THE MOST IMPORTANT MYTHOLOGICAL MANUAL UNTIL THE LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Boccaccio, Giovanni. Della geneologia de gli dei di m. Giouanni Boccaccio libri quindeci. Ne' quali si tratta dell'origine, et discendenza di tutti gli dei de' gentili. Con la spositione de' sensi allegorici delle fauole & con la dichiaratione dell'historie appartenenti a detta materia. Tradotta già per m. Gioseppe Betussi. Et hora di nuouo con ogni diligenza reuista, et corretta. Aggiuntaui la vita di m. Giouanni Boccaccio, con le tauole de'capitoli & di tutte le cose degne di memoria. In Venetia : appresso la Compagnia de gli Vniti, 1585.

4to (212x155 mm), near contemporary paperboards, colored paper at spine, ff. [20], 268. Text in italic type. Title vignette; initials; head- and tail pieces.

Fine Venetian edition of Boccace's «Genealogy», a scholarly treatise on ancient Greek and Latin mythology, that remained the most important mythological manual until the late sixteenth century.

Genealogia deorum gentilium, known in English as «On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles», is a mythography or encyclopedic compilation of the tangled family relationships of the classical pantheons of Ancient Greece and Rome, written in Latin prose and here translated by Giovanni Betussi.

The work is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica «humanist in spirit and medieval in structure». According to the Preface Boccaccio undertook the project at the request of Hugh IV of Cyprus. The first version was completed in 1360, and he continuously corrected and revised the work until his death in 1374, so that various redactions of the works were copied in different manuscript traditions. In his lifetime and for two centuries afterwards it was considered his most important work.

The full range of genealogies of the classical Gods are described in the fifteen books, drawing on the standard earlier works. According to Malcolm Bull, «Boccaccio does his best to make sense of the complex genealogy of the gods. But as he also allows for several gods of the same name, the result becomes enormously confusing. No subsequent mythographer followed his method of organizing material, yet Boccaccio's Genealogia retained its prestige and was to remain the most important mythological manual until the late sixteenth century».

The Genealogia was unkindly described by Edward Gibbon as «a work, in that age, of stupendous erudition, and which he ostentatiously sprinkled with Greek characters and passages, to excite the wonder and applause of his more ignorant readers.

Boccaccio was responsible for spreading the story, which he credited to Theodontius, that Demogorgon was the ancestor of all the heathen gods, based on a misspelled scholion to Statius, which had intended to claim ancestry for Plato's Demiurge. This gave rise to a literary and iconographic tradition lasting to John Milton and Shelley. From the earliest manuscripts, some believed to be Boccaccio autographs, diagrammatic family trees are included, which are thought to be the earliest non-Biblical uses of this type of graphic, which was already used in the form of the Jesse tree in art.

The last two books of the work include a defence of poetry that is his latest and most extended discussion of the subject.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was an Italian author, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and important Renaissance humanist. Boccaccio wrote a number of notable works, including the Decameron and «On Famous Women». As a poet who wrote in the Italian vernacular, Boccaccio is particularly noted for his realistic dialogue, which differed from that of his contemporaries, medieval writers who usually followed formulaic models for character and plot.

References: Adams, B-2176. CNCE, 6383. OCLC, 123211007.

Very good.