Boccaccio's Trattatello in laude di Dante, Or Dante Resartus

Abstract

Boccaccio's Trattatello in laude di Dante is notoriously unreliable as an historical biography of the poet. Much of what is doubtful in the Trattatello has been blamed on simple misinformation, the influence of literary convention, the misreading of Dante's works, or pure invention on the part of the author. Especially susceptible to objection has been the Trattatello's representation of Dante's personal character. Leonardo Bruni, the first to offer an assessment, found Boccaccio's portrayal of Dante distorted and inadequate, and Bruni's pronouncement established an interpretative commonplace from which critical opinion has never been entirely free: “It seemed to me that our Boccaccio … described the life and manners of so sublime a poet just as though he were writing the Filocolo, or the Filostrato, or the Fiammetta, for he is all full of love and sighs and burning tears, as though the man had been born into this world merely to turn up in those ten days … related in the Centonovelle [Decameron].“