Giovanni Boccaccio

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The Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) is best known for the Decameron. For his Latin works and his role in reviving Hellenistic learning in Florence, he may be considered one of the early humanists. In this sense Boccaccio’s vernacular humanism contrasts with Petrarch’s classical humanism.

Boccaccio had some doubts about writing in the vernacular. There was an opinion of many literary people of the time that if someone couldn’t read Latin, they weren’t worth the trouble to write for. In Boccaccio’s later years, after a religious awakening, he wrote that he regretted writing The Decameron.

Deception

The Decameron reflects Humanistic thinking about the elevation of man, which had an influence upon morality in the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a period when society, attitudes and ideas were changing. Capitalism allowed for social mobility, yet it also served to change peoples opinions on morality.

First, humanism radically changed the idea of individual independence. Man and human nature were no longer seen as totally sinful and in need of punishment but instead as independent, beautiful, and individual creations of God.

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives.

Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” BEST illustrates the ideals of humanism because it was written in a vernacular language that is not difficult to understand. Renaissance writers focused on the dignity of humans and the value of the individual and reflected it on its humanist works. This was the case of Dante and Petrarch.

Humanists believe that human experience and rational thinking provide the only source of both knowledge and a moral code to live by. They reject the idea of knowledge ‘revealed’ to human beings by gods, or in special books.

He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy). Dante’s Divine Comedy, a landmark in Italian literature and among the greatest works of all medieval European literature, is a profound Christian vision of humankind’s temporal and eternal destiny.

Dante wrote Inferno while in political exile from Florence, and he used it as a vehicle to express his political beliefs and take comfort in imagining bad ends for his enemies. However, the poem’s main purpose is, to quote Milton, to “justify the ways of God to Men.”

Dante called the poem “Comedy” (the adjective “Divine” was added later, in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High (“Tragedy”) or Low (“Comedy”).

We note that Dante the Pilgrim is completely silent in Canto 12. Apparently, he is learning to concentrate on his education. We remember that earlier Dante the Pilgrim said to Virgil that “I’m trying not to talk too much, / as you have told me more than once to do” (Musa, Inferno10. 20-21).