[BOCCACCIO] Giovanni Boccaccio, c. 1313-1375, says that his father made him legitimate, probably in 1319 or 1320, Amorosa Visione 14.42-46. His father, Boccaccino da Certaldo, was a banker with the Bardi and came from the small town of Certaldo, twenty-three miles southwest of Florence. Nothing is known about his mother. The story of the seduction of a French woman by a Tuscan, Filocolo V.9 and Ameto XXIII, formerly believed to be Boccaccio's accounts of his conception and birth, is now discounted. Boccaccio was well taken care of and given a good education, as he tells throughout De genealogia deorum gentilium (The Genealogy of the Pagan Gods). His father wanted him to be first a banker, then a lawyer, and Boccaccio studied canon law. But poetry claimed him. Between 1333 and 1339 he wrote Il Filocolo, Caccia di Diana, and Il Filostrato. In these years he loved a lady he called Fiammetta. In 1350 he met Petrarch, whom he had always revered. He began his Vita di Dante (Life of Dante) in 1351 and revised Amorosa Visione between 1355 and 1361. Between 1339 and 1341, he composed Il Teseida di Nozze d'Emilia; he added his own glosses to this poem and meant poem and glosses to be read as one unit. During the last twenty-five years of his life he worked on De genealogia deorum gentilium, which he referred to as his major work. Between 1349 and 1351, he composed his Decameron, following the incidence of the Black Death in Florence, never thinking that posterity would chose to remember him for those stories rather than for his Latin works. He composed De claris mulieribus (Concerning Famous Women) in 1361 and De casibus virorum illustrium (The Fall of Illustrious Men) between 1355 and 1373. Boccaccio never married, but he mourns the death of a daughter, Violante, in his Eleventh Eclogue. In this poem he says that he is a father of five children. Nothing is known of the mother, or mothers, of these children. Boccaccio died on December 21, 1375, in Certaldo, where he was born.

Chaucer never mentions Boccaccio by name, although he used his work more often than any other poet's. Critics have suggested that Chaucer mentions Boccaccio by other names: for example, "Lollius" may mean "loller," one who speaks with a thick tongue, in Tr I.394, V.1653, HF II.1468; "Corynne," Anel 21, has also been suggested as a pseudonym for Boccaccio, derived from Italian corina, "wry face," a synonym in Italian for Boccaccio. But these are conjectures. Other critics maintain that Chaucer means Lollius when he says Lollius. [Corynne: Lollius]

Chaucer's Knight's Tale (c. 1385) is based on Boccaccio's Il Teseida delle Nozze d'Emilia; Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385) is based on Il Filostrato. The Adam, Hercules, Samson, and Zenobia tragedies in the Monk's Tale (c. 1384-1386) are indebted to De casibus virorum illustrium and De claris mulieribus.