De casibus virorum illustrium

De casibus virorum illustrium (On the Fates of Famous Men) is a work of 56 biographies in Latin prose composed by the Florentine poet Giovanni Boccaccio of Certaldo in the form of moral stories of the falls of famous people, similar to his work of 106 biographies De Mulieribus Claris.

De casibus virorum illustrium
On the Fates of Famous Men
Illuminated recto from Parisian edition (1467)
Author(s)Giovanni Boccaccio
LanguageLatin
Date1355–1374
ProvenanceCertaldo
GenreDe viris illustribus

Overview

De casibus is an encyclopedia of historical biography and a part of the classical tradition of historiography. It deals with the fortunes and calamities of famous people starting with the biblical Adam, going to mythological and ancient people, then to people of Boccaccio's own time in the fourteenth century.[1] The work was so successful it spawned what has been referred to as the De casibus tradition,[2] influencing many other famous authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and Laurent de Premierfait.[3] De casibus also inspired character figures in works like The Canterbury Tales,[4] The Monk's Tale,[5] the Fall of Princes (c. 1438),[6] Des cas de nobles hommes et femmes (c. 1409),[7] and Caida de principles (a fifteenth-century Spanish collection), and A Mirror for Magistrates (a very popular sixteenth-century continuation written by William Baldwin and others).[8]

Development

Boccaccio wrote the core of his work from about 1355 to 1360 with revisions and modifications up to 1374. For almost four hundred years this work was the better known of his material. The forceful written periodic Latin work was far more widely read then the now famous vernacular Tuscan/Italian tales of Decameron.[9] The Renaissance period saw the secular biography development which was spearheaded partly by the success of this work being a stimulus and driving force of the new biography-moral genre.

Purpose

Boccaccio's perspective focuses on the disastro awaiting all who are too favoured by luck and on the inevitable catastrophes awaiting those with great fortune.[10] He offers a moral commentary on overcoming misfortune by adhering to virtue through a moral God's world. Here the monastic chronicle tradition combines with the classical ideas of Senecan tragedy.

Content

De casibus stems from the tradition of exemplary literature works about famous people. It showed with the lives of these people that it was not only biographies, but also snapshots of their moral virtues.[11] Boccaccio relates biographies of famous people who were at the height of happiness and fell to misfortune when they least expected it. This sad event is sometimes referred to as a "de casibus tragedy" after this work. William Shakespeare created characters based on this phenomenon, as did Christopher Marlowe.[12]

Lives recounted
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In order, directly translated from Latin.[13]

Book One

Book Two

Book Three

Book Four

Book Five

Book Six

Book Seven

Book Eight

Book Nine

See also

References

Primary sources
  • Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes translated from Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustribus by Laurent de Premierfait (1400) [15][16][17]
  • Tutte le Opere de Giovanni Boccaccio ed., Vittore Branca (Verona: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1964)
  • The Fates of Illustrious Men, trans. Louis Brewer Hall (New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1965)
  • Çoban, R. V. (2020). The Manzikert Battle and Sultan Alp Arslan with European Perspective in the 15st Century in the Miniatures of Giovanni Boccaccio's "De Casibus Virorum Illustrium"s 226 and 232. French Manuscripts in Bibliothèque Nationale de France. S. Karakaya ve V. Baydar (Ed.), in 2nd International Muş Symposium Articles Book (pp. 48-64). Muş: Muş Alparslan University. Source Archived 2021-05-18 at the Wayback Machine

Secondary sources
  • Miscellanea di Studi e Ricerche sul Quattrecento francese, ed., F. Simone (Turin: Giappichelli, 1966)
  • Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes ed., Patricia May Gathercole, Chapel Hill - University of North Carolina (1968)
  • Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405)
  • Egan, Margarita trans. The Vidas of the Troubadours, New York, Garland (1984)
  • Joinville, Jehan de Vie de saint Louis, ed., Noel L. Corbert. Sherbrook Naoman (1977)
  • Richards, Earl Jeffery trans. The Book of the City of Ladies, New York, Persea (1982)
  • Lalande, Denis, ed., Le livre des fais du bon messiere Jehan le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut Geneva: Droz (1985)

Footnotes
  1. History of Tragedy
  2. Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian by Larry Scanlon, p. 119, Cambridge University Press (1994), ISBN 0-521-04425-1
  3. Alan Coates, et al., A Catalogue of Books Printed in the Fifteenth Century now in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 596-617. ISBN 0-19-951373-2
  4. Chaucer's influences
  5. JSTOR: The Mediaeval Setting of Chaucer's Monk's Tale
  6. Richard A. Dwyer, "Arthur's Stellification in the Fall of Princes" Philological Quarterly, 57 (1978), pp. 155-171
  7. The Literary Encyclopedia
  8. Vittorio Zaccaria, Introduzione, in Giovanni Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium volume 9 of Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio under guidance of Pier Giorgio Ricci and Vittorio Zaccaria, ed. Vittore Branca, 12 volumes I Classici Mondadori (Milan:Arnoldo Mondadori editor, 1983)
  9. Louis Brewer Hall, "Introduction," De casibus illustrium virorum (Gainesville: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1962), v.
  10. De casibus virorum illustrium (work by Boccaccio) -- Britannica
  11. Medieval France: An Encyclopedia By William W. Kibler, p. 129, Routledge Publisher (1995), Paris, ISBN 0-8240-4444-4
  12. "Medieval tragedy". Archived from the original on 2010-03-13. Retrieved 2007-12-24.
  13. Giovanni Boccaccio, Tutte le opere Vol. 9: De casibus virorum illustrium ed. trans. V. Zaccarria (La Scuola: Mondadori, 1983).
  14. Çoban, R. V. (2020). The Manzikert Battle and Sultan Alp Arslan with European Perspective in the 15st Century in the Miniatures of Giovanni Boccaccio's "De Casibus Virorum Illustrium"s 226 and 232. French Manuscripts in Bibliothèque Nationale de France. S. Karakaya ve V. Baydar (Ed.), in 2nd International Muş Symposium Articles Book (pp. 48-64). Muş: Muş Alparslan University. Source Archived 2021-05-18 at the Wayback Machine
  15. Laurent de Premierfait: The Translator of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium
  16. The Manuscripts of Laurent de Premierfait's 'Du Cas des Nobles' (Boccaccio's 'De Casibus Virorum Illustrium')
  17. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism - Cambridge University


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