What was giovanni boccaccio famous for

Giovanni Boccaccio is, with the older Dante and his contemporary Francis Petrarch, one of the three great poets of the Italian fourteenth century. Chaucer knew the works of all three, and it has been speculated that he may even have met both Petrarch and Boccaccio (but see below).

Of the three, Boccaccio was the one on whom Chaucer drew most heavily, and in some sense strove to emulate; Chaucer based Troilus on Boccaccio's Il Filostrato and his Knight's Tale on Il Teseida, and Chaucer's elaborate high style owes something to Boccaccio's attempt to emulate the classics in his own vernacular.

In his Monk's Tale, Chaucer drew on Boccaccio's Latin works, his account of the falls of famous men and his book of illustrious women. A number of the Canterbury tales tell stories that also appear in Boccaccio's Decameron.

There is a slim possibility that Chaucer met Boccaccio, who was living in Certaldo, just south of Florence, in the 1370s, when