Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio ( [ d͡ʒovan ː i ː at͡ʃ bok ː o]; * 1313 in Florence or Certaldo, † December 21 1375 in Certaldo near Florence) was an Italian writer, democrat, poet and an important representative of humanism. His masterpiece, the Decameron, portrays movement of unprecedented realism and wit the multifaceted society of the 14th century and raises him the founder of the prosaic narrative tradition in Europe.

Life

The exact circumstances of his birth are not yet secured. Boccaccio was born in 1313, probably in Florence, but possibly also in the nearby mountain village of Certaldo, the illegitimate son of the merchant Boccaccio di Chellino. His mother died shortly after childbirth. Later cited in many sources and sponsored also by himself, until now unproven legend arose that he had been born in Paris, emerged out of a relationship between his father and a French nobleman named Giovanna.

His childhood was spent in Florence in the Father, who, working for the Compagnia dei Bardi, a banking company house. Still a teenager - about fourteen years old - he was sent to Naples to work in a branch of the Compagnia dei Bardi, to practice in the profession of a business person.

The time spent in Naples years ( to 1340 ) had a great influence on the personal and intellectual development of Boccaccio. Instead of dealing with the study of commercial activities, or in canon law, as it had wanted the father, he devoted himself to his passion for literature. Thanks to his good name he was given access to the Neapolitan court of Robert of Anjou, where he met the elegant, courtly lifestyle, wrong with intellectuals and taught himself appropriated a broad-based education.

During this period his first works in verse and prose, in which Boccaccio experimented with different genres and styles. In keeping with the taste of the time he designed the recurring image of an ideal lover, which he called Fiammetta and their real role model is probably a Neapolitan nobleman named Maria d' Aquino.

1340 he returned to Florence. Due to financial difficulties, he joined the civil service and held several offices. Between 1345 and 1346 he went to the court of Ostasio da Polenta in Ravenna, while he was in Forlì next year in the service of Francesco Ordelaffi. The bourgeois - urban environment, very different from the courtly life, was a major source of inspiration for his fruitful literary activity in that decade, which culminated in the Decameron, written in the years after the plague epidemic that struck Italy in 1348.

His masterpiece, however, was probably already finished when he first met Francesco Petrarca in the fall 1350. Boccaccio concluded with him a deep friendship. Both of them were the worship of the classical authors in common, such as their correspondence testifies, in which they exchanged views on literary experiences.

Now that his fame had grown, the Florentine city government entrusted him with various diplomatic missions that took him on many trips.

During these years, Boccaccio dedicated - also influenced by his friend Petrarch - reinforced his study of classical texts. To 1355, he received free access to the library of Monte Cassino, in the many masterpieces of antiquity had survived the ages. Some of the precious codes wrote Boccaccio even from his own hands.

Soon arose to Petrarch and Boccaccio, a group of intellectuals who rediscovered several important classic works, including the Annals of Tacitus and the Metamorphoses of Apuleius.

After Boccaccio began around 1360 with the study of Greek, he arranged that the first chair was set for that language in Florence. The chair was awarded to Leontius Pilatus, the Boccaccio the translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer confided in addition to Latin. These works could thus be read by a much wider audience.

His interest in the ancient world also influenced the literary production towards the end of his life. In his later years he wrote that is less in the vernacular held narrative texts, but more works that dealt in Latin with encyclopedic or philological subjects.

Maybe this change is also due to a religious crisis in the life of Boccaccio. This crisis should have been so profound that Boccaccio even wanted to destroy some of his works, which he now considered immoral and held back only by Petrarch. This representation is called into question by the fact that he still hand verfertigte copies of his Decameron around 1370. In any case, he was already in 1360 entered the inferior clergy stand, though probably due to financial hardships. Finally he met in 1362 the Carthusian monk Gioachino Cianni from Siena, Boccaccio to " devout life " converted.

In 1373 he was, who had already twenty years earlier fanned with his biography of Dante, the cult of Dante Alighieri, applied by the city of Florence, publicly read the Divina Commedia to explain and comment. 1374, however, worsened his health (he was probably suffering from dropsy, a disease in which the abdominal cavity filled with water), so he had to stop this activity.

After he had finally settled in Certaldo, he led the work on some of the works continued until his death on December 21, 1375.

Works

• La caccia di Diana in 1334, short epic in 18 cantos
• Il Filostrato 1335 epic in punching ( ottava rima )
• Il Filocolo 1336-1339, novel in prose
• Teseida 1340-1341 ( completed in Florence), epic in punching ( ottava rima )
• Rime, collection of poems, Boccaccio wrote in his lifetime; never summarized by himself to a work

• Ninfale d' Ameto 1341-1342, pastors novel in verse and prose
• L' amorosa visione 1342-1344, epic in terza rima, mimicking Dante's Divina Commedia
• Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta 1343-1344, novel in prose
• Ninfale Fiesolano 1344-1346, epic in punching ( ottava rima )

• Il Decameron 1348-1353, short story collection

• Il Corbaccio 1354 satire in prose
• Trattatello in laude di Dante 1351-1373, Biography of Dante Alighieri
• Esposizione sopra la Commedia di Dante 1373-1374, tradition of his public lectures and comments on the Divina Commedia

The works in Latin:

• Bucolicum carmen 1349-1367, sixteen Eclogues
• Genealogia deorum gentilium 1350-1367, collection of mythological tales from ancient times in 15 books
• De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus stagnis, seu paludibus et de nominibus maris liber 1355-1375, extensive catalog of geographical objects that exist in the classical literature
• De casibus virorum Illustrium 1356-1373, collection of episodes from the lives of famous personalities who suffered a bad fate
• De claris mulieribus 1361-1362, moralizing collection biographies of famous women of antiquity and the Middle Ages