Chaucer and Petrarch

Despite the fact that Chaucer introduced Petrarch’s work into England
in the late fourteenth century, Petrarch’s influence has been very little
studied. This book, the first full-length study of Chaucer’s reading and
translation of Petrarch, examines Chaucer’s translations of Petrarch’s
Latin prose and Italian poetry against the backdrop of his experience of
Italy, gained through his travels there in the 1370s, his interaction with
Italians in London, and his reading of the other two great Italian medieval
poets, Boccaccio and Dante. The book also considers Chaucer’s
engagement with early Italian humanism and the nature of translation
in the fourteenth century, including a preliminary examination of
adaptations of Chaucer’s pronouncements upon translation and literary
production. Chaucer’s adaptations of Petrarch’s Latin tale of Griselda
and the sonnet ‘S’amor non è’, as the Clerk’s Tale and the ‘Canticus
Troilii’ from Troilus and Criseyde respectively, illustrate his various
translative strategies. Furthermore, Chaucer’s references to Petrarch in
his prologue to the Clerk’s Tale and in the Monk’s Tale provide a means
of gauging the intellectual relationship between two of the most important
poets of the time.