The Divine Comedy is written in terza rima, a poetic form that originated in Italy and is understood to have been invented by Dante, although Boccaccio and Petrarch favoured it as well. The stories were a major influence on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. His best remembered work, though, is the Decameron (which has been nicknamed the Human Comedy, to complement Dante’s poem): a collection of one hundred short stories – romances, tragedies, and comic, bawdy tales – as told by a group of young men and women a to pass the time as they shelter from the black plague. He was also among the original proponents of Dante’s work, and published the first critical study of the Divine Comedy. Boccaccio was himself a feted scholar and writer who, like Dante, experimented with both the form and content of his prose, and helped establish a literary tradition for Italy. The title Divine Comedy was in fact bestowed by Giovanni Boccaccio: originally just The Comedy, Boccaccio felt that its subject matter, grand themes and innovative use of language required a more expressive title.
Rare Books, Archives and Special Collections Joyce Francis from those in the edition printed by the brothers Gregorii (1492) Boccaccio's Decameron,1934-1935, Oxford, Shakespeare Head Press.
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