Content
The 106 Famous Women biographies are of mythological and historical women, as well as some of Boccaccio's Renaissance contemporaries. The brief life stories follow the same general exemplary literature patterns used in various versions of De viris illustribus. The biography pattern starts with the name of the person, then the parents or ancestors, then their rank or social position, and last the general reason for their notoriety or fame with associated details. This is sometimes interjected with a philosophical or inspirational lesson at the end.
The only sources that Boccaccio specifically says he used are Saint Paul (no. 42), the Bible (no. 43) and Jerome (no. 86). The wording of the biographies themselves, however, provide hints about where he obtained his information. He clearly had access to works of the classical authors Valerius Maximus, Pliny, Livy, Ovid, Suetonius, Statius, Virgil, Lactantius, Orosius, and Justinus.
Read more about this topic: De Mulieribus Claris
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense—but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd—for sense cannot be counterfeited.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)