Giovanni Boccaccio (born
1313 in Paris -
December 21,
1375 in Florence) was the greatest of
Petrarch's disciples and an important
renaissance humanist in his own right. He was a great scholar of the classics, especially
Tacitus and
Livy. His own works included
On Famous Women[?], the
Decameron and the
Tale of Filippa (which is a celebrated story within the
Decameron). Boccaccio's characters are notable for their era in that they are realistic, spirited and clever individuals who are grounded in reality (In contradiction to the characters of his contemporaries, who were more concerned with the
Medieval virtues of
Chivalry,
Piety and
Humility). His greatest legacy is, however, his poems in the vernacular. In later life he turned to
Christianity and repudiated many of his earlier works.
His Decameron - named because its intent was to produce 10 stories by 10 travellers - was an important influence on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.