unknown to us, and he spent his earliest years in or near
Florence. Boccaccino encouraged his son’s education,
but not along the lines of Boccaccio’s own interests. In
Genealogie deorum gentilium (Genealogy of the Pagan
Gods), Boccaccio says:
Even in my boyhood [my father] directed all my endeavors
towards business. As a mere child, he put me in the charge
of a great business man for instruction in arithmetic. For
six years I did nothing but waste irrevocable time. Then,
as there seemed to be some indication that I was more
disposed to literary pursuits, this same father decided
that I should study for holy orders, as a good way to get
rich. My teacher was famous, but I wasted under him
almost as much time as before.... I turned out neither a
business man, nor a canon-lawyer, and missed being a
good poet besides. (Boccaccio on Poetry, trans. Osgood,
1930, 131–132).
Around 1327, when Boccaccio was fourteen, he
moved to Naples, where his father worked as an agent
of the Bardi bank at the royal court. The French court
and the busy port of Naples offered Boccaccio a wide
new range of educational experiences to complement the
hours he spent in unwanted studies. Cino da Pistoia, who
taught him law, may well have encouraged Boccaccio’s
interest in poetry, showing him writings by Dante and
other recent poets. (One of Cino’s lyrics appears as a
song in Boccaccio’s Filostrato.) Boccaccio was also
befriended by a circle of Petrarch’s acquaintances,
including Barbato, Giovanni Barrili, and the Augus-
tinian father Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro. Paolo
da Perugia, the king’s librarian, contributed a more
classical education; Paolo, with the help of Barlaam’s
knowledge of Greek, was collecting materials on ancient
mythology that later became the basis for Boccaccio’s
Genealogie.
Boccaccio began to try his hand at literature while
still pursuing other studies. His apprenticeship in the
classics is shown in his earliest endeavors, preserved
in his notebooks: Elegia di Costanza (in verse), para-
phrasing a classical epitaph; and Allegoria mitologica
(Mythological Allegory, in prose), a brief and highly
artifi cial string of mythical references from Ovid used
to prefi gure Christian history. He turned to Dante’s sir-
ventese as the model for Caccia di Diana (1334?)—an
ambiguous title which can mean either Diana’s hunt or
the chasing away of Diana. Here, the verses describe a
hunt for various beasts by fi fty-nine beautiful women of
Naples and their leader, Diana; the women then transfer
their allegiance ro Venus, who turns the beasts into men.
The problem of how to understand Boccaccio’s work
begins with the start of his career: Caccia has been read
as an elegant compliment, as Christian allegory, and as
ironic satire.
Il Filocolo (1335–1336?), a long, ambitious romance
about separated lovers, reveals that many infl uences
were working on Boccaccio. It is fi lled with idyllic
descriptions of Neapolitan gatherings and with plots
popular at the French court, but he also includes classical
gods, metamorphoses, signifi cant Greek names, and nu-
merous echoes of Dante. Boccaccio presents Filocolo as
a written version of an oral tale, and cantari on Florio’s
search for Biancifi ore do exist; however, Boccaccio
frames that story in a broader history of the conversion
of Florio, and Europe, to Christianity. The most famous
scene is a debate on questions of love in a Neapolitan
garden (4.14–72); two of the questions reappear in the
Decameron as tales 4 and 5 of the tenth day.
Il Filostrato seems to have been written at about the
same time as Il Filocolo, perhaps in 1335; however, the
language of Filostrato is much more fl uent and humor-
ous than the artifi cially elaborate prose of Filocolo,
and one scholar has therefore suggested a later date.
Filostrato became the model for Chaucer’s Troilus and
Criseyde. Its nine books of ottava rima stanzas tell of the
Trojan prince Troiolo’s love for Criseida; the seduction,
aided by her uncle, Pandaro; her betrayal of Troiolo for
the Greek Diomedes; and Troiolo’s despairing death.
Boccaccio seems to have associated the number nine
with tragedy: he also uses nine books in Elegia di ma-
donna Fiammetta and in De casibus virorum illustrorum
(Fall of Illustrious Men).
For Teseida delle nozze di Emilia (1340–1341),
twelve-book romance-epic, Boccaccio again drew on
classical history, this time continuing Statius’s Thebaid.
He described Teseida as the fi rst martial poem in Italian.
It begins with Theseus’s conquest of the Amazons and
tells of two Theban knights’ rivalry for the love of the
Amazon Emilia, whom they fi rst see from their prison
window. Theseus arranges a tournament to decide which
one is to marry her. Boccaccio appended notes to educate
his readers about Greek myths and customs, and he tried
to base his description of the games and the arena on
classical accounts. His famous glosses to the temples of
Venus and Mars in Book 7 suggest that the work may
be read allegorically, since these two deities represent
concupiscence and irascibility. The work became a basis
for Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale.”
By the time he fi nished Teseida, Boccaccio had been
forced by business troubles to return with his father to
Florence (1341). The move back to Florence is described
in depressing terms at the end of Comedia delle ninfe
fi orentine (Comedy of the Florentine Nymphs, 1341–
1342); Boccaccio remained nostalgic for the cultural
brilliance of Naples, and he tried several times to return
there to live, but disappointing circumstances repeatedly
forced him to abandon this aim. However, the return to
Florence did not interrupt his writing. Within a year he
had produced two pastoral works. One, a pair of Latin
eclogues, would become the fi rst two poems of Bucco-
licum carmen, written over many years and completedBOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI