Luoghi liminari e conclusivi di ‘De mulieribus claris’ e ‘De casibus virorum illustrium’

A detailed investigation on dedicatory epistles, proems and conclusions of Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris e De casibus virorum illustrium shows their shared topics and proves that they were conceived as a different expression of the same literary program. Biographical tales from antiquity to the present time, based on a carefully research of sources, have a deeply instructive and moral purpose. This purpose, which is slightly apparent in De mulieribus, plays a structural role in De casibus and reaches its height in the Decalogue addressed to the powerful which ends the work. A comparison is to be drawn between the biographical pair and the learned one formed by Genealogia and De montibus.