How The Canterbury Tales drew on The Divine Comedy
A documented line of influence: Geoffrey Chaucer demonstrably engaged Dante Alighieri’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri · 1320
MedievalThe influenced
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer · c. 1400
MedievalRelevance
8/10
On The Canterbury Tales’s page
- The Tales are steeped in Dante — sometimes in homage, sometimes in mischief
- Chaucer retells Ugolino from Inferno XXXIII in the Monk's Tale and names "Dant" outright, the rare case of one canonical poet citing another by name
- Read the Commedia first and you'll catch what Chaucer is doing: borrowing Dante's gravity for the Monk, then deflating his cosmic machinery in the House of Fame
On The Divine Comedy’s page
- Chaucer read his Dante closely — and named him for it
- The Monk's Tale lifts the starving Ugolino straight out of Inferno XXXIII, crediting "the grete poete of Ytaille / That highte Dant"; Dante surfaces again in the Wife of Bath's and Friar's Tales
- The House of Fame goes further, parodying the Commedia's very architecture — the surest sign a poet has absorbed a book is that he can play with it