Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer and humanist of the early Renaissance, author of The Decameron, a foundational masterpiece of European prose fiction.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) was, with Dante and Petrarch, one of the “three crowns” of early Italian literature and a key figure of the emerging Renaissance humanism.

His masterpiece, The Decameron, frames a hundred tales told by ten young people who have fled plague-stricken Florence to the countryside — a richly varied collection of stories ranging from the bawdy and comic to the tragic and noble, painting a vivid portrait of fourteenth-century life. The work profoundly influenced later writers, including Chaucer.

Boccaccio is celebrated as a master storyteller and a foundational figure of European prose fiction, whose Decameron remains endlessly entertaining and humane.