TERM PAPER ON “GENEOLOGY OF GENTILE GOD’S” BY GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

            Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), even though famous for his work ‘Decameron’, here the discussion takes place on ‘Genealogy of Gentile Gods.’ He was with Dante and Petrarch , a pioneer of Italian vernacular literature and of the humanism that would become the philosophical basis of the renaissance. It is an encyclopedic compendium in Latin if pagan mythology designed as a guide to the ancient poets. The 14^th and 15^th books of genealogy of gentile god’s, supports the poetry from the criticizers of the age. The discussion takes up to Plato’s ‘Republic’. Here, Boccaccio defends poetry against the medieval concepts and theologies given by the criticizers of the age.

           

Boccaccio was a son of a merchant called Boccaccino di Chelino, raised in Florence. As he got educated grammatically and literally, for practical bussiness training he was send to Naples to serve an apprenticeship. However as he preferred  aristocratic intellectual circles of the court of Robert of Anjou  to a lifetime. He began to mingle in courtly ,oclety and to write stories In verse and prose. He fell In love with a woman and wrote about an unattainable aristocratic woman he called Flammetta, who has been identified as Maria d'Aqulno, an illegitimate daughter of King Robert.

Boccaccio intended Genealogy of the Gentile Gods as a monumental work of scholarship,a mythological sourcebook that would introduce readers to this study of the ancient poets. His decision to write in Latin rather than Italian is a measure of its seriousness as a scholarly project. Books one to thirteen, mostly completed by 1360, contain Boccaccio's allegorical interpretations of Greek mythology. By the 1360s, however,he seemed to feel that some kind of defense of the ancient poets was necessary as well; to show that they were, as he writes in the first chapter of book 15" "really men of wisdom, their compositions full of profit and pleasure to the reader." Boccaccio's defense of poetry in books fourteen and fifteen compiles and arranges in a single document a series of arguments both for and against poetry that had been in Circulation for ·at least a thousand years. Together with Plato's Writing on poetry and ARISTOTLE's ‘Poetics’ which was not recovered in Europe until the fifteenth century, it provides the substance of Renaissance literary theory. The influence of the Genealogy's defense of poetry during the Renaissance is easily discernible, for instance, in Sir Philip Sidney's ‘Apology for Poetry’, published in England over two centuries later.

Unlike a straight forward reference book, the Genealogy is crossed by compromise and conflict-between utility and unity, reverence and ridicule, guilt and confidence, nostalgia and progressiveness, secularism and orthodoxy. For its early readers these conflicts seemed inevitable and the compromises exemplary. Both emerge precisely in the features of the book that contribute little to, or even hinder, its usefulness as a reference work-namely, in the metaphorical voyaging related in the proems of each book and in the idea of genealogy itself, the scheme that gives order both to the chaos of ancient mythology and to Boccaccio's book. It is not an overstatement that the Genealogy presents, alongside its mythological material, two plots, two historical itineraries, that struggle toward each other in time but never meet. In these plots, Boccaccio dramatizes his efforts as a mythographer and the historical discontinuity or rupture that both occasions and frustrates them.

Here the discussion mainly takes place on his three chapetrs of the fourteenth book in “GENEOLOGY OF GENTILE GODS” that is fifth, seventh and twelfth.

In the fifth chapter he talks about the false objections at the poets and their imputations. The rulers and upper status people of the age were giving importance to phylosophy at that age. It was a kind of sacred one. They kept it as if is is near to god, and the phylosophers a much bigger one. Boccaccio states that philosophy was given a position as god,( “Within a lofty throne, sits Philosophy, messenger from the very bosom of god.”) and  it is praised as ‘mistress’. Philosophy is given position near to god and praises it as a queen. It is clear that the age gave philosophy that much power that even noble people kept it as sacred. Philosophy usually deals with mother nature, the true good and  secrets of heaven. Like that those people gave a seat that give philosophy more important. It is said that if get into it, then reader would be ina devine place with devine mind, with speculations and knowledge. They praise it as something serious, honest and true huminity, that is taken for gods.

They praise philosophers as bounded with faith and doctrine of philosophy and they give the world full of their knowledge.

But there is also another group anoisy crowd of all sorts and coniditions.Some of these have resigned all pride, and live in watchful obedience to the injunctions of their superiors, in hopes that their obsequious zeal maygain them promotion.

But others there are who grow so elated with what isvirtually elementary knowledge, that they fall upon their great mistres tobes as it were with their talons, and in violent haste tear away a few shreds as samples then don various titles which they often pick up for aprice and as puffed up as if they knew the whole subject of divinity, they rush forth from the sacred house, setting such mischief afootamong ignorantpeople as only the wise can calculate. Yet these. rascals are sworn  conspirators against all high arts. First they try to counterfeit a good man they exchangetheir natural exression for an anxious careful one. They go about with downcast eye to appear inseparable from their thoughts. Their pace is slow to make the uneducated think that they stagger under an excessive weight of high speculation. They dress unpretentiously, not because they are really modest, but only to mask themselves with sanctity.

The philosophers has got this technnique to tell wonderfull things which they even do not know. And whatever they do not know, it is taken as something wrong or they ignore it. When they have caught inexperienced minds in traps, of this sort, they proceed boldly torange abouttown, dabble in business, give advice, arrange marriages, appear at big dinners,

dictate wills, act as executors of estates, and otherwise display arrogance unbecoming to a philosopher. And here they have this idea to make people think that they are masters andcall them ‘Rabbi’. Straightway theythrow off all restraint and become bold enough for anything.

           

It becomes a problem when they make fun of other genres, like poetry is treated by them as something absurd. Their comment upon poets is that they live in forests and lead a kind of life and it is just lack of manners. They say, besides that their poems are false, obscure, lewd and replete with absurd and silly tales of pagan gods, and that they make jove or zeus who was in point of fact an obscene and adulterous man, now that they have numerous kinds of names. They say poets are seducers of mind, they are prompters to crime and it is a crime to read poetry .  

Boccaccio regrets their theme and he objects supporting poets. He ward them off in his essay. As he is a writer he knows about being a writer. Thus he has his opinion. Here there is a section where it is found that Boccaccio prays to god to oppose those mad men who are against poetry and prays to give courage. He feels that he is weak and need strentgth.

In the seventh chapter he taalks on the definition of poetry, its origin and its function. He says poetry as a fervid and exquisite invention. It is something that is from bosom of  god  and a few would get the  lessing to get this  power. He feels it a gift for  rare of men. It is something which makes mind to imagine and convert ideas.

“This fervor of poesy is sublime in

its effects: it impels the soul to a longing for utterance; it brings forth strange

and unheard-of creations of the mind; it arranges these meditations in a fixed

order, adorns the whole composition with unusual interweaving of words

and thoughts; and thus it veils truth· in a fair and fitting garment of fiction. “

           

He give spoetry many meaning and praises it. He says that it can give energy and support to a king marshal them for war, launch whole fleets from their docks, attract women who are really pretty, could convey human facts, emotiond and dealing in a beautiful manner, subdue a criminal and and many things ike this.

            One fact he notices is that we write to those where our mind stimulates. And it is such a beauty it reaches to others and they also could enjoy what a writer or poet thinks. Liberal Art is both moral and natural, to possess a strong and abundantvocabulary, to behold the monuments and relies of the Ancients, to have in one's memory the histories of the nations, and to be familiar with the geography of various lands, of seas, rivers and mountains.

Places of retirement, the lovely handiwork of Nature herself, are favorable to poetry, as well as peace of mind and desire for wordly glory; the ardent period of life also has very often been of great advantage. If these conditions fail, the power of creative genius frequently grows dull and impose on others. Now since nothing proceeds from this poetic fervor, which sharpens and illumins the powers of the mind, except what is wrought all by art, for poetry is generally called an art. Poetry was origanated from greek word ‘poetes’.

He says poetry should be brief and not long and discriptive which makes reader too boring. And the name of art, as well as its artificial product, is derived from its effect. Cicero , an orator comments,

"And yet we have it on the highestand most learned authority, that while other arts are matters of science and formula and technique, poetry depends ,solely upon an inborn faculty, is evoked by a purely mental activity, and is infused with a strange supernal inspiration."

As this heard by people, they accepted poetry as a gift from god. And also accepted it as an effect converted into a beautiful masterpiece. According to Aristotle ‘poetry can create wonder by strange matter and expression as rhetoric should not’. And Boccaccio supporting him says rhetoric has also its part in literay works and it is also acceptable.

In the twelfth chapter he talks on obscurity of poetry was not causing for condemnation of poetry. As old rule of orators, where they say a speech must be simple and clear, people and upper class people critisiced as poetry also should be as a  speech. He says poets are sometimes obscure, but it is also a kind of way of expression. But when compairing to philosophers, how does they write something, it is also tough to understand.

There were people o support philosophers, but not for poets.

“Augustine,! a man of great sanctityand learning, and of such intellectual power that, without a teacher, as hesays himself, he learned many arts, besides all that the· philosophers :teach of the ten categories. Yet he·did not blush to admit that he could not understand the beginning of Isaiah. It seems that obscurities are not confined to poetry. Why then do they not critiCise philosophers·as well as .poets? Why do they hot say that the Holy Spirit wove obscure sayings into his works, just to give them ah appearance of .clever artistry?”

“To a half-blind man, even whenthe sun is shining its brightest, the sky looks cloudy. Some things are naturally so profound that not without difficulty can the most exceptional keenness in intellect sound their depths; like the.sun's globe, by which, before they can clearly discern it, str~ng eyes are sometimes repelled.”

Poets write and express which are hidden thoughts and beauty, thus they are  to be accepted. And readers of the age  opposed because they coulds grasp what the poet wrote and thus they need to show their regard. Philosophers were writing which cant be understood to people, then why poets can’t.

“As saith FrancisPetrarch in the Third Book of his ‘Invectives’, contrary to my opponents' supposition, "Such majesty and dignity are not intended to hinder those who wish to understand, but rather propose a delightful task and are designed to enhance the reader's pleasure and support his memory. What we acquire with difficulty and keep with care is always the dearer to us;" so continues Petrarch.

 He concludes by saying this that, when a reader  needs to understand a work, just repeat reading and try to get new meaning if one is not grasped.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ü  The Norton anthology of theory and criticism

ü  http://www.jstor.org/stable/462094