Giovanni Boccaccio (June 16, 1313 - December 21, 1375) was an Italian writer and humanist. He is one of the fathers, along with Dante and Petrarca, of Italian literature. He also composed several works in Latin. He is remembered above all as the author of the Decameron, an essential book to introduce the genre of the short novel or story into European literature, and which uses the technical resource of framed narration. With him he founded a large school of novellieri who imitated his work.