BOCCACCIO’S FIRST ROMANCE
BOCCACCIO, Giovanni.
Philocholo opera elegantissima de lo excellente Poeta & Oratore Joanne boccacio.
[(Colophon:) Milan, [Alessandro Minuziano], 25 March 1520.]
4to, ff. [viii], cxcviii, [1, blank]; without final blank; woodcut and Lombard initials; occasional light spotting or staining, a few upper margins slightly shorter, a few tiny wormholes to inner margin, else a very good copy; bound in eighteenth-century Italian vellum over boards, spine lettered directly in gilt, edges mottled red and blue; corners very slightly bumped; seventeenth-century annotations to c. 16 pp., other pages with marginal ink markings, eighteenth-century manuscript shelfmark to flyleaf, nineteenth-century manuscript note in Italian to front pastedown, traces of a bookplate to front free endpaper, small red bookseller’s stamp of A. Lauria of Paris to front pastedown.
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Philocholo opera elegantissima de lo excellente Poeta & Oratore Joanne boccacio.
An uncommon edition of Boccaccio’s first prose narrative, a fantastical tale of love overcoming all obstacles.
Boccaccio’s prose romance was written in the vernacular in around 1436–1438, based on the courtly love story of Florio and Biancofiore which Boccaccio felt had been reduced to a poor state in previous tellings. He introduced classical allusions as well as a Greek-inspired title Filocolo (‘Trials of love’, the pseudonym that Florio uses during his adventures), in an attempt to provide the tale with literary distinction. As a juvenile work of Boccaccio and his first main narrative text, it may lack the sophistication and cohesion of the Decameron, yet it demonstrates Boccaccio’s wide reading, from the Bible and classical literature to Dante and courtly literature, and his understanding of the motivation behind his characters’ behaviour.
The printer, Alessandro Minuziano (1450–1522), also produced an edition of Boccaccio’s Ameto in June of the same year. A scholar himself, he had been involved with the printing trade as an editor from at least 1486.
EDIT16 CNCE 6255; USTC 814738.
