Giovanni Boccaccio, a Biographical Study

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
  Superscripts are denoted by ^  eg xvj^o.

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
  the text and consultation of external sources.

  Modern practice in Italian texts contracts (removes the space from)
  vowel elisions, for example l'anno not l' anno, ch'io not ch' io.
  This book, in common with some similar English books of the time, has
  a space in these elisions in the original text.  This space has been
  retained in the etext.  The only exceptions, in both the text and
  etext, are in French names and phrases, such as d'Aquino and d'Anjou.

  More details can be found at the end of the book.




GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO




BY THE SAME AUTHOR


FREDERIC UVEDALE. A Romance. 1901.

STUDIES IN THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS. 1902.

ITALY AND THE ITALIANS. Second Edition. 1902.

THE CITIES OF UMBRIA. Third Edition. 1905.

THE CITIES OF SPAIN. Third Edition. 1906.

SIGISMONDO MALATESTA. 1906.

FLORENCE AND NORTHERN TUSCANY. Second Edition. 1907.

COUNTRY WALKS ABOUT FLORENCE. 1908.

IN UNKNOWN TUSCANY. 1909.


EDITED BY EDWARD HUTTON

MEMOIRS OF THE DUKES OF URBINO.
  By JAMES DENNISTOUN OF DENNISTOUN. Illustrating the Arms, Arts, and
  Literature of Italy, from 1440 to 1630. New Edition, with upwards of
  100 Illustrations. 3 vols. Demy 8vo. 1908.

CROWE AND CAVALCASELLE'S A NEW HISTORY OF PAINTING IN ITALY.
  3 vols. 8vo. 1908-9.

[Illustration: _Traditional Portraits of Boccaccio & Fiammetta (Maria
d'Aquino)_

_From the Frescoes in the Spanish Chapel of S. Maria Novella,
Florence._]




GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY BY EDWARD HUTTON

WITH PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE & NUMEROUS OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

    But if the love that hath and still doth burn me
    No love at length return me,
    Out of my thoughts I'll set her:
    Heart let her go, O heart I pray thee let her!
            Say shall she go?
            O no, no, no, no, no!
    Fix'd in the heart, how can the heart forget her.

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMX


PLYMOUTH: WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS




  TO MY FRIEND
  J. L. GARVIN
  THIS STUDY OF AN HEROIC LIFE




PREFACE


It might seem proper, in England at least, to preface any book
dealing frankly with the author of the _Decameron_ with an apology
for, and perhaps a defence of, its subject. I shall do nothing of
the kind. Indeed, this is not the place, if any be, to undertake the
defence of Boccaccio. His life, the facts of his life, his love, his
humanity, and his labours, plentifully set forth in this work, will
defend him with the simple of heart more eloquently than I could
hope to do. And it might seem that one who exhausted his little
patrimony in the acquirement of learning, who gave Homer back to us,
who founded or certainly fixed Italian prose, who was the friend
of Petrarch, the passionate defender of Dante, and who died in the
pursuit of knowledge, should need no defence anywhere from any one.

This book, on which I have been at work from time to time for some
years, is the result of an endeavour to set out quite frankly and
in order all that may be known of Boccaccio, his life, his love for
Fiammetta, and his work, so splendid in the Tuscan, the fruit of such
an enthusiastic and heroic labour in the Latin. It is an attempt at
a biographical and critical study of one of the greatest creative
writers of Europe, of one of the earliest humanists, in which, for
the first time, in England certainly, all the facts are placed before
the reader, and the sources and authority for these facts quoted,
cited, and named. Yet while I have tried to be as scrupulous as
possible in this respect, I hope the book will be read too by those
for whom notes have no attraction; for it was written first for
delight.

Among other things I have dealt with, the reader will find a study of
Boccaccio's attitude to Woman, and in some sort this may be said to
be the true subject of the book.

I have dealt too with Boccaccio's relation to both Dante and
Petrarch; and it was my intention to have written a chapter on
Boccaccio and Chaucer, but interesting as that subject is--and one of
the greatest desiderata in the study of Chaucer--a chapter in a long
book seemed too small for it; and again, it belongs rather to a book
on Chaucer than to one about Boccaccio. I have left it, then, for
another opportunity, or for another and a better student than myself.

In regard to the illustrations, I may say that I hoped to make them,
as it were, a chapter on Boccaccio and his work in relation to the
fine arts; but I found at last that it would be impossible to carry
this out. To begin with, I was unable to get permission to reproduce
M. Spiridon's and Mr. V. Watney's panels by Alunno di Domenico[1]
illustrating the story of Nastagio degli Onesti (_Decameron_, V,
8), which are perhaps the most beautiful paintings ever made in
illustration of one of Boccaccio's tales.