No other work prior to Chaucer's is known to have set a collection of tales within the framework of pilgrims on a pilgrimage. It is obvious, however, that Chaucer borrowed portions, sometimes very large portions, of his stories from earlier stories, and that his work was influenced by the general state of the literary world in which he lived. Storytelling was the main entertainment in England at the time, and storytelling contests had been around for hundreds of years. In 14th-century England, the English Pui was a group with an appointed leader who would judge the songs of the group. The winner received a crown and, as with the winner of The Canterbury Tales, a free dinner. It was common for pilgrims on a pilgrimage to have a chosen "master of ceremonies" to guide them and organise the journey.[18] Harold Bloom suggests that the structure is mostly original, but inspired by the "pilgrim" figures of Dante and Virgil in The Divine Comedy.[19] New research suggests that the General Prologue, in which the innkeeper and host Harry Bailey introduces each pilgrim, is a pastiche of the historical Harry Bailey's surviving 1381 poll-tax account of Southwark's inhabitants.[20]
The Canterbury Tales contains more parallels to the Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio, than any other work. Like the Tales, the Decameron features a frame tale in which several different narrators tell a series of stories. In the Decameron, the characters have fled to the countryside to escape the Black Death. It ends with an apology by Boccaccio, much like Chaucer's Retraction to the Tales. A quarter of the tales in The Canterbury Tales parallel a tale in the Decameron, although most of them have closer parallels in other stories. Some scholars thus find it unlikely that Chaucer had a copy of the work on hand, surmising instead that he may have merely read the Decameron at some point.[21] Chaucer may have read the Decameron during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372. Chaucer used a wide variety of sources, but some, in particular, were used frequently over several tales, among them the Bible, Classical poetry by Ovid, and the works of contemporary Italian writers Petrarch and Dante. Chaucer was the first author to use the work of these last two. Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy appears in several tales, as do the works of John Gower, a friend of Chaucer's. Chaucer also seems to have borrowed from numerous religious encyclopaedias and liturgical writings, such as John Bromyard's Summa praedicantium, a preacher's handbook, and Jerome's Adversus Jovinianum.[22] Many scholars say there is a good possibility Chaucer met Petrarch or Boccaccio.[23][24][25][26][27]
