Subject Area
Humanities
Description
Translated by:
Christopher Berard and Morris Tichenor
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75), born in Certaldo, Tuscany, is best remembered today as the Father of Italian Prose owing to the immense popularity of his Decameron (c.1349–51), a collection of one hundred short stories (written in Italian prose) that are embedded in a narrative frame of a storytelling game undertaken by seven young women and three young men who fled Florence for Friesole in hopes of escaping the Black Death. During the Renaissance (1400–1600), however, Boccaccio was best remembered for his De casibus virorum illustrium [On the Downfalls of Famous Men] (c.1360). Written in Latin prose and divided into nine books, De casibus is an encyclopedic collection of biographical sketches of famous mythological and historical figures extending from the fall of Adam and Eve to the capture of Jean II of France at the Battle of Poitiers (1356). In De casibus VIII.19, Boccaccio covers the fall of Arthur, king of Britain (c.500). This chapter invites us to consider the moral of King Arthur’s story. Our translation of De casibus VIII.18–19 is based on Giovanni Boccaccio, De casibus virorum illustrium, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci and Vittorio Zaccaria. Tutte le opera di Giovanni Boccaccio 9 (Milan: Mondadori, 1983), pp. 726–35.
Publication Date
1360
Type
Article
