ABSTRACT
In the discussion of the Knight’s Tale in the previous chapter, we saw how Chaucer separated Theban matters from Trojan matters by removing the copious Trojan content of his Italian source, Boccaccio’s Teseida. This enabled him to deal exclusively with the Theban question and, more precisely, with the turn the story of Thebes took in Boccaccio’s tale of the two Theban kinsmen, Palemone and Arcita. However, it should not be assumed that Chaucer separated Thebes and Troy in the Knight’s Tale because he in any way objected to the medieval interpretive practice of pairing these two famous disasters, for he himself reconnects them in his Troilus and Criseyde, his adaptation of another of Boccaccio’s works, the Filostrato. In this case, he adds to his Italian source rather than taking away, introducing Theban references and allusions into Boccaccio’s story of two Trojan lovers where there are none in the Filostrato. Given the fact that the Theban content of the Troilus represents Chaucer’s invention, no discussion of Chaucer’s handling of Theban history would be complete without some discussion of that poem.
