SIGURD SLEMBE. Tr. W. M. Payne, 1888.
BLANCHARDIN AND EGLANTINE.
THE HISTORYE OF KYNGE BLANCHARDYN AND QUEEN EGLANTYNE. Impr. by Wm. Caxton, 1485. Ed. by Dr. Leon Kellner, E.E.T.S., 1889.
BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI. b. 1313, d. 1375. The most famous of the Italian novelists.
DECAMERON [1358]. The modell of Wit, Mirth, Eloquence, and Conversation. Framed in ten dayes, of an hundred curious pieces by seven Honourable Ladies and three Noble Gentlemen. Preserved to posterity by the renowned J. B.... and now Tr. in English, 1625. [Written in 1348-58. First printed in 1470. Vol. 1 only. The Edition of this translation, published in 1620, was anonymous].
THE BOKE CALLED DE JOHN BOCHAS DESCRIUINGE THE FALLE OF PRINCIS, PRINCESSIS AND OTHER NOBLES, translated into Englissh, by John Lydgate, etc., 1494.
NOVELS AND TALES. Tr. 1684.
Boccaccio directly borrowed his 'Teseide' from Statius' 'Thebaid', A.D. 70. Introduced the octave stanza. The 'Knight's Tale' and 'Troilus and Cressida' of Chaucer are from the 'Teseide' of B., as also is Shakespeare's 'Troilus and Cressida' from the 'Filostrato.' 'All's Well that Ends Well' is also from B. Chaucer borrowed very freely from him.
The 'Decameron' suggested to Chaucer his plan for the 'Canterbury Tales', and also some of the 'Tales' themselves, and its influence on the development of the English novel was enormous.
'The "Decameron" consists of a hundred stories supposed to be related in ten consecutive days, by a party of ten ladies and gentlemen, who had retreated to a charming asylum from plague-stricken Florence in the year 1348. Some of the stories are tragedies, some are comic, some idylls. B. took most of his plots from the current fiction of his time, from the popular French fabliaux, from Oriental and classical sources, from actual history, and from tradition'.