The Italian Background to Chaucer's Epic Similes

Author / Editor
Anderson, David.

Title
The Italian Background to Chaucer's Epic Similes

Published
Annali d'Italianistica 12 (1994): 15-38.

Description
Argues that Chaucer's similes cannot be explained in terms of imitation of Dante and Boccaccio or direct imitation of classical models. Instead, following the example of Dante and Boccaccio, Chaucer practiced a "poetics of vernacularization," imitating the "well-articulated model of the rhetorical form" of the simile as defined in the Italian tradition of Ciceronian rhetoricical form" of the simile as defined in the Italian tradition of Ciceronian rhetoric.

Chaucer Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.
Style and Versification.