Of course, we’d conveniently forgotten (or failed to read) what one of the storytellers points out: while spending their afternoons spinning tales of illicit couplings, these young Florentines spend their evenings in their own beds, their Fridays reflecting on the Crucifixion and their Sundays at Mass. In fact, we went further, taking these racy tales as 1) proof that all medieval piety was just so much hypocritical nonsense and 2) a sort of literary imprimatur for our own escapades. When confronted with Boccaccio’s masterpiece in college, my group of friends indulged in the same Orwellian doublethink. Good luck tracking it down, though! It's a real shame how many books are lost obscurity before the ink even dries.Just as every generation thinks it is the first to have discovered sex, so every generation takes up The Decameron as proof that every generation has been doing it since the first two bits of protoplasm decided to play house. Investigations of that book would surely be illuminating there is perhaps no more appropriate text for your question.

The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question.

That '44' is a citation of a rare monograph on the topic: The simplest assumption to make is that Chaucer had been exposed to Decameron If it is really true that a quarter of the many tales in Canterbury have analogues in Decameron then surely 'coincidence' is not a satisfying explanation. If you claim Chaucer was ignorant of Boccacio in whole or in part, this fact must be explained as an exception to the general pattern.

The great familiarity that Chaucer had with the Italian scene. 44įrom the way these scholars discuss the issue (rather above my level, to be honest), the main points of evidence are: Growing up in a mercantile family close by the Thames, Chaucer earlyĪcquired a familiarity with Italian shipmen, traders, and financiers that was put to good use in later professional life and through his actual visits to Italy, he gained sophisticated, first-hand knowledge of the social and political settings from which the writings of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch hadīut it is Boccaccio’s example, it would seem, that finally encourages Chaucer to organize a travelling company of tellers under a single narrative structure fully one-quarter of Chaucer’s tales find analogues in the Decameron. I found two resources worth investigating if this interests you, but I really don't have the background or the time to pursue them much deeper at the moment:įirst there is an essay titled ' Chaucer's Italian Inheritance' from The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer.Įxact details have been obscured by the centuries, but it is clear Chaucer visited Italy and it is only natural for him to have become familiar with the intellectual movements there:

Decameron by boccaccio