Bucolicum carmen

The Bucolicum carmen is an organic collection of twelve eclogues, composed by Petrarch between 1346 and 1347 and published in 1357. The last, Aggelos, contains the dedication of the collection to Donato Albanzani. The dark allegories suggested by its verses are partly explained in a letter Boccaccio sent to Martino da Signa (Ep. XXIII), which some manuscripts place as an introduction to the collection. In it Boccaccio reviews the history of the genre, names Theocritus, Virgil and Petrarch as its main exponents, and attempts a self-exegesis in the best Dantean tradition, though he leaves Dante out of the list of poetic antecedents.

The eclogues treat a variety of themes. Galla and Pampinea are, according to the author himself, youthful exercises; in Faunus, Dorus, Silva cadens and Alcestus, events at the Angevin court are raised to the level of parenthetical examples. In Midas, Boccaccio denounces the untrustworthiness of Niccolò Acciaiuoli. The autobiographical element is central to Olympia, a sad and tender memory of his young daughter Violante, who died at the age of five. Because of its form, it has also been compared to the verse bucolic correspondence Boccaccio exchanged with Checco di Meletto Rossi.