Giovanni Boccaccio

But that is impossible.

She takes us through Boccaccio's life, and as by the reflection of a sunset from a mirror, we are warmed with the glow and mirth from distant and long past times in Italy.

One feels through her works the innate delicacy of her mind.

Through Boccaccio's life, as through all the others, the history of the times and the noteworthy facts concerning the poets are brought forward, such as the sums of money Boccaccio spent, though poor, to promote the study of Greek so long before the taking of Constantinople by the Turks.

In the friendship of Petrarch and Boccaccio, she shows how great souls can love and makes you love them in return.

And you feel the riches of the meetings of such people, these dictators of mankind, not of a faction-tossed country or continent.

How paltry do the triumphs of conquerors, which end with the night, the feasts of princes, which leave still hungry, appear beside the triumphs of intellect, the symposium of souls.

After Boccaccio, Mary rapidly ran over the careers of Lorenzo de' Medici, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Polizian, and the Pulci, exhibiting again, after the lapse of a century, the study in Italy of the Greek language.

Last of all, the question might be asked, is the Renaissance more than a period of storm and stress, a link between the Middle Ages and modern times? Like every age, it is one of transition, but it is also one of glorious achievement.

If anyone doubts this, let him remember only a few names of the imposing roll call, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Montaigne, Calderon, Lope de Vega, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and in their ranks Dante takes his place with the same serene and august confidence with which he joined the company of Virgil and Homer.

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But while his facts, ideas, and interests were those of his day, certain traits differentiate him from his fellows.

With Petrarch, he shares intensity of feeling and strong personality.

With Chaucer and Boccaccio, clearness of vision and the gift of vivid dramatic characterization.

With none, his artistic reaction to the wilder aspects of nature, his stupendous imagination, his conciseness, his power of suggestion.

The maidens themselves turn into chattering bats.

Boccaccio, helped doubtless by Ovid's art, affects a similar contrast between the gay tales of the Decameron and their gruesome occasion.

as we glide along the varied course of ovid's story with changes in moods and colors changes in the music of the verse changes in the settings changes in the actors at the end of the tale we become gradually aware that the spirit of the poem is constantly changing as it moves It starts as epic and is epic throughout.

It has not the nobility of Virgil's poem, which only Milton among the countless imitators of Virgil could reproduce.

But antiquity as a whole was more zealously sought and found in this tremendous period than in the centuries preceding.

The term Renaissance is no misnomer.

of its popularity as attested by translations allusions and imitations in the literature of all the european countries was securely established and ever enlarged its bounds the thirst for ancient life and thought found satisfaction in his pages painters and sculptors no less than poets turned to the metamorphoses for stories and themes and for pictures that needed only the transferring to canvas or to stone his work became an authoritative bible of art one patriarch and boccaccio petrarch reckoned ovid among his favorites with a hint from the amores he hit on an invention in his triumpho d'amore that enjoyed a wide vogue in contemporary and subsequent poetry but no censor morum could be more savage than petrarch in berating the indecency of that insane work the art of love worthy cause of the poet's exile and typical product of a mind lascivious lecherous and altogether mulierous in general petrarch is too serious and self-centred to make ovid his friend for life boccaccio started with an intensely intimate friendship with ovid his early works both latin and italian are saturated with the amorosities of ovid's early poetry and with the gay fancy of the metamorphoses in fiametta he has constructed an elaborate tissue from the heroides and added his darling to their number ovid praised by name has furnished many of the ensembles old for the amorosa visione but here the spirit of corinna is caught up into that of beatrice and of laura the pastoral fairyland of ameto takes much of its scenery from the metamorphoses we cannot deny that boccaccio or sannazaro after him may have known something of the greek romance but for the essence of the ameto or the arcadia we need look no further than ovid virgil a few other romans and the genius of the two authors in the decameron boccaccio like chaucer essays a larger contest with ovid if with dryden we allow chaucer a special prize as master of drama the three contestants all come off with flying colors arcades omnes In the latter half of his bisected life, spent soberly under the spell of the worshipped Petrarch, Boccaccio turned to Ovid chiefly for material, for his scholarly work De genealogia deorum.

Virgil is his principal authority, with Ovid a close second.

The melodies of Provence wakened the spirit of Dante.

The busy versifiers of Troyes prepared the way for a Wolfram, a Benoit for a Boccaccio, a Jean de Meung for a Chaucer.

With all their fascinating and unfailing grace, the early French romancers rarely caught the finer breath of romance.

On the other hand, their realism was the realism of the esprit Gaulois, gay, malicious, intelligent, full of verve and wit, but fastening with zest on weakness and folly, indifferent to beauty, incredulous of virtue, fundamentally hostile to romance.

This, like other kinds of unnatural virtue, was a part of the heritage from medieval romance.

Fortified with Roman legend The classical exaltation of friendship concurred with the Germanic absoluteness of faithful devotion, and for the medieval mind, the most convincing way of attesting this was by the surrender of a mistress.

In the tenth book of the Decamaron, Boccaccio collects the most admired examples of things done generously and magnificently, chiefly in matters of love.

One of them is the tale of Tito and Gisipo, where Tito, having fallen in love with his friend's bride, Gisipo generously resigns to him all but the name of husband.

Irving's Dante, as he walked, leaned forward and held his left shoulder a little higher than the other.

These details, of course, were culled from the description by Boccaccio, who saw the divine poet with his own eyes when he himself was an observing little boy of nine.

Since the death of Sir Henry Irving, no other celebrated actor has also exhibited such clever achievements in impersonation as Mr. George Arliss.

At the present time, Mr. Arliss is perhaps most noted for his impersonation of Disraeli, but he had already asserted his eminence in the finer art of acting long before he first put on the makeup of Lord Beaconsfield.

Alone among all modern playwrights he has recaptured and restored the magic atmosphere of the Forest of Arden, an atmosphere which marries to identity the usually antithetic methods of loveliness and wit.

He flutes a little melody upon a slender reed, but his music awakens echoes from an organ which resounds with the diapason of eternity.

The story of Barbarine is suggestive of any of the hundred tales of Boccaccio which date from a period when narrative was naive and had not yet become self-conscious and sophisticated.

Count Ulrich is married to a perfect wife.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit livervox.org. Recording by Lynn Salva The Eptameron of the Tales of Margaret, Queen of Navarre, Volume 1 by Margaret of Navarre Translated by George Sainsbury Appendix A, Prologue, page 31.

The dedication with which Anthony Limassol prefaces his translation of Boccaccio contains several curious passages.

In it, Margaret is styled the most high and most illustrious Princess Margaret of France, only sister of the King, Queen of Navarre.

Duchess of Alungsung and of Bery, while the author describes himself as Master Antoine Limassol, Consular of the King, Receiver General of his Finances in Burgundy, and very humble secretary to this Queen.

The first edition of Limassol's translation 1545 was in folio, the subsequent ones of 1548, 1551, 1533 being in octavo.

It should be remembered that Le Masson's was by no means the first French version of the Decameron.

Laurent du Premier Fecte had already rendered Boccaccio's masterpiece into French in the reign of Charles VI.

But unfortunately, his translation, although a pleasing naivete, was not at all correct, having been made from a Latin version of the original.