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The luster of Giovanni Boccaccio's jewel as a member of the tre corone of fourteenth-century Italian literature depends, in great measure, on the reflected brilliance of the other two lights, Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca. Dante's subtle self-insertion into the group of august poets, Vergil, Homer and Ovid, in Inferno 4, cunningly enacts his status as a major figure in the literary canon. Petrarch's coronation as poet laureate in Rome guaranteed his position in the future annals of poetic history (WP 113-115). Boccaccio, on the other hand, less adept in the craft of self-praise, pales in comparison as the author of the mercantile epic the Decameron and the erudite complier of Latin encyclopedias. Indeed, Boccaccio sets up the terms of this unfavorable comparison as he consistently humbles himself to his Florentine fellows: Dante is his "primus studiorum dux" and Petrarch his "preceptor inclite".1 This rhetoric of humility in his deference to Dante and Petrarch partially masks his role as mediator, as galeotto, between Dante and Petrarch.
While the relationship between Boccaccio and Dante and between Petrarch and Dante has been well explored, the literary relationship between Boccaccio and Petrarch has not received sufficient attention, despite some recent important scholarship. Certainly, as Boccaccio himself relates, Petrarch served as a literary model. Scholars who have written on Boccaccio's role in the development of fourteenth-century humanism have taken Boccaccio at his word: Petrarch is identified as the intellectual force behind humanism and then, in a subordinate clause, Boccaccio is affiliated to Petrarch's program.2 Boccaccio doubtlessly followed Petrarch's lead, particularly in his Latin works: the De casibus virorum illustrium comes after the De viris illustris, and Petrarch's Bucolicum Carmen, especially the Argus, inspired Boccaccio's Bucolicum Carmen. However, there is also ample evidence of discord between these two men, especially in terms of their how they employ their poetic vocation in service to their political affiliations.
In this article, I concentrate on one particular moment in the long relationship between Boccaccio and Petrarch as a locus of a chronic conflict between the two men. Specifically, the letter Boccaccio sent to Petrarch in 1353 (Epistole 10) sharply rebukes him for refusing the offer proffered by the Signoria of Florence to return to that city as the first magister of the Studio...