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What is Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Corbaccio about?
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Giovanni Boccaccio
Italian poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio, detail of a fresco by Andrea del Castagno; in the Cenacolo di Sant'Apollonia, Florence.
Il Corbaccio (1354–1355) is a satire written by Giovanni Boccaccio that stands in stark contrast to his earlier works, which often celebrated love and women.1
The text is characterized as a bitterly misogynistic work, reportedly directed at a widow who had jilted the author. It represents a significant shift in Boccaccio’s literary output, as he moved away from the imaginative and poetic themes found in the Decameron to focus on humanist scholarship and Latin writings during his later years.12