Boccace

Giovanni Boccaccio , in French Jean Boccace , is an Italian writer born in 1313 with Certaldo or Florence, dead the December 21st 1375 with Certaldo.

Biography

Wire illegitimate of a merchant who intends it for the trade and of a Frenchwoman, his father sends it as of adolescence to Naples so that it is formed with the businesses in the bank of Bardi and that it continues his studies of canonical Droit. Although the right and the trade interest it little, it is integrated easily into the court of the king Robert of Naples where it at the time of binding with the noble ones of the court of Anjou. There, it also starts to cultivate its literary knowledge, it reads traditional Latin, the French chivalrous literature, Dante and Pétrarque. It also starts to write its first texts of courteous inspiration, in prose, like the Filocolo , or in worms, like the Teseida . It also composes a poem epic on the Trojan War: the Filostrato . Lastly, it is in Naples which he saw his first passion in love for a lady that he called Fiammetta .

To the end of the year 1340, it returns to Florence because of the bankruptcy of Bardi. The return is painful because Boccace is sad to leave Naples and is found in a difficult economic situation. However, it meets Pétrarque with which it binds friendship. As of its youth, it dealt with poetry; its admiration for Dante not enabling him to aspire in the forefront among the poets, it had been flattered to obtain the second; but as soon as he knew Italian poetries of Pétrarque, his/her friend, he lost any hope and threw to fire the greatest part, of his lyric worms, sonnets, songs and other poetries in love. He however continues to write: The delle commedia Ninfe which reports the loves of a nymph and its shepherd; other allegorical works like: Amorosa views , the Ninfale d' Ameto and the Ninfale fiesolano ; or the Elegy of lady Fiammetta , autobiographical account of style of a Neapolitan young person betrayed by his lover.

In 1348, Boccace attends the devastation that the Peste causes in all Europe. It is perhaps this pandemia which decides it to write its masterpiece: the Décaméron. Work is a success and is propagated very largely after 1353. It is worth to him the recognition of its pars and promotion with new honourable missions by the communal government of Florence. In this same city, it will occupy the pulpit which has just been created for the explanation of Dante.

In 1362, following the curse of a monk Carthusian monk, Boccace undergoes a deep religious crisis and is withdrawn as a recluse in the paternal field of Certaldo. It goes as far as making the project destroy all its manuscripts, but Pétrarque dissuades some by convainquant it that it must do for prose what itself did for poetry. Soon, by its works, Boccace will place above all the Italian prosator S of which there will remain a long time the model. The same year, it is accommodated by Niccolò Acciaiuoli with the Castello di Montegufoni.

Between 1365 and 1366, Boccace writes the Corbaccio , work which takes again the tradition of the satyr misogynist in way moralist. It is the last work which it writes in Toscan. Encouraged by his friend Pétrarque with whom it maintains a followed correspondence, it returns to the Latin and composes various Traité S, of the Biographie S, of the eclogue S and the epistle S. It venerates Dante and devotes to him a Trattatello in laude di Dante and of Esposizioni will sopra Commedia di Dante .

Withdrawn in Certaldo, he saw the end of his life in misery. Lastly, in 1373 - 1374, it is invited by the town of Florence to make the public reading of the “ divine comedy ” of Dante in the church San Stefano di Badia. But its bad health the constrained one to stop and it dies in Certaldo in 1975, one year after the disappearance of Pétrarque.

If Dante is regarded as the founder of Italian poetry, Boccace is generally allowed like the creator of Italian prose.

A marble stele, being reproduced Boccace on the central alley of the church of Certaldo Viola, pays homage to him although its writings dedicated it to the recriminations of the population in her time.

Décaméron

Of all its works, the Décameron , is its first title with immortality. Freedoms that one finds there circulated without obstacle in manuscripts during more than one century; this book was prohibited by the popes Paul IV and Pie IV; academicians were charged to reform the Décameron ; but the complete editions multiplied so much since the end of the 16th century, which one spoke any more neither of prohibition nor about reform. Jean of the Fountain imitated a great number of this news. It chose most licentious and it often added to the license of the original. Boccace composed in the retirement several other works among which one distinguishes the treaty From genealogia deorum , Venice, 1472, folio. It is the first modern work where one gathered all the mythological concepts which are scattered in the writings of old. The first copies of the Iliade and the Odyssée are due to Boccace, which made them come from Greece.

Principal works

Major work

the Decameron , novel in prose writes between 1349 and 1353:
C' east is a collection of 100 news, told in turn during 10 days (significance of the title) by 7 women and 3 young men who flee the epidemic of plague which devastated Florence in 1348. This work inspired by many writers of which Jean of the Fountain and Geoffrey Chaucer.

Minor works

It Filocolo : one of the first works of its Neapolitan period, written towards 1336. work in prose in five books telling the history of two lovers, Florio and Biancofiore.

Filostrato : narrative poem of the Neapolitan period.

Caccia di Diana : mythological poem writes towards 1338.

Ameto O commedia delle ninfe fiorentine : allegorical novel in which prose alternates with poetry. It is about the first work of its period florentine, made up about 1341.

Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta : written in Florence towards 1343, work in prose in which Fiammetta tells the history of its love for Panfilo (Boccace actually).

Ninfale fiesolano : pastoral allegorical poem writes towards 1346.

Corbaccio : satire in prose against the women, written towards 1355.

Trattatello in laude di Dante : study on Dante written between 1351 and 1355.

Genealogia deorum gentilium : treaty of mythology written in Latin between 1363 and 1366.

Publications at the 19th century

Various works of Boccace were collected in Florence or rather in Naples in 1723 and 1724, 6 volumes in-8; it is necessary to join to it the Décameron , whose oldest edition is that of Venice, 1471, folio, and most precise, that of Florence, 1597, in-4.

One can be satisfied with the edition of Paris, 1768, 3 volumes in-12, or of Milan, 1803, volume in-8. One still seeks the old French translation of Jean Martin, reprinted in Paris in 1757, 5 volumes in-8; the abbot Sabatier de Castres renovated of it the style, 1779, 40 volumes in-18, reprinted in 1804. A translation published under the name of Mirabeau, Paris, 1802, 4 volumes in-8, did not have success.

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