ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Petrarch was as celebrated for his Latin works as for his Italian writings by his contemporaries. Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale closely follows this work, Petrarch’s elegant Latin adaptation of the last tale in Boccaccio’s Decameron.

Detailed explanation-2: -Of the three, Boccaccio was the one on whom Chaucer drew most heavily, and in some sense strove to emulate; Chaucer based Troilus on Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato and his Knight’s Tale on Il Teseida, and Chaucer’s elaborate high style owes something to Boccaccio’s attempt to emulate the classics in his own vernacular.

Detailed explanation-3: -Chaucer’s early work is heavily influenced by love poetry of the French tradition, including the Romaunt of the Rose (c. 1370) and Saint Cecilia (c. 1373), later used as the “Second Nun’s Tale” in the Canterbury Tales.

Detailed explanation-4: -But it is a romance by Boccaccio, the Filostrato, that is most closely worked on by Chaucer to produce his own great poem, Troilus and Criseyde (early-to-mid 1380s).