Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales': Reviewing the Work

Author / Editor
Cooper, Helen.

Title
Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales': Reviewing the Work

Published
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 19 (1997): 183-210.

Description
An advance first chapter of a proposed revision of Bryan and Dempster's 'Sources and Analogues' (1941), in process under the editorship of Robert Correale and Mary Hamel. Cooper evaluates the relation of CT to other medieval storytelling collections, arguing that Boccaccio's "Decameron" was Chaucer's model. The dialogic CT shares features with several medieval debate poems, especially the "Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolphus."
Its taletelling competition owes a debt to "puys," societies that held literary contests. Cooper distinguishes between CT and the tradition of tale-tales told about pilgrimages, but notes evidence of historical pilgrims' amusing themselves with storytelling.

Chaucer Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.
Canterbury Tales--General.