The Reeve's Tale & Prior Text

In Chaucer's "Steward's Tale", also known as the "Reeve's Tale", the main theme is "you get what you give". There's considerably more to it than that, however, if you read some of the references below. They mention themes of "falling from Grace" and "subversion of justice" and how they relate to other tales, but what interests me the most is how this tale relates to prior text.

As I read the "Steward's Tale", I recognized its resemblance to the one and only Decamron tale I happened to have read. I had heard the Canterbury Tales were derived from the Decameron, but this was the first time I noticed it for myself. That was quite a moment.

Boccaccio's IX.6 of the Decameron, which preceded The Canterbury Tales by about 1/2 a century, has an identical plot but is mainly a sex comedy. Chaucer borrowed the plot and added literary elements that ingeniously tie in with the rest of the tales.

What's even more interesting is that Boccaccio, too, borrowed his plot. His version is based on "Gombert et les deus clers" ("Gombert and the two clerks"), a French fabliau (medieval sex comedy) by Jean Bodel 1165-1210--more than a hundred years earlier! Fabliaux were apparently quite popular throughout the Middle Ages.

And what's astounding to me, as an American who thinks "historical" means "Victorian", is how raunchy these old stories are. How did they ever survive the Victorian days, as literature no less?


References:
Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. ca. 1390. Trans. Burton Raffel. Modern Library. 2008.
Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems. ca. 1390. Ed. D. Lang Purves. Kindle Edition. Donal O'Danachair.
Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. 1353. Trans. G. H. McWilliam. Penguin Classics. 1972, 1995.
Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. 1353. Trans. John Payne. 1886. Kindle Edition. Walter J. Black, Inc. 2009.
GradeSaver. "The Canterbury Tales Study Guide & Literature Essays". GradeSaver. 1999-2011. web 2011.
Jean Bodel. "Gombert and the Two Clerks". 1190-1194. Ed. Larry Benson, Theodore Andersson. The Literary Context of Chaucer's Fabliaux. 1971. web 2011.
Thomas C. Foster. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Harper. 2003.
"Pedagogy". Decameron Web. Brown Univ. 1994-2010. web 2011.
"Fabliau". Wikipedia. web 2011.
"Jean Bodel". Wikipedia. web 2011.