The following includes some basic works that will be helpful. Note that the best bibliography for Boccaccio's Decameron is in the Introduzione to Vittore Branca's 2-volume edition.

On Boccaccio (all of the following on short-term loan in the library):

Guido Almansi, The Writer as Liar : Narrative Technique in the 'Decameron' (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975) – Warwick Library PQ 4290.A5

Lucia Battaglia Ricci, Ragionare nel giardino : Boccaccio e i cicli pittorici del Trionfo della morte (Rome: Salerno ed. 2000) – Warwick Library PQ 4293.A2

Vittore Branca, Boccaccio visualizzato: narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1999) – Warwick Libr. PQ 4282.B6 (oversize)

Francesco Bruni, Boccaccio: l'invenzione della letteratura mezzana (Bologna: il Mulino, 1990) – Warwick Library PQ 4286.B7

Corradina Caporello-Szykman, The Boccaccian Novella : Creation and Waning of a Genre (New York: P. Lang, 1990) – Warwick Library PQ 4287.C2

Pier Massimo Forni, Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio's Decameron (Philadelphia: UPenn UP, 1996) – Warwick Library PQ 4295.F6

John C. Hirsh, Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales: A Short Introduction (Malden: Blackwell, 2003) – Warwick Library PR 1874.H4

Lucia Marino, The Decameron Cornice: Allusion, Allegory, and Iconology (Ravenna: Longo, 1979) – Warwick Library PQ 4287.M2

Giuseppe Mazzotta, The World at Play in Boccaccio's Decameron (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986) – Warwick Library PQ 4287.M2

Cormac O. Cuilleanáin, Religion and the Clergy in Boccaccio's Decameron (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984) – Warwick Library PQ 4293.P4

Michelangelo Picone (ed.), Introduzione al Decameron (Florence: Cesati, 2004) – Warwick Library PQ 4287.I6

Jill M. Ricketts, Visualizing Boccaccio: Studies on Illustrations of 'The Decameron', from Giotto to Pasolini (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997) – Warwick PQ 4287.R4

On Chaucer:

Piero Boitani and Jill Mann (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003) – N.B. available online via the Library website

Christopher Cannon, ‘The Lives of Geoffrey Chaucer’. In Lerer 2006: 31-54.

Steve Ellis (ed.). Chaucer: An Oxford Guide (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005). Warwick: PR 1924.E5 (also on 3-day loan)

Ruth Evans, ‘Chaucer’s Life’. In Ellis 2005: 9-25.

Seth Lerer (ed.). The Yale Companion to Chaucer (Binghamton: Yale UP, 2006). Warwick Library PR1905.Y35 (also on 3-day loan)

______. ‘The Canterbury Tales’. In Lerer 2006: 243-294.

Donka Minkova, ‘Chaucer’s Language: Pronunciation, Morphology, Metre’. In Ellis 2005: 130-157.

Stephen Penn, in Ellis 2005: 113-129.

See also bibliography at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/first/en121/bibliography/

On Boccaccio and Chaucer:

R. Edwards, Chaucer and Boccaccio: Antiquity and Modernity (Gordonsville: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Warwick Library electronic access

N.S. Thompson, Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) – Warwick Library PR 1874.T4 (also on 3-day loan)