Chaucer and Italian Culture

A collection of eight original articles by leading scholars, which throw new light on Geoffrey Chaucer's engagement with Italian literature and culture in the late fourteenth century.

Chaucerian scholarship has long been intrigued by the nature and consequences of Chaucer’s exposure to Italian culture during his professional visits to Italy in the 1370s. In the eight chapters of Chaucer and Italian Culture, leading scholars take a fresh and holistic view of Chaucer’s engagement with Italian cultural practice, moving beyond the traditional ‘sources and analogues’ approach to reveal the varied strands of Italian literature, art, politics, and intellectual life which permeate Chaucer’s work. Each chapter unfolds, from a different lens, links between Chaucerian texts and Italian intellectual models, including poetics, choreography, visual art, classicism, diplomacy, and prophecy. Echoes of Petrarch, Dante, and Boccaccio reverberate throughout the book, across a rich and diverse landscape of Italian cultural legacies. Taken together, these eight chapters cover a wide range of theories and references while sharing a united understanding of the rich impact of Italian culture on Chaucer’s narrative art.