Alcestus is the sixth among fifteen eclogues in Giovanni Boccaccio's Buccolicum carmen (c. 1362–63). Like most poems in this book, Alcestus presents an allegorical narrative based upon a specific historical episode. More particularly, Alcestus takes the form of a political panegyric in honour of Louis of Taranto (the husband of Queen Johanna), who returned to Naples in 1348, after a long conflict involving a vendetta for the murder of Andrew of Hungary (Johanna's first husband), in 1345. This article aims to offer, first, an overview of Boccaccio's Alcestus; and then, provide a closer examination of this work. Taking into consideration its historical background, as well as its literary strategies, I will focus on the different kinds of shifts that emerge in the text – from winter to spring, absence to return, sorrow to happiness, and peace to fear. As I will try to demonstrate, these shifts, besides reflecting the political instability that marked the Neapolitan Trecento, also reveal Boccaccio's literary models for this eclogue – mainly Virgil's Eclogues 5 and 8.
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