4 Italy, poetry and the Hundred Years War
Journal: Manchester University Press eBooks
Year: 2024

Italy played crucial, facilitating roles in England’s long war with France. Papal and imperial politics, commerce and finance, shipping and weapons manufacture formed a complex nexus within which English writers engaged with Italian letters. This chapter considers key encounters over two generations, two ages of Chaucer: the first that of Geoffrey, and the second of Thomas, his son. Geoffrey’s travels to Florence, Genoa and Milan in the 1370s famously led him to reappraise what poetry, in the mo