Aside from the Dceameron, Boccaccio's writ ings include: (I) The Filoeopo (133S), his first and longest work of fiction, which may perhaps have fulfilled its purpose of amusing the Prin cess Maria, but which modern taste finds sadly tedious. Yet its curious and naive conglomera tion of pagan and chivalric legends, of classic mythology and medieval Christianity, is at least amusing. It is also interesting as forming the transition from the metrical romance to the prose novel. (2) The Filostra to (about 1338) and (3) the Teseide (about 1341), two poems in the octave stanza, interesting to English read ers as having funned the basis of Chaucer's K nigh I's Tale and Troilus. (4) gusto (1341 -42), the earliest modern example of the pasto ral romance, in which a number of shepherd esses, Fiammetta among them, successively relate their adventures. (5) Pia 111711Ct in (about 1343), which is partially autobiographic, and really contains the first germ of the modern psycho logical novel. Boccaccio, however, has reversed their relative positions, representing Fiammetta as the one who is abandoned, so that the story becomes simply a personal record of her grief and sufferings. (6) Ninfale Ries°lano; (7) .4 morosa Visione; and (8) Corbaecio— three minor works of uncertain date. (9) Vita di Dante (1364) ; and (10) numerous Latin poems and prose writings. The work, however, upon which his fame rests is the Decumcron, a col lection of 100 stories, supposed to have been told during ten successive days by a party of ten peo ple who, to escape the plague, have retired to a charming retreat a short distance outside of Florence. The stories themselves are few of them original with Boccaccio. They are drawn
from the French fabliaux, from classical or Ori ental sources, from current folk-lore, and are pruned and polished and worked over in order to suit the spirit of the time and place and the supposed characters of the narrators. He went for his material and his inspiration mainly to the simple and homely humor of the people; he turned it, with an alchemist's touch, into liter ary gems, which in his own time won the plau dits of the most fastidious. The licentiousness of these stories has been, from his time to the pres ent, a standing reproach against Boccaccio; yet allowance must be made for his age and his environment. He gave only what he found, and the chief interest which the Decame•on possesses to-day is due to the fidelity with which it mir rors for us the life of his time and country, while in the delicate art of the short story—of clear, vivid, swift narration—he set a standard which has seldom been attained by those who have come since.
The Decanzeron has been translated into al most all modern languages, and bas proved a useful mine for a tater author—Shake speare. Moliere. and La Fontaine among them. Of Italian editions, the earliest of all, the so called "Deo gratias" edition, is without date; the second is dated Venice. 1471. Both are folios and both very rare. For biographies of Boccac cio. consult: Baldelli, Vita di aioranni Boccac cio (Florence, 1306) ; Landau, Boccaccio, sein Leben and seine Werke (Stuttgart. 1377) ; trans lated by Antona-Traversi, much amplified (Na ples, 1331) : and Cochin, Boccaccio, etudes ita liennes (Paris. 1890 ) .