Trattatello in laude di Dante

Beautiful.! Simply beautiful.!! That's what it was. Boccaccio intended to write a biography and ended up writing a poetry. I was struck by the beauty of his words,rather than the content. Content doesn't seem much reliable,even though Boccaccio had access to most of the details. Instead of concentra Leggi tutto

Boccaccio, who is best known for his Decameron, was a fellow Florentine and was 10 years old when Dante died. In his Life of Dante, In this book Boccaccio shares anecdotes he has gathered about Dante from people who knew him, most notably Dante’s sister and nephew. Boccaccio seems to have some sort Leggi tutto

Oh, foolish minds! One brief fragment of an hour will separate the spirit from the failing body, and bring to nothing all the blameworthy toils, and time, which must consume all things, will either quickly destroy the memory of the wealthy man, or preserve it for a little while to his shame. This

Vbb, io cinque stelle gliele do perché è Giovannuzzo mio, ma ci sono degli errori, delle cose che non vanno. Non cita le fonti, sbaglia le date (il De Vulgari Eloquentia e il Convivio mica li scrive poco prima di morire, Dante, Giova', che mi combini, bastava controllare un attimo su Wikipedia), ins Leggi tutto

I can’t really “review” a book of this kind but I’ll just say I found the dream about the peacock that Boccaccio describes very interesting (I wonder what Freud would think about that). I also owe a lot to the added text, the epilogue, in the edition I’ve read, which shed some light about the contex Leggi tutto

Probably not really historical accurate (though he still had access to many primary sources or could even speak to people who had actually known Dante). But then like another reviewer also stated. This is probably not a book about Dante, but about what Boccaccio thought about Dante. But whatever it

I wish there was a better biography of Dante. At least this is entertaining, and short.

There is a tone of high and almost religious praise of the work of Dante, and, although the first pages, where Dante's love for Beatrice is touched, have a delicately fictional flavor, modern Dante criticism has recognized in the work a few authentic information drawn from oral tradition and learned Leggi tutto

This is an awesome little biography, especially because while it is the first written biography of Dante, Boccaccio goes off on his own little rants about politics, poetry, wives, etc. He is very critical of Dante's wife for distracting him from his writing, and rants, "Who does not know that everyt Leggi tutto