The life of Boccace (in Italian Giovanni Boccaccio), which was one of first humanistic Italian, remains badly known. He is the child, most probably illegitimate, of Boccaccino, trading Italian native of Certaldo.

15 years old, it is sent to Naples to continue there a double legal and commercial training on behalf of the company dei Bardi; but, in this city which enchants it immediately, it will carry out, during twelve years, a life of pleasures. It is introduced at the Court and becomes the lover of a great lady, Maria d' Aquino, girl of king Robert.

He gives up his studies and, under the impulse of his mistress, writes its first account, II Filocolo, and some time later his famous Fiammetta (1343). But its painful rupture with Maria d' Aquino and her reverses of fortune bring back it to Florence (1341), where it is fixed, with the death of his/her father, in 1349. Its work in Italian language understands lyric, epic poetry (It Filostrato and Théséide), allegorical (Amorosa Visione; Ameto), as well as pastoral, It Ninfale Fiesolano.

While continuing to write, he attends the political milieu and he is in charge of several missions.

The publication of Décaméron (1353), in Italian language, composed at the request of the Jeanne queen of Naples, makes it famous. They are ten series of ten news or tales that tell themselves seven young women and three young men withdrawing itself in the countryside during ten days because of the epidemic of plague of Florence in 1348. The crucible is that of the oral tradition and the French French tale in verse.

From 1362, after having been all his youth an enemy of the clergy, Boccace carries out a very pious life. He corresponds with Pétrarque, which encourages it to turn to the study of Antiquity, and until its death, which has occurred on on December 21st, 1375, he will write nothing any more but Latin works (Of casibus virorum illustrium  ; Of claris mulieribus  ; Genealogia deorum gentilium  ; Montibus, silvis, fluminibus  ; Bucolicum Carmen “Eclogues”).

The realism of its tables of manners was worth the reproach of immorality to him, whereas Décaméron, which reflects all the one time spirit, mixes the courtly love with the erotic license. The process of the account in the account, the digressions of the narrators and the author make think of Thousand and One Nights, announce the literature baroque, and Chaucer, another “creator of language”, was inspired some to compose his Tales of Canterbury.

Boccace, which was regarded as a poet much lower than Pétrarque and Dante (of which it will transcribe and comment on works), brought all its virtuosity to the invoice of its tales. The purity and the richness of its style make of him the creator of Italian prose.