Giovanni Boccaccio

About Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) was an essential Italian poet, scholar, and humanist who made profound contributions to early Renaissance literature. He is primarily celebrated for authoring the *Decameron*, a collection of one hundred tales that offers a vivid and earthy portrait of life and human nature during the Black Death pandemic. This seminal work, written in the vernacular, helped establish the Tuscan dialect as the literary standard for the modern Italian language, securing his high historical rank of #332 globally.

Despite this foundational importance, Boccaccio currently experiences significant underattention in the digital sphere. With an annualized Wikipedia view count of just 195K in 2025, his presence is strikingly diminished compared to contemporaries in the literary field. For instance, George Orwell, ranked #398 (only slightly less important historically), commands 2.0M views—more than ten times the traffic Boccaccio receives. This translates to an Attention Gap of -2x, indicating that internet culture pays him only half the attention warranted by his historical impact.

Furthermore, the current trend suggests this gap is widening. Boccaccio’s pageviews have declined by 15.9% year-over-year, and his recent 2025 Momentum shows a further 6% dip comparing Q1 to Q3 traffic, suggesting a steady drift toward obscurity online.