Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of "The Decameron" and "The Canterbury Tales"

Description: "The Decameron" should be seen as a source of CT despite the lack of verbal parallels. Each work forms "an itinerary for the reader, if a highly indirect one, towards the good." "The Decameron" leads to Griselda, while CT leads to the Parson's penitential treatise, but both works depict labyrinthine, disrupted worlds and obliquely indicate that the only true way is the way of virtue.; Thompson considers literary self-consciousness, genre, and the relations of art and morality. Includes an extended discussion of ClT and the version of the Griselda tale in Boccaccio and Petrarch.

Chaucer Subjects: Canterbury Tales--General.; Clerk and His Tale.; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations