Everyone knows of the Canterbury Tales, acknowledged as one of the leading texts of the English Canon. Consensus about them ends there. Amongst the most written about works of English literature, they still defy categorisation. Was Chaucer a poet of profound religious piety or a sceptic who questioned all religious and moral certainties? Do his pilgrims reflect the actual society of his day, or were they a product of an already well-established literary tradition and convention? Was he a defender of women or a misogynist, who reproduced the antifeminism characteristic of his time? Did his writings present a challenge to the dominant social outlook of late Medieval England or reinforce the status quo? This stimulating new book surveys and assesses these competing critical approaches to Chaucer's work, emphasising the need to see Chaucer in historical context; the context of the social and political concerns of his own day. Writing as a historian, Rigby brings refreshing new insights to this contested old chestnut and Chaucer, and his Tales, are revealed to us as Chaucer's contemporaries would have seen them.

Provides a rich and varied reference resource, illuminating the different contexts for Chaucer and his work.

This book examines Chaucer's life and poetry through the lens of his cultural experience. It offers a wide-ranging account of the medieval society from which his works sprang, and examines the works in detail. It considers the intellectual and philosophical contexts, and the modern reception of Chaucer in film and television.

It looks out, in a groundbreaking study, to the use of similes in other late-medieval poems."--BOOK JACKET.

The extensively revised and expanded version of the acclaimed Companion to Chaucer An essential text for both established scholars and those seeking to expand their knowledge of Chaucer studies, A New Companion to Chaucer is an authoritative and up-to-date survey of Chaucer scholarship. Rigorous yet accessible, this book helps readers to identify current debates, recognize historical and literary context, and to understand how particular concepts and theories affect the interpretation of Chaucer’s texts. Chaucer specialists from around the globe offer contributions that range from updates of long-standing scholarship on biography, language, women, and social structures, to original research in new areas such as ideology, the afterlife, patronage, and sexuality. In presenting conflicting perspectives and ideological differences, this stimulating volume encourages readers to explore additional paths of inquiry and engage in lively and informed debate. Each chapter of the Companion, organized by issues and themes, balances textual analysis and cultural context by grounding the reader in existing scholarship. Key issues from specific passages are discussed with an annotated bibliography provided for reference and further reading. Compiled with all students of Chaucer in mind, this important volume: Presents contributions from both established and emerging specialists Explores the circumstances in which Chaucer wrote, such as the political and religious issues of his time Includes numerous close readings of selected poems Provides points of entry to a wide range of approaches to Chaucer’s works Incorporates original research, fresh perspectives, and updated additions to Chaucer scholarship A New Companion to Chaucer is a valuable and enduring resource for scholars, teachers, and students of medieval literature and medieval studies, as well as the general reader interested in interpretations and historical contexts of Chaucer’s writings.

This concise companion provides a succinct introduction to Chaucer’s major works, the contexts in which he wrote, and to medieval thought more generally. Opens with a general introductory section discussing London life and politics, books and authority, manuscripts and readers. Subsequent sections focus on Chaucer’s major works – the dream visions, Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Essays highlight the key religious, political and intellectual contexts for each major work. Also covers important general topics, including: medieval literary genres; dream theory; the Church; gender and sexuality; and reading Chaucer aloud. Designed so that each contextual essay can be read alongside one of Chaucer’s major works.

This is a comprehensive critical guide to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. This new edition has been comprehensively revised in light of the latest scholarly and critical research and with a fully updated bibliography. It includes a full account of Chaucer's imaginative deployment of his sources, and an extended survey of this narrative poem's innovative combination of a range of generic identities. The chapters explain how Chaucer builds thematic significance into his poem's symmetrical structure, and the poem's distinctive variety in style and language, as well as a full commentary on the poem's concerns with love in the contexts of time and mutability and human free will. The Guide explores the poem as an extended debate about the nature and value of love, and how love was conceptualized and experienced as a form of service in quest of compassionate reward, a quasi-religious devotion, and a potentially fatal illness always in hope of cure. The subjectivities of the chief protagonists are fully analysed, as is the poem's problematic ending. Alongside discussions of theme and structure, there is also an account of what the extant manuscripts of Troilus and Criseyde may reveal about the poem's early genesis, and a unique survey of responses to Troilus from its own times to the present day. Barry Windeatt's contribution to the series is a comprehensive single-volume guide to Troilus and Criseyde, bringing together a wide range of material and providing a readable commentary on all aspects of the work. Combining the informative substance of a reference book with the coherence of a critical reading, the Guide has taken its place as the standard introduction to Troilus and Criseyde since its first publication in 1992.

The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer is an extensively revised version of the first edition, which has become a classic in the field. This new volume responds to the success of the first edition and to recent debates in Chaucer Studies. Important material has been updated, and new contributions have been commissioned to take into account recent trends in literary theory as well as in studies of Chaucer's works. New chapters cover the literary inheritance traceable in his works to French and Italian sources, his style, as well as new approaches to his work. Other topics covered include the social and literary scene in England in Chaucer's time, and comedy, pathos and romance in the Canterbury Tales. The volume now offers a useful chronology, and the bibliography has been entirely updated to provide an indispensable guide for today's student of Chaucer.

Brings 'new formalist' approaches to Chaucer, focusing on formal agency, bodies, disability, ethics, poetics, reception, and scale.

This book is an attempt to discover the origins and significance of the General Prologue-to the Canterbury Tales. The interest of such an inquiry is many-sided. On the one hand, it throws light on the question of whether `life' or 'literature' was Chaucer's model in this work, on the relationship between Chaucer's twenty-odd pilgrims and the structure of medieval society, and on the role of their `estate' in determining the elements of which Chaucer composes their portraits. On the other hand, it makes suggestions about the ways in which Chaucer convinces us of the individuality of his pilgrims, about the nature of his irony, and the kind of moral standards implicit in the Prologue. This book suggests that Chaucer is ironically substituting for the traditional moral view of social structure a vision of a world where morality becomes as specialised to the individual as his work-life.