Until Boccaccio wrote the Filostrato, the Troilus and Criseida story, first told in Benoît's Roman de Troie (1155), existed only as part of more extensive historical accounts of the Trojan War of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, such as Guida delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troae. The poem consists of a 'framing story,' detailing the narrator's misfortunes in his love for his lady, Filomena, and a 'framed story,' that of the tragic love between Troilus and Criseida. In the poem the author acts as an incompetent, 'stupid' narrator of literary and philosophical materials that exceed his interpretive abilities. This paper proposes that in the Filostrato Boccaccio employs narrative frames and creates a narrative persona for ironic effect, the result of reshaping the writings of his auctores. They have preferred to offer autobiographical interpretations which seek to explain the poem in terms of the author's life. In fact, many scholars have resisted the interpretive challenges which the Filostrato's narrative sophistication poses. The way in which Boccaccio uses a narrative frame in the Filostrato has been little explored.

The technique of enveloping stories within stories allows the poet to control multiple perspectives and thus to broaden the frames of reference from which the reader interprets any given story. Giovanni Boccaccio is perhaps best known for the earthy, often ribald tales of the Decameron which exemplify a distinctively Ovidian fascination with layered narration. Boccaccio's Criseida and her Narrator, Filostrato.

Your narrator face