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====The life of Giovanni Boccaccio====
[[File: Boccaccio 3.jpg|200px|thumb|left|Florence]]
The future writer was born in a village outside of the city of Florence, and he was the son of Boccaccio de Chellino, a wealthy merchant and banker, who was employed by the famous Bardi Bank. It appears that Boccaccio was born outside of marriage and he was raised by his father and legitimized. The young boy received an excellent education and was tutored in Latin, and his father also gave him some business training. From an early age, the young Giovanni was determined to be a poet. His father moved to Naples and worked as a financial advisor to the king and Boccaccio was familiar with the Neapolitan Court. The young man was obliged to become an apprentice banker, which he hated, but he was able to meet many writers and scholars.<ref>Bartlett, Kenneth R. [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1442604859/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1442604859&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=c3d374ea225865ed2995e8921320d0f6 The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance. ] Toronto: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992, p 42-43)</ref> It was about this time that he became interested in the mythology of the Greeks and the Romans.
The young man would regularly attend the Royal Court, and he fell in love with the young daughter of the king, who inspired some of his later works, but his passion was unrequited. Boccaccio’s first efforts were in poetry, and he was much influenced by the Sicilian School.<ref>, Bartlett, p 42</ref> He wrote a long poem, Il Filostrato, and Teseida, which represented his emotional turmoil caused by his unrequited love for the King’s daughter. In 1340 the Bardi Bank collapsed, and this creates a European financial crisis, which forced Boccaccio to return to Florence, leaving his beloved in Naples. It was at this time that he grew as a writer and wrote a traditional medieval style Romance in verse, In the Elegy of Lady Fiammetta, which has some of his most beautiful poetry.
The young writer traveled throughout Italy at this time, and he appears to escape the Black Death unscathed (1347-1350). The plague killed up to one-third of the population of Italy and the devastation it caused, deeply impacted Boccaccio’s writings. The Black Death was directly the inspiration for his most celebrated work the [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140449302/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0140449302&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=c9aa7bd74453a31a3ad010c425b948eb Decameron], which was written between 1348-1353.<ref> Mc William, G.H.: 1995, Introduction to The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, Penguin Classics, Suffolk England, 1995), p 5</ref> This is a large prose work, and it is a collection of short stories or Nouvelles. It was an instant sensation and has remained so to this day. Boccaccio came to regret his masterpiece, and after completing it, he seemed to have experienced some form of crisis.
In the 1350s, he met Petrarch and the two men became friends’ and each influenced the works of the other. In the 1350s Boccaccio wrote the biography of Dante and went on to write a collection of portraits <i>On Famous Women and On Famous Men</i>, which was very popular. He also wrote a work on classical mythology, and this is considered to be one of the first studies of myth ever produced. In 1362 during a religious crisis, he met a monk who told him to abandon literature and to burn his extensive library, for the sake of his soul.<ref>McWilliam, p 4</ref>
