Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, Vol 1

by Giovanni Boccaccio, Jon Solomon (Translator)

Giovanni Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Pagan Gods is an ambitious work of humanistic scholarship whose goal is to plunder ancient and medieval literary sources so as to create a massive synthesis of Greek and Roman mythology. The work also contains a famous defense of the value of studying ancient pagan poetry in a Christian world.

The complete work in fifteen books contains a meticulously organized genealogical tree identifying approximately 950 Greco-Roman mythological figures. The scope is enormous: 723 chapters include over a thousand citations from two hundred Greek, Roman, medieval, and Trecento authors. Throughout the Genealogy, Boccaccio deploys an array of allegorical, historical, and philological critiques of the ancient myths and their iconography.

Much more than a mere compilation of pagan myths, the Genealogy incorporates hundreds of excerpts from and comments on ancient poetry, illustrative of the new spirit of philological and cultural inquiry emerging in the early Renaissance. It is at once the most ambitious work of literary scholarship of the early Renaissance and a demonstration to contemporaries of the moral and cultural value of studying ancient poetry. This is the first volume of a projected three-volume set of Boccaccio’s complete Genealogy.

(20110524)

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Mythology

928 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1372

About the author

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian author and poet, a friend and correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist in his own right and author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular. Boccaccio is particularly notable for his dialogue, of which it has been said that it surpasses in verisimilitude that of just about all of his contemporaries, since they were medieval writers and often followed formulaic models for character and plot.

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boccaccio, ut patet, primo quae ab antiques hausisse potuerit scrivit; inde, ubi defecerint seu minus iudicio suo plene dixerint, suam apposuit sententiam. ex quibus enucleationibus, praeter artificium fingentium poetarum et futilium deorum consanguinitates et affinitates explicitas, naturalia quaedam videbatur tanto occultata misterio, ut mireris, sic et procerum gesta moresque non per omne trivium evagantia.

[Liam Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one book I read as a grad student while studying the Classics. This is a marvelous source of classical myths, at leas as good as Ovid or Vergil. Homer still out paces everyone as does Hesiod, in his shorter works.

What I like is how Boccaccio attempts to define what the myths mean. He also will ascribe several entities to one god, so that there are three Jupiters from three different ages of man and gods.
This is a unique way of looking at them.

[Kurt R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lesser know but broader in scope than his other works which provides deeper insight into the myths and gods themselves. SHould now be overlooked by any mythologist.

Here is just one example for Hermes “ interpreter of secrets and the dissolver of the clouds of the mind” and “ it is Mercury's part to control the winds”.

[Mills College Library]

292.211 B6642

[Steve Donoghue · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great work by Boccaccio that *isn't* the Decameron! Here's my full Open Letters review:

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/boo...