Thomas Goddard Bergin (1904–1987)

8. Boccaccio by Thomas Goddard Bergin
published: 1981
format: 381-page hardcover
acquired: November
read: Dec 25, 2021 – Mar 10, 2022
time reading: 20:32, 3.2 mpp (3.6 mpp before adding endnote pages)
rating: 3
locations: Florence, Naples, 14th century Europe, etc.
about the author: Thomas G. Bergin was an American scholar of Italian literature, 1904-1987

This book is a weird thing, but the scholars like it a lot. It's not really a biography. There is a chapter on the European world of Boccaccio (which is great fun). One single chapter on his life. Then a chapter on each of his works, most of which don‘t have decent English translations. He summarizes the work, then provides commentary. These chapters are just barely readable, but also really helpful to get a sense each of these works, and of his entire oeuvre. Boccaccio had a lot of output, including lengthy really ambitious creative and encyclopedic stuff. Lengthy, and original but not all is very good.

Boccaccio was the illegitimate son of a Florentine banker working for a famous Bardi bank. Born in 1314 Certaldo, he grew up in Florence. As a teenager he moved with his father to Naple, in 1327, then under the stable rule of King Robert I. Boccaccio flourished and Naples. If his mythical Fiammetta was real, a real lover who left him and became his sort of muse, it was here they met and he had his heart broken. Something happened in 1341, and he and his father, financially broken, returned to Florence. Boccaccio would travel a lot for various temporary positions, often diplomatic, for the rest of his life, until he retired to Certaldo. He never married. He had five illegitimate children, and they all pre-deceased him, without having children of their own. Famously, he met Petrarch in 1350, and developed an intimate friendship and that would greatly influence him until his death in 1375, a year after Petrarch's.

There is, in a way, a before and after Petrarch version of Boccaccio. Before this friendship, Boccaccio's output was very creative and original, included extensive poetry, was often irreverent and racy. Many of these works are important, but not otherwise highly regarded. After the friendship, Boccaccio got more serious. He wrote several lengthy encyclopedic works on mythology, famous women, and on the history of the names of natural features and other topics. These were in Latin. He famously burned his Italian poetry (much of which was already in circulation and still exists, but without any standard order or form.) For about 200 years the later Latin works were in heavy circulation around the European intelligencia , until they became outdated. But when Boccaccio and Petrarch met, he was working on his collection of stories, his Decameron. He probably wrote it mainly between 1348 and 1352 (although he kept editing all his works unti his death). It was not his last creative work, but it was arguably his last playful work. And it is, of course, his best work, and has what made him famous, a keystone work of the early Rennaissance. I will try to talk about it in more detail, constructively, in a later review.

The book is recommended for anyone looking deeply into Boccaccio (unless something better comes around)

I have an addendum with my notes on each chapter on my thread.

2022
https://www.librarything.com/topic/337810#7796993… (mere)

19. Petrarch: Selected Sonnets, Odes and Letters by Thomas G. Bergin
published: 1966 (Petrarch lived 1304-1374, and wrote the Canzoniere from roughly 1327 to his death.)
format: 146-page paperback
acquired: Feb 19
read: Feb 19 – May 23
time reading: 7:56, 3.3 mpp
rating: 4
about the author: Thomas G. Bergin was an American scholar of Italian literature, 1904-1987

translators (number translated and approximate publication dates)
[[Thomas Goddin Bergin]] (29, 1954 &1966), [[Albert Compton]] (3, 1898), [[Basil Kennet]] (1, 1879), [[James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont]] (1, 1882), [[C. B. Cayley]] (14, 1879), [[Charles Tomlinson]] (2, 1874), [[Barbarina Wilmot, Lady Dacre]] (2, 1836), [[Edward Fitzgerald]] (1, 1889), [[Francis Wrangham]] (1, 1817), [[Geoffrey Chaucer]], (1, 1483), [[Gilbert F. Cunningham]] (3, 1955), [[Joseph Auslander]] (11, 1931), [[John Addington Symonds]] (3, 1890), [[John Nott]] (4, 1808), [[John Penn]] (1, 1798), [[James Henry Leigh Hunt]] (1, 1860), [[Morris Bishop]] (41, 1932), [[Maria Eugenia Wrottesley]] (1, 1851), [[Richard Garnett]] (18, 1896), [[R. G. Macgregor]] (6, 1854), [[Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey]] (1, 1557), [[Susan Wollaston]] (1, 1841), [[Thomas Caldecott Chubb]] (1, 1933), [[Thomas Wyatt]] (1, 1557), [[Thomas Wentworth Higginson]] (1, 1903), [[Warburton Pike]] (2, 1879)

I discovered this oddball anthology from 1966 in the introduction to The Poetry of Petrarch by David Young. It forms something like a cabinet of curiosities. It collects translations of about half of Petrarch‘s full 366 poem Canzoniere. Highlights are the older poets like Geoffrey Chaucer (translating in 1384!), Thomas Wyatt, and Henry, Earl of Surrey. And I really liked all the Morris Bishop and Joseph Auslander. Lowlights are painfully forced rhyming and one where the translator chose the word “blithe” to be used over and over again in a long poem. Overall it has a Victorian feel and very poor translation accuracy. Since i had more accurate translations available I found this great fun.

fuller review on LT here:

2021
https://www.librarything.com/topic/330945#7517869… (mere)