This dissertation analyses the support that female community offers its members in three ofBoccaccio’s most renowned works, the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (1344), the Decameron (1353), and the De mulieribus claris (1374). Each of the first three chapters centres upon one of these titles and examines the fictional networks of women who influence outcomes for Boccaccio’s female protagonists. These protagonists are themselves rewarded when they embrace this succour. In this way, Boccaccio models the kind of pro-woman behaviour that the female readers he explicitly addresses in his writing should emulate. In a fourth chapter, I read these texts alongside those of Italian women writers of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries to explore how these later authors engaged with Boccaccio’s ideas about female community for their own protofeminist goals. Studies of Boccaccio’s women characters have tended to focus on conflict between men and women, whilst studies of his reception highlight his impact on male authors. This project directs attention instead to his depictions of fictional interactions amongst women and, by means of a comparative study, attributes to Boccaccio a foundational role in a developing social consciousness around the position of women in Italy. I argue that the range of perspectives on women available in Boccaccio’s corpus provided a wealth of inspiration for Renaissance women writers to consider their own positions within both society and the literary landscape.