by Giovanni Boccaccio
(ca. 1336)
One of BOCCACCIO’s earliest works, composed during the young writer’s first years of independence in Naples between 1336 and 1338, the lengthy prose ROMANCE Il Filocolo (Love’s labor) has been called the first Italian novel. The text has been criticized by many readers as overly pedantic, full of learned allusions and digressions included by the 23-year-old poet as a demonstration of his newly acquired knowledge. In addition, the plot is rambling and circuitous. Boccaccio uses a combination of sources, mainly two short poems in French but including Dante, Ovid, Virgil, and other short French and Italian texts, in retelling the popular medieval story of FLOIRE ET BLANCHEFLOR (here called Florio and Biancifiore).
Boccaccio’s text begins with an introduction, set at Easter, in which the narrator is urged by Fiammetta (Boccaccio’s name for a beautiful married Neapolitan woman he claims to be in love with him) to retell the story of Florio and Biancifiore in the Italian vernacular. This is followed by the five books of Boccaccio’s romance, beginning with the births— on the same day—of Florio (the son of the pagan king Felice of Spain) and Biancifiore (posthumous child of Lelio, a descendant of the Roman hero Scipio Africanus, and his wife, Giulia—a descendant of Julius Caesar—who dies in childbirth). The children are raised in the same royal household and fall in love, but the king, unaware that Biancifiore is not of low birth, tries to separate the couple.He sends Florio off to be raised by an uncle, and sells Biancifiore to merchants who in turn sell her to an Egyptian sultan in Alexandria.King Felice tells Florio that the girl has died, but when he threatens suicide, his mother tells him the truth. At that point Florio sets off to recover his lost love, adopting the name Filocolo (“Love’s Labor”) as appropriate to his task.After many adventures along the way, Filocolo arrives in Naples, and takes part in a festival at which Fiammetta herself reigns as queen and must provide a solution to 13 questions of love. Although a digression, this episode became the most famous section of the Filocolo.
From Naples Filocolo ultimately reaches Alexandria, where he learns that Biancifiore is imprisoned in a castle. He befriends the governor of the castle during a chess game, and with his help and that of Biancifiore’s nurse, attains the chamber of his beloved.After a pagan marriage ceremony of their own devising, Filocolo and Biancifiore consummate their love. Though they are discovered, they survive being burnt at the stake through the magic of Filocolo’s ring, and are ultimately married publicly. Following more adventures, including a stop in Rome to be converted to Christianity, Filocolo and Biancifiore return home, where Filocolo receives his dying father’s blessing and is crowned king with Biancifiore as his queen. The Roman priest Ilario, who had converted the couple, attends their coronation and writes the tale of their adventures in Greek, and from this imaginary source Boccaccio claims to have translated his own version of the story.
Though overblown and in many ways unsatisfactory, Il Filocolo is important as (most likely) Boccaccio’s earliest significant work, and as containing his first mention of Fiammetta (identified as the lady Maria d’Aquino), whom he purports to love, but may well have simply made up as a literary device, since no record survives of the existence of such a person.
Bibliography
■ Bergin, Thomas G. Boccaccio. New York:Viking Press, 1981.
■ Boccaccio, Giovanni. Il Filocolo. Translated by Donald Cheney with the collaboration of Thomas G. Bergin. New York: Garland, 1985.
■ Branca, Vittore. Boccaccio: The Man and His Works. Translated by Richard Monges. Cotranslated and edited by Dennis J.McAuliffe. Foreword by Robert C. Clements. New York: New York University Press, 1976.
■ Kirkham, Victoria. Fabulous Vernacular: Boccaccio’s Filocolo and the Art of Medieval Fiction. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.