The tale of Griselda was bound from the very beginning to elicit a strong response from its audience, both real and fictitious. For it recounts Griselda's steadfast resolution to keep the oath of obedience given to her husband and lord, her self-abnegation, the meek surrender of her children (reminiscent of the Virgin Mary's sacrifice), and the stoic, Job-like endurance with which she faces her husband's bestial trials. Griselda began her journey across European literatures in Boccaccio's Decameron (c. 1353), in its final narrative – the tenth tale of the tenth day. The ladies in the patrician company that forms Boccaccio's fictional audience animatedly discuss her story ‘at length, some drawn one way and some another, some blaming an action which some others praised’. That such debates might have their counterparts in real life is attested by the anonymous conduct book intended for a young man's wife: Le Ménagier de Paris (1393). Here, the husband presents the Griselda story to his wife not because she might emulate Griselda's superhuman patience and obedience; rather he wishes to make her acquainted with the story so that she herself could take part in the public debate which the tale has engendered. Two other, this time original, responses to the tale are recorded in one of Petrarch's letters. One of the poet's friends, who had been given Petrarch’s own version of the tale (1374) to read, was moved by Griselda's ordeals to such an extent that he was quite unable to finish the story. In contrast, the response of the other friend of Petrarch's was not so much emotional as governed by reason, giving way to disbelief that such a woman could ever have existed.

Similarly, Chaucer in the Clerk's Tale represents Griselda as someone who lived a long time ago and whose equal it is impossible to find (ClT 1177–82).