Comparison of 'The Decameron' and 'The Canterbury Tales'

Despite huge differences in plot and subject matter, there are many striking similarities between “The Canterbury Tales” and “The Decameron” by Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio respectively. Both of these 14^th century stories, The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio, and “The Canterbury Tales”, by Geoffrey Chaucer, are strikingly similar in many ways, leading the reader to notice a significant amount of “borrowing” from some tales of Boccaccio by Chaucer in select Canterbury Tales.   



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• The first set of tales to be analyzed are Boccaccio’s “The Story of Patient Griselda,” from Day Ten, Tale Ten in “The Decameron”, and from “The Canterbury Tales” Chaucer’s “The Clerk’s Tale.” There is very little to distinguish these stories from one another. Indeed the source of inspiration for both men appears to have been a bard of a preceding generation, Petrarch.
• The goal of both stories in “The Decameron” and “Canterbury Tales” is to portray a female figure, named Griselda, who is able to bear tremendous and undeserved suffering caused by her partner as a test of her love and devotion, and this despite the fact that both women in the tales have been nothing but faithful, loving, and attentive.
• Another set of stories worth comparing is that of Boccaccio’s tale from Day Two, Tale Ten and Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale.” Both tales reveal schemes of love and sex that play on significant age differences, as well as more subtle differences between social classes. In both stories, a younger woman married to an older man is the subject of the tale. The main difference between the two tales is that in Chaucer’ story, a young scholar wishes to bed the young woman, while in Boccaccio’s tale it is the younger woman who seeks a lover who is more compatible with her based on age.
• At the same time, both Boccaccio’s Day Two, Tale Ten and Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale” provide a means for the authors to reflect on distinctions between morality and immorality. While both authors provoke thought about issues of love, marriage, and sex through humorous repartee, they are far from advocating promiscuity or infidelity. While Chaucer does not encourage infidelity overtly in the didactic way that Boccaccio does, he is less judgmental about it. In “The Miller’s Tale,” the narrator reveals his own opinion about the events that will be told to the pilgrims when he says that he himself is married but cares not whether his wife sleeps with another man, as it is not his business. There is a sort of moral neutrality that this statement sets up, and which is reinforced with the conclusion of the Miller’s  tale. While Nicholas and Alisoun have succeeded in tricking John the carpenter and spending the night together, everyone is ultimately embarrassed and shamed, or even physically hurt, because of their collective lack of good judgment.