Abstract
ACCORDING to the most widely held theory, Chaucer began the composition of the Canterbury Tales in 1387. Why he chose the form that he did—a number of tales told by traveling pilgrims—has aroused much speculation. As it is one of the high crimes of scholarship to attribute originality to any author, especially a great one, source hunters have diligently combed all literature extant in Chaucer’s time for a similar plan. The closest one they have found is the Novelle of Sercambi; this is, however, not too similar, for in it the travelers roamed around most of Italy, and Sercambi himself told all of the tales. It is fairly well agreed that Chaucer was not familiar with the Decameron of Boccaccio. There is nothing in Chaucer’s works that shows a direct influence of those tales.
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Notes and References
H. Snowden Ward, The Canterbury Pilgrimages (London, 1904), pp. 100–60.
Nevill Coghill, The Poet Chaucer (London, 1947), p. 167.
F. N. Robinson, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1957 ), p. 697.
Marcette Chute, Geoffrey Chaucer of England (New York, 1958), p. 278.
Walter C. Curry, Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences rev. ed. (New York, 1960), pp. 3–36.
J. Leslie Hotson, “Colfox vs. Chauntecleer,” PMLA, XXXI (1924), pp. 726–81; also in Wagenknecht, as in note 11, pp. 98–116.
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© 1964 Twayne Publishers, Inc.
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Howard, E.J. (1964). The Canterbury Tales. In: Geoffrey Chaucer. The Griffin Authors Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02943-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02943-3_7
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