Author: BOCCACCIO, Giovanni
Biography:
BOCCACCIO, Giovanni (1313-75: EB)
Best known for his Decameron, Boccaccio was born in Florence or Certaldo, Tuscany, Italy, in 1313 to an unknown woman and Boccaccino di Chelina, a Florentine businessman. His parents were not married but his father acknowledged him and took charge of his education. In about 1327 Boccaccio moved to Naples to begin training in commerce and it was there that he began writing verse and prose romances. When his father suffered business reversals they returned to Florence in 1340/1. Boccaccio also spent time in Ravenna and Forlì but he was in Florence when the Black Death struck the city’s population in Mar.-Apr. 1348. It was this event that inspired Boccaccio to begin writing the Decameron about a group of ten young people who, having escaped from the city to the hills of Fiesole, entertain themselves with stories, dance, and song. In 1350 he met Petrarch (q.v.) and this proved to be a turning point in his literary career after which he focused increasingly on humanist scholarship, the classical authors, and writing in Latin rather than Italian. Boccaccio also revered Dante (q.v.); he wrote Vita di Dante Alighieri, and in the last years of his life he gave public readings from Dante’s Divina commedia at the church of Santo Stephano di Badia, Florence. He was living in poverty in Certaldo when he died on 21 Dec. 1375. John Cam Hobhouse and Thomas Moore, the two translators of Boccaccio listed in this bibliography, both have headnotes of their own. (Moore’s authorship of Spirit of Boccaccio’s Decameron is likely but not certain.) (Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy 7 May 2025; EB; Oxford Bibliographies Online) SR
Other Names:
- Boccaccio