Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313-1375)

Italian writer and poet. He is chiefly known for the collection of tales called the Decameron (1348-53). Equally at home with tragic and comic narrative, he laid the foundations for the humanism of the Renaissance and raised vernacular literature to the status enjoyed by the ancient classics.

He was born in Florence but lived in Naples 1328-41, where he fell in love with the unfaithful ‘Fiammetta’ who inspired his early poetry. Before returning to Florence in 1341 he had written the romance Filostrato and the verse narrative Teseide (used by Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde and ‘The Knight's Tale’). Teseide is the first romantic narrative to appear in the Italian language in ottava rima, the metre adopted by Ariosto and Tasso. The narrative poem Filostrato is also written in ottava rima. Boccaccio was much influenced by the poet Petrarch, whom he met in 1350.

In his later years he lectured on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy; he also founded the first professorship of Greek in Western Europe, at the University of Florence.