shortly before his death. The other was Comedia delle
ninfe fi orentine. In this allegory, the shepherd Ameto
overhears seven nymphs (virtues) tell, each in turn,
how they won over their lovers (vices). Then Ameto is
stripped of his animal skins and baptized, and he realizes
that the nymphs he lusted for are even more desirable
as moral virtues. Venus descends, announcing herself as
the triune god, while the nymphs sing, in veiled terms,
of the mysteries of Christian belief. The title and plot
of Comedia delle ninfe fi orentine, the use of terza rima,
and the usual borrowings of phrases show Boccaccio’s
indebtedness to Dante. Yet Boccaccio’s work is radi-
cally new in kind, and it was to be a major infl uence on
the uses of the pastoral mode during the Renaissance.
Its alternation of prose narrative with verse provided a
model for Sannazaro’s Arcadia.
Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and the Roman
de la Rose as well as Dante were the major sources for
Amorosa visione (Amorous Vision, 1342). In this dream
vision, the narrator must choose between a narrow fl ight
of ascending stairs and a broad doorway into a palace.
A heavenly guide follows the narrator into the palace,
commenting on the murals he sees painted there—tri-
umphs of wisdom, glory, wealth, love, and fortune.
The notion of a series of triumphs and the catalogs of
fi gures in them inspired Petrarch’s Trionfi and many
Renaissance paintings. In Amorosa visione three poems
run as an acrostic down the entire length of the work,
spelled out by the fi rst letter of each tercet; Boccaccio’s
own name appears in the acrostic at the point where he
sees his beloved painted in love’s triumph. Boccaccio
circulated a manuscript into which he had copied Cac-
cia di Diana, the lyric Contento quasi, and Amorosa
visione, all in terza rima.
Meanwhile Petrarch, recently made the laureate at
Naples (1341), was stirring the enthusiasm of literary
circles. Boccaccio composed a brief Latin life, De vita
et moribus domini Francisci Petracchi (1341–1342),
noting that no poet had been crowned at Rome since late
antiquity but praising Petrarch’s Italian lyrics as well as
his Latin endeavors. Boccaccio wrote that if souls were
reincarnated, people would think of Petrarch as the re-
incarnation of Virgil. Clearly, excitement over a revival
of ancient culture had much to do with Boccaccio’s own
enthusiasm.
In 1343–1344, Boccaccio was once again experi-
menting with a new kind of work; the result—Elegia di
madonna Fiammetta (Elegy of Lady Fiammetta)—has
been considered one of the fi rst novels. Elegia is nar-
rated by Fiammetta, a young married woman of Naples;
she tells of her falling in love, the departure of her
beloved, and his failure to return despite his promises.
Small events evoke long psychological reactions as
Fiammetta’s alternating hope and depression lead her
ever deeper into despair. Her attempted suicide is foiled,
and she writes her book both to warn other women and
to glory in her own tragedy. As in the earlier works,
descriptions of real life are mingled with mythical ref-
erences; and psychological realism coexists with hints
of a moral allegory about passion and reason. Venus is
associated with the Fury Tesiphone, and in a sense we
witness Fiammetta’s descent into hell (there are echoes
of Dante’s Inferno)—a hell of misery, violence, hypoc-
risy, and stubborn pride. Ovid’s Heroides and Seneca’s
tragedies, especially Phaedra and Hippolytus, were
important sources for this work.
Boccaccio had used the name Fiammetta for his
beloved in earlier books (Filocolo, Teseida, Comedia
delle ninfe, and Amorosa visione); however, her identity
changed from work to work—she was a daughter of the
king of Naples from before or after his coronation, a
nymph, and a descendant of Aquinas. In Elegia she is a
middle-class Neapolitan, and her unhappy love mirrors
the unhappiness of her lover in the earlier works. His
is the pain of unrequited desire; hers the pain of having
been seduced and abandoned. Her name will appear
once more, in the Decameron—where, as a Florentine,
she is one of the narrators, ruling the day of love stories
with happy endings. It is worth noting that most of these
happy endings consist in marriage.
Marriage is also celebrated in Ninfale fiesolano
(1344–1346?), an Ovidian pastoral narrative about
the love of the country boy Africo and one of Diana’s
nymphs, Mensola. Diana turns the pregnant Mensola
into a stream in the Tuscan countryside; and Africo,
who commits suicide, gives his name to another stream
nearby. Both Venus’s advocacy of rape and Diana’s insis-
tence on chastity yield before social marriage, however,
as Africo and Mensola’s son grows up, marries, and
sires citizens of the new community, Fiesole. The work
ends with a rapid history of the origins of and relations
between Fiesole and Florence. As in Filostrato, clarity
and lightness of language go hand in hand with the use
of stanzas of ottava rima; if Boccaccio did not invent
this form, he established it as a graceful and effective
mode of narrative, taken up by poets of the Renaissance.
The adoption of Ovidian metamorphoses to mythicize
features of the local landscape is another feature that
became immensely popular.
The mid-1340s saw political turmoil and violence
in Florence, along with the failure of Florentine banks.
Perhaps to escape all this, Boccaccio lived for a while
(1345–1346?) in Ravenna; he dedicated his translation
of Livy’s fourth decade to its ruler, Ostasio da Polenta.
He next spent a short time (1347–1348?) in Forlì. Naples
was then undergoing a period of chaos: the king of
Hungary invaded it to avenge the death of his brother
Andrew, who had been the husband of the queen of
Naples and had been mysteriously murdered. Francesco
Ordelaffi , lord of Forlì, wanted to join the HungarianBOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI