How Selected Poems drew on The Decameron
A documented line of influence: John Dryden demonstrably engaged Giovanni Boccaccio’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio · c. 1351
MedievalThe influenced
Selected Poems
John Dryden · 1697
PoetsRelevance
7/10
On Selected Poems’s page
- Three of Dryden's Fables are lifted straight from Boccaccio — Sigismonda and Guiscardo, Theodore and Honoria, Cymon and Iphigenia — with "Boccace" credited on the title page
- Reading the Decameron tales first shows you exactly what Dryden kept, cut, and heightened in turning Italian prose into English couplets
- The seed of these poems is a 14th-century storyteller — go back to him and the borrowing is unmistakable
On The Decameron’s page
- Boccaccio's tales kept getting picked up and retold for centuries — Dryden is one of the last great translators to mine the Decameron directly
- In Fables, Ancient and Modern, he versified three of these stories — Sigismonda and Guiscardo, Theodore and Honoria, Cymon and Iphigenia — with "Boccace" named right on the title page
- See the prose original, then click through to watch a master of the English heroic couplet recast it as verse