biography
| name: |
Boccaccio, Giovanni
|
pronunciation:
[bokahchioh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1313–75)
|
| biography:
| Poet and scholar, born in Tuscany or Paris. He abandoned a career in commerce, and at Naples (1328) turned to story-writing in verse and prose. He mingled in courtly society, and fell in love with the noble lady whom he made famous under the name of Fiammetta. Until 1350 he lived alternately in Florence and Naples, producing prose tales, pastorals, and poems. The Teseide was partly translated by Chaucer in the Knight's Tale. The Filostrato, dealing with the loves of Troilus and Cressida, was also in great part translated by Chaucer. After 1350 he became a diplomat entrusted with important public affairs, and a humanist devoted to the cause of the new learning. In 1353 he completed his great collection of tales, the Decameron, begun some 5 years before. A huge fresco of life in the late Middle Ages, Decameron represents all social classes in situations ranging from comic to dramatic, linked together by exuberant sensuality. During his last years he lived principally in retirement at Certaldo, and would have entered into holy orders, allegedly moved by repentance for the follies of his youth, had he not been dissuaded by Petrarch. Boccaccio is a seminal figure in the history and development of narrative fiction, and has provided inspiration to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, Keats, Longfellow, and Tennyson, among others. |
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