Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, Volume 1: Books I–V (The I Tatti Renaissance Library) - Hardcover

A truly stupendous effort in which Boccaccio references hundreds of ancient Greek and Roman sources in over a thousand citations--a stunningly masterful synthesis of all classical mythology, running to over 700 chapters. The whole thing is an utterly amazing performance, a towering masterpiece of Renaissance humanism, and here, as one of the latest entries in Harvard University Press' I Tatti Renaissance Library, it gets its very first unabridged translation into English. Jon Solomon does the honors, everywhere using a deftly light touch that works perfectly to bring out the relatively straightforward simplicity, sometimes called "arid" by those who go into the work expecting frolics in the Tuscan hills, of the Latin Boccaccio uses in this teeming work...This I Tatti volume is in itself a mighty achievement, and when it's joined by its companion volumes, all attractively produced and supplied with the extensive critical apparatus most modern readers will need for a work that isn't entirely accessible, it will stand as a long-overdue monument to its beloved author. And it will give that author's many fans something new--and wonderful--by him to read. -- Steve Donoghue Open Letters Monthly 20110524

Giovanni Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Pagan Gods is an ambitious work of humanistic scholarship whose goal is to plunder ancient and medieval literary sources so as to create a massive synthesis of Greek and Roman mythology. The work also contains a famous defense of the value of studying ancient pagan poetry in a Christian world. The complete work in fifteen books contains a meticulously organized genealogical tree identifying approximately 950 Greco-Roman mythological figures. The scope is enormous: 723 chapters include over a thousand citations from two hundred Greek, Roman, medieval, and Trecento authors. Throughout the Genealogy, Boccaccio deploys an array of allegorical, historical, and philological critiques of the ancient myths and their iconography. Much more than a mere compilation of pagan myths, the Genealogy incorporates hundreds of excerpts from and comments on ancient poetry, illustrative of the new spirit of philological and cultural inquiry emerging in the early Renaissance. It is at once the most ambitious work of literary scholarship of the early Renaissance and a demonstration to contemporaries of the moral and cultural value of studying ancient poetry. This is the first volume of a projected three-volume set of Boccaccio's complete Genealogy.