"What was the influence of the Decameron on the genesis and shape of the Canterbury Tales? In this collection, leading scholars of Chaucer and Boccaccio offer original, provocative answers to this question in light of recurring critical resistance to the idea of the Decameron as a text for Chaucer.

That resistance, informed by a model of literary influence grounded on the idea of interruption, would keep the Canterbury Tales away from the Decameron, though not the rest of Chaucer from other works by Boccaccio. In the end, of course, that resistance tells us more about Chaucer's reception since the fifteenth century than about Chaucer himself or his sources."--BOOK JACKET.