How Giovanni Boccaccio became such an influential writer
How Giovanni Boccaccio became such an influential writer
Giovanni Boccaccio was born in Paris on December 21, 1375 to a merchant from Certaldo who was a man of some prominence in Florence. Shortly after his birth his father deserted his mother and took Giovanni to Florence. There he was put in school until he was ten years old. He was sent to Naples to study law in 1323. He abandoned law and dedicated himself to classical and scientific studies. The king had an illegal daughter, Maria de Conti d’Aquino. Even thought proof of her existent has not been established, she was said to be Boccaccio’s mistress and she inspired a great deal of his work.
When he returned to Florence in 1340 he performed many diplomatic services for the cities government. In 1350 he met the famous humanist Petrarch. They were friends till Petrarch died. In Boccaccio’s last years, he turned to religious meditation, were brightened by his appointment in 1373 to lecturer in Dante. His lecturers were interrupted by his illness, which killed him the following year.
His most famous work was II Decamerone translated to The Decamron that means Ten Days’ Work. A group of friends, seven women and three men, all “well bred, of worth and discretion,” to escape an outbreak of the plague have taken refuge in a country villa outside Florence. There they entertain one another over a period of ten days with a series of stories told by each member of the party in turn. In this work Boccaccio gathered material from many sources: the French fabliau, Greek and Latin classics, folklore, and observations of contemporary Italian life.
Boccaccio has written many other writings many for his love Maria d’Aquino. Among illustrious English writers who were influenced by Boccaccio’s works and used them as source material are Geoffrey Chaucer, Shakespeare, and John Dryden. The structure of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, for example, which also employs the frame story device, is modeled after that of The Decameron.