Giovanni boccaccio famous works

How did giovanni boccaccio die
Giovanni boccaccio interesting facts
Giovanni boccaccio contributions to the renaissance

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Giovanni Boccaccio was the greatest writer of vernacular Italian prose of the Medieval period and was instrumental in creating works of reference that were invaluable for introducing the ancient word to the Renaissance. Known for his incomparable lyrics and romances, Boccaccio met his boyhood hero, the humanist Francesco Petrarch (1304-74) in 1350, just before completing his greatest work, The Decameron (1352). Under Petrarch’s influence he turned almost exclusively to scholarship. He became the first champion and apologist for Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) and the author of works on ancient mythology and geography that became standard for centuries. Edward Gibbon credited him with “restoring in Italy the study of the Greek language.” It is with this latter part of his life that we are here principally interested.

Boccaccio grew up in Florence in a well-to-do family. His father, employed by the Florentine business and trading consortium, Compagna dei Bardi, married Margherita di Mardoli, of an affluent family, in the 1320s. Boccaccio was tutored at home until the age of nine, whe

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Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

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

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 1370s, when Chaucer was in Italy. Donald Howard, in his biography (Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World.&nb

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Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio (June 16, 1313 – December 21, 1375) was a Florentine author and poet, the greatest of Petrarch's disciples, an important Renaissance humanist in his own right and author of a number of notable works including On Famous Women, the Decameron and his poems in the vernacular.

The exact details of his birth are uncertain. He was almost certainly a bastard, the son of a Florentine banker and an unknown woman. An early biographer claimed his mother was a Parisien and that the city was also the place of his birth, this has been largely depreciated as a romanticism and his place of birth is more likely to have been in Tuscany, perhaps in Certaldo, the town of his father.

Boccaccio grew up in Florence. His father was working for the Compagnia dei Bardi and in the 1320s married Margherita del Mardoli, of an illustrious family. It is believed Boccaccio was tutored by Giovanni Mazzuoli and received from him an early introduction to the works of Dante. Around 1327 Boccaccio moved to Naples when his father was appointed to head the Neopoli