Chaucer , Boccaccio and Dante

1. Chaucer, Boccaccio and Dante Reading and Speaking p. 43 Millennium 1

2. What literary precedents did Chaucer have in the choice of a frame for his collection of tales? Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and Sir Giovanni Sircambi’sIl Novelliereare The Canterbury Tales literary precedents. • Briefly state Boccaccio’s influence on Chaucer. Chaucer is indebted to Boccaccio for the idea of the frame into which he inserted his tales and because one of his tales (the story of Griselda) clearly derives from one of Boccaccio’s novellas. • Briefly state Dante’s influence on Chaucer. Chaucer might have taken from Dante’s Divina Comedy the idea of the pilgrimage as a link throughout the tales; also, Chaucer, like Dante, elevated a vernacular language (the language spoken by common people) to the dignity of a literary language. • Read the passage from The Canterbury Tales on the next page, then say if there is anything in it which you can relate to your own readings from Decameron or other Italian novellas. Boccaccio’s Decameronis a collection of tales written in prose, while The Canterbury Tales are written in verse. Both Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio’s Decamerondeal with a group of people who have gathered together, but in Boccaccio’s work they all belong to the aristocracy while in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales they represent a heterogeneous society. In The Canterbury Tales the action takes place “on the road”, on the way to Canterbury, while in Boccaccio’s Decameronthe action is set in a villa, a closed and isolated place.