Giovanni Boccaccio
1313–1375
Biography
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) was a fourteenth-century Italian who wrote poetry and prose, a close friend of Petrarch, and one of the first champions of the humanist movement. He was born in Certaldo, a small town near Florence, and spent part of his youth in Naples, where his father worked for a banking firm. His poems and prose were written mainly in the Italian vernacular, though he also wrote in Latin.
His most famous work is The Decameron, a collection of one hundred tales told over ten days by a group of young people who have fled Florence to escape the plague of 1348. Each day has its own theme, and the stories range from comedy and bawdy wit to tragedy and moral testing. Their realistic speech and sharp characters set them apart from the stiffer storytelling of medieval writers, and the book became a model for Italian prose for generations.
Boccaccio's influence reached well beyond Italy. Chaucer drew on his work, and Italian literature counts him, with Dante and Petrarch, among its three great founders. The site holds The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio in John Payne's English translation, so readers can enjoy the stories in English and see where a long line of European storytelling begins.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio
by Giovanni Boccaccio (translated by John Payne)
Ten young Florentines flee the plague of 1348 to a country villa, and each tells a story a day for ten days. Boccaccio's hundred tales of love, trickery and fortune, here in John Payne's translation, are among the great story collections. This edition omits one or more passages…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.