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Boccaccio: 2
. Viking, with dustjacket, bright clean copy, no markings, Professional booksellers since 1981
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
392 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
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March 27, 2022
8. Boccaccio by Thomas Goddard Bergin
published: 1981
format: 381-page hardcover
acquired: November
read: Dec 25, 2021 – Mar 10, 2022
time reading: 20:32, 3.2 mpp (3.6 mpp before adding endnote pages)
rating: 3
locations: Florence, Naples, 14th century Europe, etc.
about the author: Thomas G. Bergin was an American scholar of Italian literature, 1904-1987
This book is a weird thing, but the scholars like it a lot. It's not really a biography. There is a chapter on the European world of Boccaccio (which is great fun). One single chapter on his life. Then a chapter on each of his works, most of which don‘t have decent English translations. He summarizes the work, then provides commentary. These chapters are just barely readable, but also really helpful to get a sense each of these works, and of his entire oeuvre. Boccaccio had a lot of output, including lengthy really ambitious creative and encyclopedic stuff. Lengthy, and original but not all is very good.
Boccaccio was the illegitimate son of a Florentine banker working for a famous Bardi bank. Born in 1314 in Certaldo, he grew up in Florence. As a teenager he moved with his father to Naples, in 1327, then under the stable rule of King Robert I. Boccaccio flourished in Naples. If his mythical Fiammetta was real, a real lover who left him and became his sort of muse, it was here they met and he had his heart broken. Something happened in 1341, and he and his father, financially broken, returned to Florence. Boccaccio would travel a lot for various temporary positions, often diplomatic, for the rest of his life, until he retired to Certaldo. He never married. He had five illegitimate children, and they all pre-deceased him, without having children of their own. Famously, he met Petrarch in 1350, and developed an intimate friendship and that would greatly influence him until his death in 1375, a year after Petrarch's.
There is, in a way, a before and after Petrarch version of Boccaccio. Before this friendship, Boccaccio's output was very creative and original, included extensive poetry, was often irreverent and racy. Many of these works are important, but not otherwise highly regarded. After the friendship, Boccaccio got more serious. He wrote several lengthy encyclopedic works on mythology, famous women, and on the history of the names of natural features and other topics. These were in Latin. He famously burned his Italian poetry (much of which was already in circulation and still exists, but without any standard order or form.) For about 200 years the later Latin works were in heavy circulation around the European intelligencia , until they became outdated. But when Boccaccio and Petrarch met, he was working on his collection of stories, his Decameron. He probably wrote it mainly between 1348 and 1352 (although he kept editing all his works unti his death). It was not his last creative work, but it was arguably his last playful work. And it is, of course, his best work, and has what made him famous, a keystone work of the early Rennaissance. I will try to talk about it in more detail, constructively, in a later review.
The book is recommended for anyone looking deeply into Boccaccio (unless something better comes around)
------
Addendum - my notes on each chapter. I took a lot of notes as I read this, and I'm including a lot here for my own reference. They're hopefully useful to anyone curious.
Diana’s Hunt - ~1333 - his earliest narrative work (if he's the author).
Il Filocolo - ~1336-8 - arguably the earliest prose novel of modern Europe. It's his first work dedicated to Maria d'Aquino, his Fiametta. The story is of two lovers, Florio and Biancifiore, separated by unapproving parents and bad fortune. The lenghthy work includes a gathering of storytelling, a Decameron predecessor. Some of these stories (3?) would be recycled into the Decameron. Filocolo presents “a theme that Boccaccio was to treat with predilection and consummate art in later works such as the Ninfale fiesolano and several tales of the Decameron: the natural or instinctive love that attracts two young people of the opposite sex and the persistence of their love against the obstacle erected by an unsympathetic law or by class-conscious relatives concerned with preserving the distinction created by social and economic position.” (quoting Nicolas James Parella)
Il Filostrato - ~1340 - An epic poem, the main source of Chaucer's [Troilus and Criseyde]. I read and reviewed this last year. It has uncomfortably long stretches, but also delightful ones. My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Teseida - ~1339-1340. The title refers to Theseus, mythical king of Athens, slayer of the Minotuar. But the story, a very long epic poem, is about the Palemone and Arcita, two men who fall in love with Emilia and eventually fight over her. It derives from Statius, Thebiad 4 by Statius, and is a key inspiration of Ariosto, Tasso and Chaucer (The Knight's Tale).
Ameto: Comedia Delle Ninfe Fiorentine (1558) - ~1341-2, in Florence. This is a mixture of poetry and prose (like Dante's [La Vita Nuova]). Ameto stumbles across a group of nymphs in some Tuscan woods. He disguises himself as a woman, and joins them. They sit around telling stories, Ameto essentially playing voyeur to their careless actions, awing at their beauty until he finally comes clean.
L’Amorosa Visione - ~1342 - a long encyclopedic epic poem with a lengthy acrostic that forms a sonnet itself! The work forms a parody of Dante's [Comedia], including a lady guide in place of Dante's Virgil, and a strange place a lot like Dante's Limbo in [Inferno]. The narrator doesn't always adhere to his lady guide, wandering off on his own and finding a garden with allegorical figures representing different kinds of love (much different than what Dante found).
The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta - ~1343-44 - "the first modern psychological-realistic novel”. The work has a clean simple prose, like the Decameron. The narrator, the married Fiammetta, tells the story of her lover who leaves town permanently, and the realistic mental strife she goes through, having been truly in love and not knowing if he will return to her.
Ninfale fiesolano (The Nymph Song of Fiesole) - ~1346 (attributed to Boccaccio) - An epic poem of a shepherd, Africo, who falls in love with a real nymph. This is the only one of these works Bergin convinced me to pursue. I acquired a 1960 prose translation, a library discard, now waiting for me.
The Decameron - ~1349-1351 - I'm listing this in chorological order. But this is Bergin's last and longest chapter. Just posting some straight notes:
⁃ “Between the ambitious poems of his youth and the learned works of his mature years Boccaccio grants himself a moment of relaxation and child-like mischief.”
⁃ Subtitled Prince Galeotto - references Gallehault, Lancelot’s go-between for Guinevere
⁃ 1/3 of the characters are women. 32 of the 100 stories have women as a central character and in 42 others women are significant.
⁃ Faith, courage and liberality are ignored. War is limited
⁃ 67 stories involve sex
⁃ The storytellers - 7 women and 3 men:
---“We may well suspect that it was Boccaccio’s intention (quite different from that of Chaucer) to avoid making too sharp definitions of the storytellers… storytelling is his purpose“
--- Of the women, Pampinea speaks most, Fiametta second
---The three men are each an aspect of Boccaccio, and are all named after love: Panfilo, Filostrato and Dioneo (from Dione, the mother of Venus)
--- Lauretta's name is derived from Petrarch's Laura; Elissa's name references Dido from Aenied, and so references Virgil; Neifile's name references the dolce stil nuovo - Dante's style, hence references Dante.
---Storytelling styles, arguably: "Filomena and Filostrato for the predominantly lyric narrative; Elissa and Emilia for the renewal of the epic; Neifile and Lauretta for that of the lyric; Pampinea and Dioneo for the foundation of the pastoral narrative, Fiammetta and Panfilo for the invention of the novel and the purely psychological novel." - quoting Vittore Branca
The Corbaccio, or, The Labyrinth of Love - ~1355 - Boccaccio's last creative work. A bitter misogynistic dream vision by man spurned by a widow. He meets her deceased husband and is told how evil and unvirtuous she is.
The Rhymes - burned in 1364. Arguably there are 119, the first 69 dedicated to Fiammetta and dating to his time in Naples.
The Life of Dante and the Lectures on the Comedy - Boccaccio gave lectures on the Commedia through Canto 17 in 1351-5, and was grateful to stop, but continued to edit them.
Genealogy of the Pagan Gods - ~1350-1375, includes Boccaccio's famous defense of poetry. In Latin
Il De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de nominibus maris liber - Latin. The title translates roughly to "On the names of mountains, forests, fountains, lakes, rivers, ponds or marshes and seas" and ties into pagan mythology
Concerning Famous Women - ~1361-1375 - Latin. Covers Eve and 103 other pagan women. Not a feminist work. "…demonstrates what women can do—in spite of being women”
The Buccilicum Carmen (Pastoral Songs) - ~1350-69 - Lain. There are 16, with a cover letter on the history and nature of eclogues.
The Downfall of the Famous: New Annotated Edition of the Fates of Illustrious Men - ~1355-60 - Latin. The downfall of famous men, from Adam to King John of France.
published: 1981
format: 381-page hardcover
acquired: November
read: Dec 25, 2021 – Mar 10, 2022
time reading: 20:32, 3.2 mpp (3.6 mpp before adding endnote pages)
rating: 3
locations: Florence, Naples, 14th century Europe, etc.
about the author: Thomas G. Bergin was an American scholar of Italian literature, 1904-1987
This book is a weird thing, but the scholars like it a lot. It's not really a biography. There is a chapter on the European world of Boccaccio (which is great fun). One single chapter on his life. Then a chapter on each of his works, most of which don‘t have decent English translations. He summarizes the work, then provides commentary. These chapters are just barely readable, but also really helpful to get a sense each of these works, and of his entire oeuvre. Boccaccio had a lot of output, including lengthy really ambitious creative and encyclopedic stuff. Lengthy, and original but not all is very good.
Boccaccio was the illegitimate son of a Florentine banker working for a famous Bardi bank. Born in 1314 in Certaldo, he grew up in Florence. As a teenager he moved with his father to Naples, in 1327, then under the stable rule of King Robert I. Boccaccio flourished in Naples. If his mythical Fiammetta was real, a real lover who left him and became his sort of muse, it was here they met and he had his heart broken. Something happened in 1341, and he and his father, financially broken, returned to Florence. Boccaccio would travel a lot for various temporary positions, often diplomatic, for the rest of his life, until he retired to Certaldo. He never married. He had five illegitimate children, and they all pre-deceased him, without having children of their own. Famously, he met Petrarch in 1350, and developed an intimate friendship and that would greatly influence him until his death in 1375, a year after Petrarch's.
There is, in a way, a before and after Petrarch version of Boccaccio. Before this friendship, Boccaccio's output was very creative and original, included extensive poetry, was often irreverent and racy. Many of these works are important, but not otherwise highly regarded. After the friendship, Boccaccio got more serious. He wrote several lengthy encyclopedic works on mythology, famous women, and on the history of the names of natural features and other topics. These were in Latin. He famously burned his Italian poetry (much of which was already in circulation and still exists, but without any standard order or form.) For about 200 years the later Latin works were in heavy circulation around the European intelligencia , until they became outdated. But when Boccaccio and Petrarch met, he was working on his collection of stories, his Decameron. He probably wrote it mainly between 1348 and 1352 (although he kept editing all his works unti his death). It was not his last creative work, but it was arguably his last playful work. And it is, of course, his best work, and has what made him famous, a keystone work of the early Rennaissance. I will try to talk about it in more detail, constructively, in a later review.
The book is recommended for anyone looking deeply into Boccaccio (unless something better comes around)
------
Addendum - my notes on each chapter. I took a lot of notes as I read this, and I'm including a lot here for my own reference. They're hopefully useful to anyone curious.
Diana’s Hunt - ~1333 - his earliest narrative work (if he's the author).
Il Filocolo - ~1336-8 - arguably the earliest prose novel of modern Europe. It's his first work dedicated to Maria d'Aquino, his Fiametta. The story is of two lovers, Florio and Biancifiore, separated by unapproving parents and bad fortune. The lenghthy work includes a gathering of storytelling, a Decameron predecessor. Some of these stories (3?) would be recycled into the Decameron. Filocolo presents “a theme that Boccaccio was to treat with predilection and consummate art in later works such as the Ninfale fiesolano and several tales of the Decameron: the natural or instinctive love that attracts two young people of the opposite sex and the persistence of their love against the obstacle erected by an unsympathetic law or by class-conscious relatives concerned with preserving the distinction created by social and economic position.” (quoting Nicolas James Parella)
Il Filostrato - ~1340 - An epic poem, the main source of Chaucer's [Troilus and Criseyde]. I read and reviewed this last year. It has uncomfortably long stretches, but also delightful ones. My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Teseida - ~1339-1340. The title refers to Theseus, mythical king of Athens, slayer of the Minotuar. But the story, a very long epic poem, is about the Palemone and Arcita, two men who fall in love with Emilia and eventually fight over her. It derives from Statius, Thebiad 4 by Statius, and is a key inspiration of Ariosto, Tasso and Chaucer (The Knight's Tale).
Ameto: Comedia Delle Ninfe Fiorentine (1558) - ~1341-2, in Florence. This is a mixture of poetry and prose (like Dante's [La Vita Nuova]). Ameto stumbles across a group of nymphs in some Tuscan woods. He disguises himself as a woman, and joins them. They sit around telling stories, Ameto essentially playing voyeur to their careless actions, awing at their beauty until he finally comes clean.
L’Amorosa Visione - ~1342 - a long encyclopedic epic poem with a lengthy acrostic that forms a sonnet itself! The work forms a parody of Dante's [Comedia], including a lady guide in place of Dante's Virgil, and a strange place a lot like Dante's Limbo in [Inferno]. The narrator doesn't always adhere to his lady guide, wandering off on his own and finding a garden with allegorical figures representing different kinds of love (much different than what Dante found).
The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta - ~1343-44 - "the first modern psychological-realistic novel”. The work has a clean simple prose, like the Decameron. The narrator, the married Fiammetta, tells the story of her lover who leaves town permanently, and the realistic mental strife she goes through, having been truly in love and not knowing if he will return to her.
Ninfale fiesolano (The Nymph Song of Fiesole) - ~1346 (attributed to Boccaccio) - An epic poem of a shepherd, Africo, who falls in love with a real nymph. This is the only one of these works Bergin convinced me to pursue. I acquired a 1960 prose translation, a library discard, now waiting for me.
The Decameron - ~1349-1351 - I'm listing this in chorological order. But this is Bergin's last and longest chapter. Just posting some straight notes:
⁃ “Between the ambitious poems of his youth and the learned works of his mature years Boccaccio grants himself a moment of relaxation and child-like mischief.”
⁃ Subtitled Prince Galeotto - references Gallehault, Lancelot’s go-between for Guinevere
⁃ 1/3 of the characters are women. 32 of the 100 stories have women as a central character and in 42 others women are significant.
⁃ Faith, courage and liberality are ignored. War is limited
⁃ 67 stories involve sex
⁃ The storytellers - 7 women and 3 men:
---“We may well suspect that it was Boccaccio’s intention (quite different from that of Chaucer) to avoid making too sharp definitions of the storytellers… storytelling is his purpose“
--- Of the women, Pampinea speaks most, Fiametta second
---The three men are each an aspect of Boccaccio, and are all named after love: Panfilo, Filostrato and Dioneo (from Dione, the mother of Venus)
--- Lauretta's name is derived from Petrarch's Laura; Elissa's name references Dido from Aenied, and so references Virgil; Neifile's name references the dolce stil nuovo - Dante's style, hence references Dante.
---Storytelling styles, arguably: "Filomena and Filostrato for the predominantly lyric narrative; Elissa and Emilia for the renewal of the epic; Neifile and Lauretta for that of the lyric; Pampinea and Dioneo for the foundation of the pastoral narrative, Fiammetta and Panfilo for the invention of the novel and the purely psychological novel." - quoting Vittore Branca
The Corbaccio, or, The Labyrinth of Love - ~1355 - Boccaccio's last creative work. A bitter misogynistic dream vision by man spurned by a widow. He meets her deceased husband and is told how evil and unvirtuous she is.
The Rhymes - burned in 1364. Arguably there are 119, the first 69 dedicated to Fiammetta and dating to his time in Naples.
The Life of Dante and the Lectures on the Comedy - Boccaccio gave lectures on the Commedia through Canto 17 in 1351-5, and was grateful to stop, but continued to edit them.
Genealogy of the Pagan Gods - ~1350-1375, includes Boccaccio's famous defense of poetry. In Latin
Il De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de nominibus maris liber - Latin. The title translates roughly to "On the names of mountains, forests, fountains, lakes, rivers, ponds or marshes and seas" and ties into pagan mythology
Concerning Famous Women - ~1361-1375 - Latin. Covers Eve and 103 other pagan women. Not a feminist work. "…demonstrates what women can do—in spite of being women”
The Buccilicum Carmen (Pastoral Songs) - ~1350-69 - Lain. There are 16, with a cover letter on the history and nature of eclogues.
The Downfall of the Famous: New Annotated Edition of the Fates of Illustrious Men - ~1355-60 - Latin. The downfall of famous men, from Adam to King John of France.
February 9, 2021
While not a difficult read, the subject is not simple and consequently every single page is informationally dense, insightful and blends from one page to the next. Boccaccio was a complex man living in a complicated time, and he reflects that in his writing--along with his love for his mentors Dante and Petrarch. The biography is just a single chapter, with a couple of chapters of history for context and the rest is textual analysis and criticism of Boccaccio's work. I learned a lot, and not just about the author or 14th century Italy but also about the influences he had on authors in subsequent centuries, including Chaucer and Shakespeare.
May 25, 2020
Very little is known for certain of Boccaccio's life and his biography occupies a single chapter of this book. The other chapters consist of a summary and analysis of Boccaccio's major compositions, many of which are unavailable to those who cannot read Italian. The Decameron is shown to be the singular masterpiece between prolex early works and the dry catalogs of gods, women, and famous men that followed.
February 10, 2010
Curious. A very literary focus, but this does give an overview of history and methods as well as a synopsis of every work. In what seems to be an older style. In a way, you could call this the definitive biography for our times of GB, the language he uses is mostly straightforward so long as you understand some poetry forms and their terminologies, but it is a rarefied work. Dare I say, precocious? No, that's not it. Like a thin drapery with exquisite tracery has been lain over a statue and the sign next to it details unending minutiae of the material and mineral contents of the statue, piece by piece. The lighting is shaded, the audience is hushed and out from behind the curtain comes an old man in a walker, with barrel-handle mustache and big spectacles that make his brooding eyes look huge.
But I don't think people really see the variety in Boccaccio like Bergin did either, if only from this other (hard-literature-science) perspective -- maybe if I knew more about Professor Bergin, it would help me.
But the book is good, I only read a chapter or so at a time, over the course of years now. It doesn't have to hold my interest, it's research.
But I don't think people really see the variety in Boccaccio like Bergin did either, if only from this other (hard-literature-science) perspective -- maybe if I knew more about Professor Bergin, it would help me.
But the book is good, I only read a chapter or so at a time, over the course of years now. It doesn't have to hold my interest, it's research.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews