Whilst Chaucer and Petrarch may not have met in life, they do in death. John Lydgate's praise of Chaucer in poems such as The Floure of Curtesye transposes the Clerk's encomium to Petrarch:

In the Life of Our Lady, Lydgate not only echoes Chaucer's praise of Petrarch but also notes the importance of translation to the literary polysystem:

That Lydgate had the Clerk's prologue in mind may be surmised from the fact that, just a couple of lines earlier, he had referred to ‘the Retorykes swete| Of petrak Fraunces that couthe so endite’ (II. 623–4). Interestingly, the two passages mark a distinction between interlingual and intralingual translation. Chaucer's role as translator of the Italian avant-garde is lauded on the one hand; on the other, later poets ‘may assay for to countrefete | His gaye style, but it wyl not be’. Lydgate accords Chaucer the same status as Petrarch had achieved in Italy, the reference to ‘the laurer grene’ rendering him England's ‘lauriat poete’ (IV. 31).

Yet prior to posthumous reputation, in their literary attempts to make a good end in accordance with the ars moriendi, both Chaucer and Petrarch occupy the same impulse: