Chaucer and Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato

Abstract

This chapter shows how Geoffrey Chaucer's relationship to literary tradition can be explored through his study, translation, and adaptation of one Italian poem—Giovanni Boccaccio's Il Filostrato. Chaucer used Boccaccio's youthful experiment Il Filostrato (1335) to create Troilus and Criseyde (1385), an enduring masterpiece and unquestionably his greatest completed work. Here, the chapter examines twelve aspects of Il Filostrato which prompt Chaucer at times to straightforward imitation, at times to considerable amplification of an idea, and at times to a corrective reaction. It shows how many of these aspects—which represent Chaucer in different ways learning from and being stimulated by Boccaccio—also came to seem like key characteristics of Chaucer's mature work. After all, Chaucer became the poet he was partly through intense reflection on Boccaccio's ideas and techniques.