Balti state university a. Russo chair of english philology

The Italian Period (1372 – 85) 
The journey that Chaucer made to Italy in 1372 was a milestone in his literary 
development.
 
“This journey immersed him in the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio – the last two 
still alive at the time of Chaucer‟s visit. Chaucer himself mentioned his respect for Boccaccio, 
whose cast of mind was far more congenial to Chaucer than the more sober Dante and Petrarch. 
Many of the famous Canterbury Tales are indebted to Boccaccio‟s works. His poems The 
Parliament of Fowls (1375 – 1385) and Troilus and Criceide (1385) have been inspired by 
Boccaccio‟s creation”./1 Troilus and Criceide  is considered to be the 1
st
psychological novel in 
English although its characters are those of ancient Greece. 
Troilus and Criceide is a courtly romance true to the courtly code of love, which 
stipulates some strange principles. They are the lover submits totally, voluntarily and 
irrevocably to the lady he has chosen. If he happens to fail her in one sense or another she has 
the right to punish him, even putting him to death. His supreme joy is to have the unique 
privilege of serving her. Once the love has been accepted the obligation of fidelity extends to 
both the lover and the beloved. Jealousy is considered a result of infidelity but it has no sign of 
love. The essential lesson lovers should be taught, Criseyde says, is that “The first virtue is to 
hold your tongue” not to boast about one‟s “conquests”.
Quite helpful in this respect is the philosophical background extremely adequate to the 
shaping of strong characters: namely the works of Fortune which ever-changing as she is, 
“plays with us and there is no appeal.” The feeble will be pushed out, the fittest, like Criseyde, 
will survive. “Fortune favours the brave!” 
The French spirit, which is so visible in Troilus and Criseyde, is not absent in Chaucer‟s 
later work Canterbury Tales. It is still felt in long digressions, the naïve refinement, the 
malicious remarks. The vigorous and popular tone prevails in the word, though the bourgeois 
element is strong.
1. Leviţchi, Leon, Literatura Engleză de la începuturi pînă la 1648 , Iasi 1973 p 42 

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Under such circumstances, Chaucer‟s work is all the more remarkable. Keeping within the 
limits of a conventional genre, the courtly romance, he creates the first psychological novel in 
English Literature. 
Between Chaucer and the greatest of the Italian writers, Dante, there was a large 
dissimilarity of temperament, yet if Chaucer could not assimilate The Divine Comedy, “he 
nevertheless appreciated its austere moral grandeur, and his works show its influence in a subtle, 
oblique way./2 Moreover, one of his funniest poems, House of Fame written when he was in the 
customs (1374-1386) may be read as a light-hearted imitation of the comedy, though not a 
wholly successful one. From the works of Petrarch, also a writer of alien temperament, Chaucer 
obtained less, though he accords Petrarch respect on several occasions. It was Boccaccio, 
whose cast of mind was far more congenial to Chaucer than the more sober Dante and Petrarch 
who was to provide the source for some of Chaucer‟s finest poems – though his name is never 
mentioned in Chaucer‟s work. 
During the English period Chauser wrote a number of poems celebrating famous faithful 
women. He could not bring himself to use the simple moralistic technique of conventional 
English poetry and they often appeared to be burlesque.
Burlesque is a literary form in which a serious subject is made to seem foolish, or 
unimportant things are treated solemnly.