Giovanni Boccaccio

(Certaldo, 1313-1375)

Poet, language scholar, thinker and storyteller. He was a precursor of the great Renaissance literature, and was able to write both in Latin and in the new Tuscan language. Petrarch was his teacher and encouraged him to learn the pagan classics. As a literary critic, Boccaccio was the author of Dante's biography, establishing the method of reading the Comedy which consists of analyzing the poem song by song. As a linguist, Boccaccio became a defender of the Greek language and literature in Italy. As a narrator, he composed one of the first psychological novels, the epistolary Elegy of Madonna Fiametta and the short story collection The Decameron.