Indebtedness of Chaucer's Works to the Italian Works of Boccaccio

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V Chaucer's Use Of The Filostrato A. A Summary of the Sources of Troilus and Criseyde In the Prefatory Remarks of his parallel edition of Troilus and Criseyde and the Filostrato translated into English (Chaucer Society, 1873), W. M. Rossetti presents, in a brief table, a scheme of the poet's indebtedness to Boccaccio which is no longer altogether satisfactory. Its tendency, no matter how legitimate its original aim was, is now to make the student of Chaucer-Boccaccio relations accredit the Italian poem with less than its full and proper amount of contributions to Troil. As we note that only 2,730 lines of Fil. were adapted into Chaucer's poem and there condensed into 2,583 lines, or something less than a third of the total lines of Troil., we are prone to infer that Chaucer is indebted to Boccaccio for less than one third of the material of his romance. Such an inference is very far from being the truth. Besides the material, borrowed line for line from Boccaccio, there is of course in Troil. much in the way of episode, plot, or characterization, which is taken over into the English work by a less direct method than verbal translation, and which constitutes a far greater indebtedness to Fil. than the actual use of a number of Italian lines, however great. It is really impossible to over-estimate Chaucer's debt in this regard. In order that it may be more conveniently seen how much of the material and how much of the spirit of Boccaccio's work the English poet actually borrowed, it is my desire to submit as a supplement to Rossetti's parallels a number of notes, accounting in a more concise way for the sources of Troil. These notes will not only reveal further indebtedness to Fil. in spirit and, at times, in instances of actual...