6. The device Chaucer employs in The Canterbury Tales of many characters gathered together, each telling stories, was not new. The idea had been used by an Italian author in a work probably begun sometime in the late 1340's. Who was this Italian poet?
- Dante Alighieri
- Giovanni Boccaccio
- Baldassare Castiglione
- Francesco Petrarch
The answer is b. Giovanni Boccaccio.
Boccaccio wrote the Decameron, a collection of 100 tales told by a group of 10 people who've fled from plague in the city of Florence. Other works by Boccaccio may also have influenced Chaucer, including Il filostrato, which influenced Troilus and Creyside, and Teseida, which had a direct impact on The Knight's Tale. Chaucer encountered the works of Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch on his diplomatic missions to Italy.
Dante Alighieri (1245-1321) was perhaps the most significant author of pre-Renaissance Italy and wrote such masterpieces as The Divine Comedy. Petrarch, a contemporary and friend of Boccaccio, was not only a poet but might reasonably be called the founder of Humanism. Baldassare Castiglione was a fifteenth century writer, courtier and diplomat and is best known for his Book of the Courtier.
