''Bucolicum carmen'' is an organic collection of twelve

eclogue An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics. Overview The form of the word ''eclogue'' in contemporary English developed from Middle English , which came from Latin , wh ...

s, composed by

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...

from 1346–7 and published in 1357. The last (Aggelos) contains the dedication of the sylloge to Donato Albanzani.

Overview

The dark allegories suggested by the verses are in part explained in the letter that Boccaccio sent Martino da Signa (Ep. XXIII), which some manuscripts give in front of the collection of poems, by way of introduction. In this document, after having briefly gone into the history of the genre and having indicated its main exponents to be

Theocritus Theocritus (; grc-gre, Θεόκριτος, ''Theokritos''; born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry. Life Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from h ...

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

and

, Boccaccio undertakes an exercise in self-exegesis, in the best of Dantean tradition. Dante is the most evident model for the , even though Boccaccio strategically excludes him from the list of poetic antecedents recalled in Epistola XXIII. Dante's influence can be seen in the themes and means used in the correspondence between Alighieri and Giovanni del Virgilio, the famous exchange of eclogues that Boccaccio personally copied and that is among the documents in the Zibaldone Laurenziano XXIX 8. The deals with a variety of themes. The first two compositions ( Galla and Pampinea) are said by the author himself to be as if they were youthful exercises; in Faunus, Dorus, Silva cadens and Alcestus facts and events related to the Angevin court are elevated to the rank of parenthetic exemplification. With Midas Boccaccio denounces the untrustworthiness of Niccolò Acciaiuoli, thus vindicating his influential friend's “betrayal”. The autobiographical element would seem to be central to the Olympia, a sad and touching recollection of his baby daughter Violante, who had died at the early age of five. Similar to the pastoral poetry in the vernacular of the or Comedy of Florentine Nymphs, the has also been likened to bucolic correspondence in verse, engaged in by Boccaccio with Checco di Meletto Rossi (Carmina I and II).

References

External links

''Il Bucolicum Carmen''
with an introduction in Italian by Antonio Avena {{Authority control Epic poems in Latin Second Punic War Poetry by Petrarch