Fiction and Religion in Boccaccio and Chaucer

Author / Editor
Howard, Donald R.

Title
Fiction and Religion in Boccaccio and Chaucer

Published
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 47.2, Supplement : 307-28, 1979.

Description
Howard compares TC with Il Filostrato and CT with Decameron, focusing on how Chaucer adapts Boccaccio's uses of conventions to engage his audience. In Boccaccio, fiction enables the audience to escape from a contemptible world, whereas Chaucer--more the humanist--defends literary experience as a confrontation of human values. If literature has done no more good than religion for humankind, it has also done less harm.

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