), son of Boccaccino da Chellino, who left Certaldo, an agricultural town in Italy, to work at the Bardi banking house in Florence. Nothing is known about his mother except that she may have been French (it used to be thought that he was born in Paris). Poet and scholar, he laid the foundations for Renaissance Humanism and elevated vernacular (vulgar, popular) Literature to the level of the classics of Antiquity.
At around the age of fifteen, Giovanni was sent to study business, finance, and canon law in Naples, at the banking house of Bardi, the wealthy family that gave him access to the court in that city. In this environment Boccaccio experienced the aristocracy of the commercial world, mixed with the court scholars and Petrarch's friends and admirers. He also met and fell in love with Fiammetta, a woman who would be an important character in his literary work in the first half of his career, including the Decameron.
Unfortunately for Giovanni, the Bardi banking house went bankrupt, and his father's finances plummeted. Called back to Florence around 1340, his career prospects took a serious nosedive when the cold hand of poverty beckoned.
In 1350 he was appointed ambassador to the court of Romagna. The following year he served outside Italy as ambassador to Tyrol, and in 1354 he served the same role at the Vatican. That same year he was appointed ambassador to the Florentine government in the city of Ravenna. It was the beginning of a series of trips through Italy.
All these studies were conducted in poverty, sometimes almost in poverty, and Boccaccio had to earn most of his income by transcribing his own works or those of others. In 1363, poverty forced him to retire to the village of Certaldo. In October 1373, however, he began public readings of the Divine Comedy in the Church of San Stefano di Badia in Florence.
A revised text of the commentary he gave on these readings still exists, but it stops at the point he reached when, early in 1374, illness caused him to lose heart. Petrarch's death in July 1374 was another pain for him, and he permanently retired to Certaldo. There he died on December 21, 1375, and was buried in the Church of San Michele and Jacopo ֎
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