Comedy in Chaucer and Boccaccio

Although many of Chaucer's sources have been exhaustively studied relatively little work has been done on the influence of his contemporary Boccaccio a gap which this book aims to fill. It examines the relationship of the comic tales the so-called fabliaux in Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' and Boccaccio's 'Decameron' demonstrating that not only did Chaucer draw on Boccaccio's work but that they shared the same comic literary tradition stretching back into antiquity. By putting the tales and the characters side-by-side it throws new light on Chaucer's inventiveness and mode of working. Professor CAROL FALVO HEFFERNAN teaches at the Department of English Rutgers University New Jersey.