LA FIAMMETTA

BY

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO


TRANSLATED BY JAMES C. BROGAN

1907.




INTRODUCTION


Youth, beauty, and love, wit, gayety and laughter, are the component
parts of the delightful picture conjured up by the mere name of Giovanni
Boccaccio, the prince of story-tellers for all generations of men. This
creator of a real literary epoch was born in Paris, in 1313, (in the
eleventh year of Dante's exile), of an Italian father and a French-woman
of good family. His father was a merchant of Florence, whither he
returned with his son when the child was seven years old. The boy
received some education, but was placed in a counting-house when he was
only thirteen, and at seventeen he was sent by his father to Naples to
enter another commercial establishment. But he disliked commerce, and
finally persuaded his father to allow him to study law for two years at
the University of Naples, during which period the lively and attractive
youth made brisk use of his leisure time in that gay and romantic city,