Boccaccio

bok-kat'cho (1313-1375), a celebrated Italian writer. He was the son of a wealthy merchant of Florence. He received the best education afforded by the times. He ranks with Dante and Petrarch as one of the three great founders of Italian literature. His reputation rests chiefly on the Decameron. This is a collection of tales written during the period when the Great Plague desolated Italy. It was designed to amuse the ladies of the court at a time when ordinary social pleasures were out of the question. The tales are united by the supposition that they are told by a party of ten people who have retired to a villa near Naples. Each tells ten tales; in all, bringing the number up to one hundred. It is supposed that Boccaccio got his idea from the Arabians, who, in turn, had it from the Hindus. The same plan was followed by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, and by Longfellow in his Tales of a Wayside Inn. Boccaccio's tales rank very high as specimens of literary style. His language is easy and correct. One of the most beautiful of the tales is that of Griselda, the last in the collection. Unfortunately for the present popularity of the Decameron, the author yielded so far to the coarseness, not to say to the prevailing indecency of the times, that his tales are now little read by people of good taste. In his later years, Boccaccio became a clergyman and a professor in the University of Florence. He lectured on Dante's Divine Comedy. He wrote a life of Petrarch. His former home, a beautiful villa, is still pointed out to travelers. See Petrarch; Dante