Giovanni Boccacio

1) His Biography:

Giovanni Boccaccio, an important figure in the history of Italian literature, was one of the forefathers of the Renaissance. Despite spending years studying law and commerce, Boccaccio’s passion was naturally for poetry and writing. His most famous book, The Decameron, has enjoyed popularity for more than 600 years and has influenced several authors, including Francesco Petrarch who translated The Decameron into Latin. In addition to being a writer, Giovanni was a humanist who was sometimes credited with finding humanism.

Italian-born author Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313. His birthplace and exact date are unknown, but it is known that he spent his formative years in Florence. His mother came from an affluent family and his father was a well-known trader. When he was ten years old, Giovanni was introduced to business. He attended school in Florence. In 1327, he was sent to Naples to study law and business.

His focus on these areas began to stray as his interest in literature grew. He soon stopped going to school and focused only on reading. He wrote about a woman he fell in love with and called her Fiammetta. Giovanni also began mixing with the aristocratic crowd at this time. After his father passed away in Florence in 1348, he went back there to take care of his younger brother.

In addition to being dispatched on diplomatic missions to Padua, the Romagna, Avignon, and other locations, Giovanni was given access to official offices in Florence. Petrarch and Boccaccio made their lifelong friendship official in 1350. Both authors frequently collaborated closely.

The epic Decameron, written by Boccaccio in 1358, has a hundred stories about seven women and three men who spend ten days in a country estate after fleeing the plague in Florence. Decameorn has had a long-standing impact on Europe, and renowned authors like Shakespeare and Chaucer are said to have drawn inspiration from this masterwork. The Decameron has inspired poetry by well-known authors such George Eliot, Tennyson, Keats, Longfellow, and Swinburne. On the other hand, Giovanni was moved by Dante’s writings and gave lectures on his poems in 1373.

On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles (De genealogia deorum gentilium) by Boccaccio (1350–1374), is a superb work on classical mythology written in Latin, and it concentrated on the mythology and culture of the time. Boccaccio worked on The Corbaccio (Il Corbaccio), a work about the difficulties of one-sided love, from 1354 until 1355. Boccaccio was inspired to write the ‘Biography of Dante’ (1355-1364) by his adoration for Dante. On the Fates of Famous Men (De casibus virorum illustrium) (1355–1374) is another well-known work that details the demise of powerful men. Concerning Famous Women (De claris mulieribus) (1360-1374), a notable book on lives of famous women, was also written by him.

Giovanni became depressed due to disappointing love affairs and his ailing health, and his literature began to reflect this, particularly in his treatment of women. He tried to sell, burn, and destroy his writings, letters, and library. Petrarch offered to buy his possessions from him and persuaded him not to burn them. However, Boccaccio’s literary possessions were donated to the Florence convent of Santo Spirito following his passing. Despite never getting married, Boccaccio had three kids. On December 21, 1375, he died.

2) Main Works:

The Decameron:

Giovanni Boccaccio’s unquestionable masterwork, set against the backdrop of the Black Death of 1348, is without a doubt one of the greatest literary accomplishments in history. It portrays both the tragedies and comedies of mediaeval life.

Genealogy of the Pagan Gods:

The ambitious humanistic scholarly work ‘Genealogy of the Pagan Gods’ by Giovanni Boccaccio aims to scavenge ancient and mediaeval literary materials in order to produce a huge synthesis of Greek and Roman mythology. The essay also features a well-known justification of the merits of studying pre-Christian paganism poetry.

A meticulously ordered genealogical tree identifying about 950 Greco-Roman mythical people may be found in the complete work, which is divided into fifteen books. The breadth is vast: 723 chapters contain over a thousand citations from 200 writers, including Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Trecento. Boccaccio uses a variety of metaphorical, historical, and philological critiques of the ancient tales and their iconography throughout the Genealogy.

On Famous Women:

The amazing work “On Famous Women” (“De claris mulieribus”) by Boccaccio tells the stories of 106 women from myth and history, from Eve through Queen Giovanna I of Naples, who lived during Boccaccio’s time. It is the first ever written compilation of women’s biographies.

Life of Dante:

This magnificent volume brings together the works of Giovanni Villani’s Florentine Chronicles and Filippo Villani’s Life of Dante, as well as documents found in a Boccaccio manuscript, and offers a wealth of knowledge about Dante’s distinct personality and life. They discuss the author’s propensity for the agonies of passionate love, his involvement in politics, his zest for learning, his military service, and the tales behind his greatest literary triumphs. These narratives are essential for their subject matter, but they are also important models of the first biographical writing.

The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta:

This magnificent European romance, narrated by a woman, is considered the first psychological novel in a modern language and a forerunner of stream-of-consciousness writing. It is a landmark in feminist literature. Giovanni Boccaccio penned it between 1343 and 1345.

3) Main Themes in his Writings:

The Power of Love:

The Decameron’s overarching message is that love can transcend human intelligence and endure changes in fortune. By “love,” Boccaccio typically refers to lust and other forms of romantic ardour. He presents love as a powerful natural force that triumphs over personal will. Love is always a male when Boccaccio personifies this energy. The Decameron has stories with adultery in around a fourth of them, mainly because the women are unable to resist the power of love. However, there are several instances of familial love as well. In many tales, including Elissa’s tale about the Count of Antwerp, parents find their long-lost children and bring back prosperity and harmony to the family. In some tales, such as the last tale about Griselda, married men demonstrate their love for their spouses by treating them with kindness and paying them respect in public. In all tales, love gives the heroes the fortitude to withstand unanticipated and unfair changes in fortune.

The Decameron also has several traditional love stories where young people meet, fall in love, and get married. Some of these love stories have happy endings, like the charming story of how Ricciardo climbs to Caterina’s balcony to hear the nightingale. Others have catastrophic outcomes, like the story of two young lovers who pass away while lying down next to one another. Romeo and Juliet, a romantic tragedy by William Shakespeare, is based on both tales. Every night ends with a poem that celebrates the strength of passionate love.

The Duality of Fortune:

Numerous plots in The Decameron are driven by fortune, an impersonal force that humans cannot control, and which fluctuates ceaselessly from good to terrible. On the second day, Fortune’s modifications are the subject of every story. Like other mediaeval authors, Boccaccio personifies Fortune as a female who embodies the gendered traits of changeability and unpredictability. The idea of Fortune also encompasses chance, fate, and divine providence in addition to change.

Fortune displays the moral character of the people who get caught up in her wheel since circumstances beyond their control can cause people’s fortunes to alter at any time. Fortune kills the nasty, selfish Ciappelletto in the book’s opening tale. He continues to take as much as he can for himself in death just as he does in life. The Count of Antwerp replies to his hardships in Elissa’s tale by looking after his children and undertaking menial labour to survive, demonstrating his noble character.

Another definition of fortune is wealth, which plays a significant role in many tales. The tales depict three social classes: the middle class of doctors, attorneys, and store owners; the labouring class of bricklayers and peddlers; and the upper class of nobles and foreign trade. People seek to acquire riches and to hold onto it against the whims of Fortune at all levels of society.

The Hypocrisy of Holiness:

Most of the storytellers in The Decameron want to focus on those who claim to be pious while giving way to vice. On the first day, four of the pieces are about this subject. The first tale by Panfilo is a good illustration, in which one of the worst individuals in history persuades a priest that he is deserving of sainthood. In Lauretta’s tale of Monna Nonna de’ Pulci, a hypocritical bishop had an affair with a lovely woman. In Dioneo’s tale of a mare, a vulgar priest connives with a pair of farmers. Other tales depict priests, nuns, and monks as having affairs with the wives of their parishioners and making false claims to con innocent Christians.

The hypocrisy, immorality, and influence of the Church receive much greater attention in the stories rather than Christian theory or morality. The fact that Christianity is taken for granted contributes to this emphasis. The storytellers gather in a church, schedule their week around worship, and otherwise live according to Christian customs. However, the emphasis on clerical mistakes demonstrates that secularism is the story teller’s everyday reality.

The Folly of Vice:

His fictional characters exhibit a wide variety of human vices, and they almost always come off as fools. Some vices, like greed, are fiercely disapproved of by the storytellers, while others, like lust, are tolerated more easily. The storytellers particularly denounce the vices of clergymen and other people who present a virtuous persona. The antagonist in Neifile’s tale about a guy who fakes a miracle treatment, is beaten, taken into custody, and almost executed. He avoids punishment, but his deception is made public, which is seen as just punishment for the committed sin of lying in the first place.

Some characters can keep their vices hidden, particularly lust, which authors frequently conflate with love and passion. In Filostrato’s tale of the nightingale, Caterina’s father uses the conventional strategy of forcing a marriage to cover up the scandal of premarital sex, protecting everyone’s dignity and happiness. In Pampinea’s tale, Isabella utilises her fast wits to keep her husband in the dark, protect her young lover, and get rid of the wealthy man. Her smart ingenuity has one more benefit: The man cannot admit to his involvement in the affair without coming across as foolish.

4) His Legacy:

The most famous of Petrarch’s pupils, Giovanni Boccaccio was also a significant Renaissance humanist in his own right. He was a master of the classical authors, particularly Tacitus and Livy. ‘On Famous Women,’ ‘the Decameron’, and the ‘Tale of Filippa’, a well-known tale from the Decameron, are some of his best works. In contrast to the characters of his contemporaries, who were more focused on the Medieval values of Chivalry, Piety, and Humility, Boccaccio’s characters are unique for their era in that they are realistic, energetic, and intelligent persons who are founded in reality. His idiomatic poems have left the biggest legacy. Later in life, he converted to Christianity and abandoned a lot of his former writings. Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ was significantly influenced by his Decameron, which was named for the intention to publish 10 stories by 10 travellers.