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On Famous Women (Latin: De mulieribus claris) is one of two such collections of biographies of famous people written by Giovanni Boccaccio, the Florentine author from Certaldo. The author declares in the preface that this collection of one hundred and six short biographies [1] (104 chapters)[2] of women is the first example in Western literature [3] devoted solely and exclusively to women. [4] Some of the lost works of Suetonius "illustrious people" and Boccaccio's De cCasibus Virorum Illustrium are a mixture of women and men, where others like Petrarch's De Viris Illustribus and Jerome's De Viris Illustribus are biographies of exclusively men. Boccaccio himself even says this work was inspired [5] and modeled on Petrarch's lives Of Famous Men.[6] The collection influenced Geoffrey Chaucer and inspired Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies. It includes mythological and historical women, as well as some of Boccaccio's Renaissance contemporaries.

Boccaccio wrote this work in Certaldo probably between the summer of 1361 and the summer of 1362.[7] He dedicated his work to Andrea Acciaioli, Countess of Altavilla, in Naples at the end of 1362 even though he continued to revise it up until his death in 1375.[8] She was not his first choice however. He first considered to dedicate his slim volume to Joanna, Queen of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem. He ultimately decided that his work as a little book was not worthy a person of such great fame.[9] Andrea Acciaioli was the sister of Niccolò Acciaioli.[10]

Boccaccio says that the purpose he wrote the 106 biographies was for posterity about women who were renowned for any sort of great deed, either good or bad. He explains that by recounting the wicked deeds of certain women that hopfully in the mind of the reader it would be offset by the exhortations to virtue by other respected women. He writes in his presentation of this combination of all types of women that hopefully it would encourage virtue and curb vice. [11]

These Boccaccio 106 brief life stories of “Famous Women” follow the same general exemplary literature patterns used in various versions of De viris illustribus. The biography pattern starts with the name of the person, then the parents or ancestors, then their rank or social position, and last the general reason for their notoriety or fame with associated details. This is sometimes interjected with a philosophical or inspirational lesson at the end.[12]


[edit] The famous women

Eve
Eve


[edit] Sources

  1. ^ Brown, Virginia translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Famous Women, page xi; Harvard University Press, 2001; ISBN 0-674-01130-9
  2. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. xi and xxii. Biographies 11 - 12 and 19 - 20 are conbined to make 104 chapters, however the biographies are I (1) through CVI (106).
  3. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. xi
  4. ^ Brown, op. cit., p.xxxvii.
  5. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. 4
  6. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. xii and p. xv
  7. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. xi
  8. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. 256
  9. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. xiii
  10. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. xii
  11. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. xii
  12. ^ Brown, op. cit., p. xvi