Dr. Eric Nicholson

This special webinar aims to show that if one reads not only between but behind and even within the lines penned by Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare, one will often encounter the writings of their precursors Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio. Chaucer, in fact, wrote two long poems that engage with and emulate entire works by the Italian authors: his House of Fame is a response to Dante’s Divine Comedy, and his Troilus and Criseyde is based on Boccaccio’s Filostrato. The fourteenth-century English poet admired Dante so much that he imports lengthy passages from Inferno and Paradiso into several of his Canterbury Tales and their Prologues, including Saint Bernard’s prayer to the Virgin Mary (Paradiso XXXIII): with his full command of Italian, Chaucer knew these verses by heart. Meanwhile, the tale-telling Monk, as he concludes his version of Count Ugolino of Pisa’s tragic story, gives the advice “Redeth the grete poete of Ytaille/ That highte Dant, for he kan all devyse/ Fro point to point; nat o word wol he faille” (“Read the great poet of Italy/ Named Dante, for he can narrate all/ From point to point; not one word will he get wrong”). Chaucer travelled to Italy, where he may even have met Boccaccio, but there is no doubt that he drew inspiration and specific material from the Italian author’s anthology of 100 novelle: a notable example is the Clerk’s Tale, an adaptation of probably the most provocative and hotly debated Decameron story, that of “Patient Griselda” and her tyrannical husband Gualtieri. Although Dante was less of an influence on Shakespeare, the comedy Much Ado About Nothing does feature a charismatic leading lady named Beatrice who quips that she has been to the gates of hell, where she was told to get herself to heaven. The Decameron, on the other hand, shapes several Shakespearean plays featuring other brilliant and courageous women, most especially All’s Well That Ends Well, set partially in Florence and based on the story of Giletta di Narbona, and Cymbeline, with its Italianate characters and plot derived from the story of Ginevra, Bernabò, and Ambrogiuolo. Just as importantly, the innovative poetic as well as prose techniques and the vast range of complex ideas explored in the two Italian writers’ masterpieces crucially enabled Chaucer and Shakespeare to create their own English classics.