ABSTRACT
Chaucer had bought at least three books in Florence in 1374. One was Dante’s Divine Comedy; the second was Boccaccio’s Teseida; the third was Boccaccio’s H Filostrato. The Divine Comedy he read and referred to in detail but it was an end in itself, with one exception (in The Monk’s Tale), not raw material he could work on. Boccaccio’s more human less perfect narratives were more malleable. Teseida offered some brilliant passages, an interesting story, and a tantalising challenge in form. Chaucer had tried to use something o f Teseida's splendid diction and expansive narrative in Anelida and Arcite and had fallen back defeated on his earlier French manner. He had been more successful in The Parliament of Fowls by simply taking a few excerpts with which to create the glowing sultry picture of Venus and her train as part o f the brilliantly varied collage out o f which he created that poem.
