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'.
For other copyings from B. it may be enough to mention Lydgate's 'Falls of Princes' and the 'Mirror for Magistrates' (1559) based on the 'De Casibus Illustrium Virorum' of the Italian.
=BODIN, JEAN.= _b._ 1530, _d._ 1596. =French representative and political writer.=
THE SIX BOOKES OF A COMMONWEALE, OUT OF THE FRENCH AND LATINE COPIES. Done into English by Richard Knolles, 1606.
This work was once read at our universities.
=BOETHIUS.= _b._ 470, _d._ 525. =Roman philosopher and statesman.=
THE BOKE OF CONSOLACION OF PHILOSOPHIE. _Tr._ by Geoffrey Chaucer. [1490]. Printed by Caxton.
[This work was first translated by King Alfred into Anglo-Saxon.]
'Boethius stood to the Dark Ages for the exemplar of the philosopher. His place in mediaeval reading was very high, and may be gauged from the fact that in England Alfred the Great translated his "Consolations" into Anglo-Saxon. To Chaucer, as to all the mediaeval world, "Boece" was part of the staple library'.
=BOIARDO, MATTIO MARIA.= _b._ 1434, _d._ 1494. =Italian poet.=
ORLANDO INNAMORATO. [Charlemagne Romances]. The three first Bookes done into English Heroical Verse (1480). _Tr._ by R(obert) T(ofte). 1598.
Milton was influenced by B. in his 'Paradise Regained'.
'Orlando Innamorato' was left unfinished by B., and was afterwards finished by Ariosto under the title of 'Orlando Furioso'.
=BOILEAU= (_or_, =BOILEAU DESPRÉAUX=) =NICOLAS= _b._ 1636, _d._ 1711. =French poet and satirist.=
THE ART OF POETRY (1674). [In verse.] _Tr._ 1683.
A DISCOURSE OF SATIRES ARRAIGNING PERSONS BY NAME. _Tr._ 1730.
LUTRIN. A mock heroic poem. _Tr._ by N. O. 1682.