In connection with the conference, Duke’s Rubenstein Library has an exhibit showcasing the library’s vast collections related to Boccaccio’s fiction and scholarly works.īelow, Eisner discusses the legacy of Boccaccio and “The Decameron” and why it still attracts scholarly interest centuries later. Putting Boccaccio back into the spotlight is one goal of the third Triennial Conference of the American Boccaccio Association, which will be held Sept. “That’s how he’s traditionally portrayed.” “In the famous Giorgio Vasari painting ‘Six Tuscan Poets,’ he’s in the painting, but he’s in the background, barely visible behind Petrarch,” Eisner said. Romance Studies Professor Martin Eisner, who teaches a course on Boccaccio, says while the writer’s influence is significant, he is traditionally treated as being in the shadow of Dante and his friend Petrarch.

And recent scholarship suggests “The Decameron” is a source for several stories in Geoffrey Chaucer more famous “Canterbury Tales” written decades later. Shakespeare readily borrowed themes for several plays. When Keats wrote “Isabella,” he borrowed from Boccaccio’s strange love story of a woman who buries her dead lover’s head in a pot of basil. Most people have never read the 14 th century Florentine writer’s most famous work “The Decameron,” but they have read modern authors who did and were inspired by the book - 100 short, earthy, bawdy, seemingly modern tales of women whose virtue is on trial, rubes who get their comeuppance by falling in latrines and lovers who find their lust thwarted (and in some cases not thwarted). To see the full Boccaccio chart, click here.Īfter 700 years, is Giovanni Boccaccio ready to come out of the background?

The decameron of boccaccio book