Note 480 — from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 5)
Reading edition
This meeting, concerning which numerous discussions have taken place, seems to have most probably happened. "I wol," says the clerk of Oxford in the "Canterbury Tales,"
I wol yow telle a tale which that I Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk ... He is now deed and nayled in his cheste ... Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poet.
Such a circumstantial reference is of a most unusual sort; in most cases, following the example of his contemporaries, Chaucer simply says that he imitates "a book," or sometimes he refers to his models by a wrong or fancy name, such being the case with Boccaccio, whom he calls "Lollius," a name which, however, does duty also with him, at another place, for Petrarch. But on this occasion it seems as if the poet meant to preserve the memory of personal intercourse. We know besides that at that date Chaucer was not without notoriety as a poet on the Continent (Des Champs' praise is a proof of it), and that at the time when he came to Italy Petrarch was at Arqua, near Padua, where he was precisely busy with his Latin translation of Boccaccio's story of Griselda.