Boccaccio's Florence

This welcome contribution to the ever-growing scholarship on the life and works of Giovanni Boccaccio centers on a period that has received less attention than it deserves: the years around 1360, when several men close to Boccaccio concocted a conspiracy to upend the ruling Guelf party in Florence. The plot itself quickly collapsed, with two of the conspirators meeting swift and brutal deaths and the others decamping to safer climes. Boccaccio himself, for whom Filosa has uncovered no direct evidence of participation in or even prior knowledge of the plan, left Florence for Certaldo, though his precise motives for that move remain unclear. They may have had to do with a fear of guilt by association, given his connections with many of the plotters, or they may have been rooted in other life events that remain somewhat murky. It appears we will never know for sure, and thus would do well to remain circumspect in our speculations.In any event, Filosa's thorough and energetic study undertakes to accomplish two goals: first, to relate the events of 1360 to Boccaccio's life and works, and second, to write a broader history of the Florence of Giovanni Boccaccio to which her title alludes. At times, she seems a bit uncertain as to which path she really wants to follow, though they are by no means irreconcilable. The book's title is itself something of a misnomer in the context of the narrower path directed at 1360, but appropriate in the context of the wider view, not of a history of the Florence Boccaccio lived in but of the Florence in which he specifically operated, as a resident of the Oltrarno, an occasional officeholder, and an astute social and political observer who animated the city in his works. To be sure, Filosa's narrative converges on 1360, particularly in the claim, which she undertakes to prove in the book's second half, that Boccaccio's experience of the conspiracy, even at a remove, informs several of his works.Along the way, there is a great deal of fascinating new information about Boccaccio and his life, thanks to Filosa's devotion to the archives. To be sure, that fealty at times evokes nineteenth-century positivism, as Filosa appears to include some information simply for the sake of sharing it. Such is the case, for example, with the book's final chapter, which addresses several of the Florentine characters of the Decameron. Here the study brims with information about family histories and relationships that do not, in the end, do much to advance an analysis of the specific tales in which the characters appear. What is telling, and for this Filosa deserves great credit, is how many of Boccaccio's life and circle are rooted in the Oltrarno. Boccaccio's Florence is deeply parochial, as the 1366 Guild Hall fresco, which Filosa has chosen as an emblem for the book, illustrates. Boccaccio, of course, had a sense of Florence as a wider, more complex city, thanks to the various offices he held and his own expansive eye, but in the end much of his attention is local.The historical reconstruction is thus superb. The book's second half, in which Filosa looks for evidence of the impact of the conspiracy on Boccaccio's writings, alternates between convincing and less so. The chapter on the consolatory letter to Pino de’ Rossi is a standout, and the chapter on the lives of Dante offers a compelling argument for why Boccaccio makes certain revisions in later drafts. One might agree with Filosa about her analysis of De mulieribus claris, though one might also sense some overreach. The chapter on the Decameron does little to advance our understanding of the question, but it does make claims that require greater unpacking. Filosa argues, for example, that the members of the brigata envision a Florence in which class distinctions vanish and undertake to bring that ideology back to the city. We might remember that they also bring back their sizeable pack of servants, whose membership in a class distinct from that of the brigata is both indisputable and immutable across the pages of Boccaccio's masterpiece.There is also the occasional error. Some of the translations are clunky; a couple of times Filosa gives trattato as “treaty,” when the word, in the context of conspiracy in which it appears, might better be rendered as “pact” or “agreement.” The reference to Doffo de’ Bardi as a major “actionist” in the Bardi company seems to hew too closely to the Italian; Filosa likely wanted “shareholder” or “player” here. There are some wobbles on important legal questions, such as what constitutes citizenship in Trecento Florence and what “civil rights” Florentines might have claimed. I wish as well that Filosa had helped her reader along more carefully in describing the complex political situation in mid-Trecento Florence. Even as she references the eradication of the Ghibellines at Campaldino in 1289, she discusses the Florentine Ghibellinism of later decades without explaining how it managed to resurge. A paragraph or two would have offered a better handle.Having said all that, Filosa's study remains a fascinating foray into Boccaccio's Florentine life, one from which we all stand to profit. The historical and biographical research is rich and welcome, and the more vexing question, of the impact of the 1360 conspiracy on Boccaccio and his works, is one to which Filosa has offered some first answers, but to which other scholars will no doubt want to respond as well. Plaudits to her for launching this worthy conversation

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