Boccaccio, Giovanni

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Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–75) Italian poet, prose writer, and scholar, considered to be one of the founders of the Italian Renaissance. His early work, the Filocolo (c.1336), is considered by many to be the first European novel, but he is best known for his masterpiece the Decameron (1348–58), a series of prose stories of contemporary mores, which exercised a tremendous influence on the development of Renaissance literature. His poetry includes Il Filostrato (c.1338) and Il Ninfale Fiesolano (c.1344–45). Boccaccio was a friend of Petrarch and biographer of Dante. See also Italian literature

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