One of these items ships sooner than the other. This was just a bunch of short stories, mostly about cheating and nuns/priests having sex. Return, for unidentified reasons, to Ravenna. Following a serious crisis of faith, Boccaccio dedicates himself exclusively to spiritual pursuits. Lots of nuns, abbesses, deacons, and young, strikingly beautiful rich virginal daughters. The coup, as the chronicler Matteo Villani has it, was meant to overturn the iniquitous law imposed by "certain great and popular men [Albizzi and Ricci] for the evil purpose of becoming tyrants" (this is a refrain in Florentine political life, dominated by the factious Guelf party, the Parte Guelfa). A German translation of the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. Previous page of related Sponsored Products. It is during this period that Boccaccio first learns news of Dante's last years, spent in Ravenna. Meeting with Petrarch in Padua around whom many intellectuals and literary figures have gathered. Storia della letteratura italiana vol. We know that Giovanni was briefly back in Ravenna in 1350, this time on a special mission from the compagnia of Or San Michele: to give suor Beatrice (Dante's daughter, a nun in the monastery of San Stefano in Ravenna) ten golden florins as a belated restitution to the heir of the great exiled poet who had died there, thirty years earlier. (G.M., M.P., M.R.) devotedly called Petrarch. The 1360s are indeed years of spiritual crisis for Giovanni.  In a famous episode (as V. Branca tells it in his biography of Boccaccio): upon receiving, in 1361, a message by the Sienese Blessed Pietro Petroni, admonishing him about his imminent death, Boccaccio rashly thought to abandon his studies and turn over his library to his magister, Petrarch. Start by marking “The Decameron: Selected Tales” as Want to Read: Error rating book. Boccaccio returns to Florence. I'll read the rest sometime. I remember really enjoying this when I read it (or some of it anyway) in college 20-some years ago. Boccaccio takes ambassadorship to the papal court in Rome. This is the premise of Boccaccio's. In the attempt to stave off the bankruptcy, a group of prominent citizens of Florence arranged a coup: Walter of Brienne, a French military leader, was named signore of the city in 1342. Download one of the Free Kindle apps to start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, and computer. Refresh and try again. Giovanni Boccaccio was born in in Florence in 1313, the son of a Florentine merchant. Violante is the only child whose name (and a faint, affectionate memory) is recorded in her father's writings. A great taste of the Decameron, which has made me want to try the full thing. Composition of the Decameron. The Seege of Troye & The Rawlinson Prose Siege of Troy: Two Shorter Accounts of the... To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. It's the beginning of a correspondence and a literary friendship that lasted until their death, a year apart from one another, in 1374 (Petrarca) and 1375 (Boccaccio). Ferroni, Giulio. I "Dalle origini al Quattrocento" Turin: Einaudi, 1991. Continually astounded by the wit and intelligence of Medieval writing. Wow, so I didn't realize that books written in the 1300s spoke of such (what is considered) contemporary subjects! And Boccaccio resumed his love's labors. Most likely Giovanni left Naples in the winter of 1340-41, thus unable to witness the coronation, in 1341, of Petrarca as the king's poet laureate. 's hopes to quickly return to the city of his youth, with the help of his now powerful and influential friend Nicola Acciaiuoli, were repeatedly stifled. They take turns settings the theme. Boccaccio is increasingly troubled by obesity, and also by a form of dropsy which impedes his movement, together with attacks of scabies and high fevers. As the scion (however illegitimate) of a prominent and prosperous citizen of Florence, Giovanni receives a sound education: by age six, he is taught to read and write, entrusted to a private tutor, Giovanni di Domenico Mazzuoli da Strada; our Giovanni also learns to spell from the children's psalm-book and already as a child, like his own characters Florio and Biancifiore, protagonists of Filocolo, he studies grammar (Latin) on Ovid. Boccaccio's first exposure to the poetry of Petrarch. These are tales from the 14th century translated from Italian. This review is of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, translated by Wayne Rebhorn, in case Amazon decides to blend it with reviews of the Beatles' White Album. What a crazy bunch of stories. Boccaccio wrote a number of notable works, including The Decameron and On Famous Women. I liked the stories well enough and found them humorous, which was the point after all. I enjoyed the stories, as I knew I would, and I very much like the art deco-style illustrations by Mac Harshberger, a well known illustrator of the era. It's supposed. For the next four years, Boccaccio receives no further official Florentine appointments. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2018, 読みやすい！ The first English version that everyone can enjoy reading. In an aborted coup d'état in Florence, several of Boccaccio's friends and acquaintances are implicated, some of whom (including Niccolò di Bartolo Del Buono and others) are subsequently executed. Work begins on the Genealogia deorum gentilium, a work which is not finished until 1374. Travels to the papal court of Urban V in Avignon as Florentine ambassador. These (1348-51) are in fact the years of the Decameron and we know very little about them. Work continues on the Genealogie. The version we had was all the so-called "amorous" tales from this collection - 23 in all. He gives his first lecture on October 23d, 1373; after a few months, too ill to continue and among some opposition from the most factious of the Guelf extremists, who never forgave Dante his "ghibellin" (pro-Empire) ideas, and some mumbling from orthodox religious figures, the lectures are interrupted. 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. An excellent rendering of an enduring classic for modern times. Joan Acocella wrote a wonderful article for the New Yorker about this book. Madison Street west of Chicago's Loop was a run-down area when I was a kid, but it had some good used bookstores. Both had lent enormous sums of money to the King of England (Edward III) to finance his military expedition against France (which, in 1336, started a war destined to last for more than a hundred years -- the hundred years war). Top quality paper and binding, AND translation. They were Day 1, Story 3; Day 2, Story 1; and Day 3, Story 1. First complete version of the De casibus and first abridged edition of the Trattatello. A fundamental turning point in the life of B. is his departure for Naples, in 1327, age thirteen, following his father who (as we said) became the "director" of the Bardi office at the court of their most important client, King Robert d'Anjou. they pass the time by taking turns telling stories. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. Perhaps looking for a patron, he went to Ravenna (guest of Ostagio da Polenta) in 1346, and Forlì (guest of Francesco Ordelaffi) between '47 and '48, where he exchanges sonnets and carmina with the grammarian Checco di Meletto Rossi. 's twofold culture, poetic in a Modern, humanistic, and encyclopedic, in a Medieval sense. I think because of the idiosyncrasies of the translation and resulting syntax, this was very slow reading. This is a classic known to many people but probably not read. I'd been travelling by bus and train to the Loop since junior high, often with friends to see a movie at one of the big theatres, but increasingly as I aged to go to the bookstores. Many of the stories are shamelessly ribald, but if you are seeing bodies stacked up in the streets. (This will amount to 100 tales, hence the title.) These (1348-51) are in fact the years of the Decameron and we know very little about them. Biographers in the 19th-century gave some currency to the romantic tale of Giovanni's birth from his father's supposed affair with a king's daughter, in far away Paris.