5. Organizing, disorganizing

Abstract

‘Organizing, disorganizing: The Canterbury Tales’ describes the structure and content of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The chief precedent for this work as a framed collection is the Decameron, heroically written in response to the 1348 plague, but then retouched by Boccaccio until his death in 1375. Chaucer heard much about Boccaccio during his visit to Florence in 1373, the year of the world’s first lecturae Dantis (Dante lectures, organized and given by Boccaccio). Chaucer’s Tales exist over fifty-five manuscripts; tale orders vary and ‘fragments’ float. For Chaucer, the framed collection provided a convenient workshop and repository for all kinds of writing, some of it drafted much earlier.