Giovanni Boccaccio

Jose GutierrezKevin Sanchez

Boccaccio was born in 1313 in Italy (there is not an exact date and place).

He spent his childhood in Florence

His life

Boccaccio live 21 years in Naples, but in 1438 he returned to Florence to take care of his younger brother

He became a close friend of Petrarch in 1350

Boccaccio died in December 21, 1375.

Although he never got married, he was the father of three children.

He wrote in Latin, and mostly of his work was inspired in mythology and culture.

The Decameron

• Decameron combines two Greek words: déka ("ten") and hēméra ("day") = “ten-day”

• Boccaccio probably conceived the Decameron after the epidemic of 1348, and completed it by 1353.

• The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales

It begins with a description of the Black Death and a group of seven

women and three men who escaped from a plague in

Florence. They went to a villa in the countryside of Fiesole for two

weeks.

To pass the time, each member of the party tells one story for each one of the nights spent at the

villa.