Comparing cultures

CHAUCER and BOCCACCIO

During his diplomatic missions to Italy (especially Genoa, Milan and Florence), Chaucer came into
contact with Italian poetry, famous throughout Europe at that time for three great writers: Dante,
Petrarch and Boccaccio.

Chaucer probably read Boccaccio’s Decameron, in fact according to some critics Chaucer took the
device of the collection from Boccaccio, although we have no proof of this as he mentions
Petrarch and Dante but never once Boccaccio.

Nevertheless, Decameron and The Canterbury Tales have several elements in common and
several differences.

SIMILARITIES

- They are written in vernacular

- They have a frame
- The stories are told by the characters themselves
- They criticize the corruption of the clergy
- Story telling as a game and as a way of passing the time
- Irony and humour
-

DIFFERENCES

THE CANTERBURY TALES DECAMERON

- In verse - In prose
- 30 characters - 10 characters
- Pilgrimage - plague
- 120 stories - 100 stories
- Incomplete (24 stories) - complete
- Different social classes - The same social class: aristocracy
(except for upper aristocracy and labourers)
- The author himself is a member of the group, -
a witness
- Detailed description of the characters -
(physical and psychological)
- -
- -
Comparing cultures
 CHAUCER and DANTE
The central idea of the pilgrimage might have come from Dante’s pilgrimage through Hell,
Purgatory and Paradise in the Divine Comedy.
But Chaucer turned Dante’s other-worldly pilgrimage into a realistic English pilgrimage, with the
pilgrims going to Canterbury less in penitence than in holiday high spirits.
He reproduced the new medieval England with its disorder and contradictions, but already strong
and self-confident.
At first Chaucer seems to respect the hierarchy of the time by introducing the Knight first, but his
presentation then mixes up the rest of the party without consideration of rank and dignity, as if to
emphasize that the old feudal values are disappearing.