The most influential thinkers of medieval Scholasticism
Some literary critics believe that a large portion of the tale may have been written before the rest of the Canterbury Tales and that the four most contemporary figures were added at a later point. A likely dating for this hypothetical first draft of the text would be the 1370s, shortly after Chaucer returned from a trip to Italy where he was exposed to Giovanni Boccaccio's Concerning the Falls of Illustrious Men as well as other works such as the Decameron. The tragedy of Bernabò Visconti must have been written after 1385, the date of the protagonist's death. The basic structure for the tale is modeled after the Giovanni Boccaccio's Illustrious Men, while the tale of Ugolino of Pisa is retold from Dante's Inferno
