The Canterbury Tales versus The Decameron: Literary Kissing Cousins

At the end of the thirteenth century and moving into the fourteenth, a cultural revolution was unfolding in Italy. This would sweep away the old medieval order and usher in a new age of creativity and enlightenment. This period, known as the Italian Renaissance, had started in the city of Florence and would soon spread to other regions of the Italian peninsula such as Venice and Rome. It was a rebirth of the Italian culture, brought on by a renewed interest in the classical cultures of ancient Rome and Greece. It brought many of the world's greatest artists to prominence, such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. In addition to the surge of new and highly skilled visual art, there was also a good deal of literature being produced, such as The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli and, of course, The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Boccaccio lived during the early years of the Renaissance and was a student of one of the cultural movement's most influential members, Francesco Petrarch. Petrarch was a poet and scholar who advocated the philosophy of humanism, which was at the core of the Renaissance. Benefiting from the guidance Petrarch provided, Boccaccio became a prolific writer producing many works, most notably The Decameron, a collection of one hundred stories.

While this cultural phenomenon transformed Italy and began to spread to other parts of Europe, the insular nation of England lingered in the middle ages. The old social orders were still in place and the art was still focused primarily on religious matters, as opposed to the Renaissance's humanist art. One member of an aristocratic social order in England was Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was the son of a successful business man, and his father used his connec...

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