Geoffrey Chaucer Books

Chaucer's "Troilus and Creseyde" presents more formidable challenges for the modern reader than "The Canterbury Tales," making it a far better candidate for a modern translation should the goal be appreciation of Chaucer's brilliant characterization and intricate psychological analysis. This particular version retains all of the humor, subtlety, complexity of Chaucer's original text. Moreover, whereas I almost prefer prose translations of epic texts such as "The Odyssey," Chaucer's poem should be formatted as poetry. In this respect, score another point in favor of this translation which, if not immediately available, is worth waiting for.

This is an excellent source on medieval fashion, politics, life style, and even tells how the people of the medieval ages told time and wrote the date! It is a pity that it is out of print, but you could try your local library.

This Guide is just what it says, a full guide to Chaucer and his works. It contains thirty-six chapters written by thirty-six authors. It aims at providing the reader with the total sum of what we can know or think about Chaucer and his poems. The general impression we get when we read the whole book is that all possible angles have been retained and explored, all possible orientations and options have been considered. Such a tool is for students and even advanced students, who may read only a few chapters, and for scholars who will read them all. The book is devided in five sections, the first two being dedicated to the historical and literary contexts. The third section considers the various possible readings, particularly the readings of today which are specialized in the voluntarily biased points of view they develop : feminism, postmodernity, queer theory, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis and a few others. The fourth part is an exploration of how Chaucer was received from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first century, received in print, or on stage, or on the screen. Chaucer has become an unavoidable author both in English literature and the English language. Finally the fifth part gives the various study resources we can have and find in the world, particularly on the Internet. Such a heavy and rich book should satisfy everyone because of its wide range of approaches. And yet there is some kind of a flaw. The traditional reading of Chaucer was conservative and extremely locked up in a ? catholic ?, aristocratic, mysoginistic stand, perfectly well adapted to the training of a certain male elite in the English society up to the 1920s. At this time Virginia Wolf, among a few others, started looking at Chaucer with the eyes of the common reader. He was no longer read as an historically dated and linguistically characterized text but from the point of view of this common reader. This is an iconoclastic approach because it imposes onto the text a pre-digested reading determined by the sex or gender, age, culture, ideology, etc, of the readers. They do not try to read the text and find out its potential or potentials (most of which had been neglected and are still neglected), but to verify if the text enables them to project their own interests and convictions into it. If the ? old ? school had done their reading properly, unbiased by their own limited a priori interpretations, most of what these new trends are bringing up would have been considered long ago. These new approaches are nothing but a reaction to the limited approaches of before. In the old days they expurgated the text of some words and passages seen as immoral and slimy. Today they project into the text so much that we are wondering what in the text itself permits these readings and how we can in anyway see, for example, any gay side in Chaucer since our conception of gayness has nothing to do at all with the sexual practices of these distant centuries. It all sounds anachronistic and yet it is essential just to remind us that we should never satisfy ourselves with one vision, one approach, one logic. There is always somewhere a hidden side to things and an unconscious dimension of desires and impulses. All Chaucer lovers will love this book tremendously, even if some chapters make them grunt a little.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universit? Paris Dauphine, Universit? Paris I Panth?on Sorbonne

I found this book to be a wonderful aid in assisting me in my study of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Gail Ashton writes her book for the beginner who needs assistance in doing a close reading of Chaucer's work. Various passages are given close readings by Ashton. She then explains the techniques the author employs, and provides definitions and questions that the reader should use to approach the work. The book is an excellent resource for how to approach Chaucer's or any author's work.

This book is intelligently written by Laura Kendrick. She is a college English literature professor with a specialty in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbuy Tales. This book is not for those who don't plan to think about it. Her writing is clear and useful especially when you have a report on the Wife of Bath. If you love Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, you will love Kendrick's intelligent approach to the material. This book is quite a read but worth it if you are researching Chaucer.

I used this book for a lengthy paper on the representations of women in the Canterbury Tales and it really sticks in my mind. It was informative, intelligent, and easy to read. Fantastic book!

The Canterbury Tales are difficult to understand, because of the language and because of the social context. The Companion dealt very well with both of these -- So much so, that I would consider this book to be absolutely essential for Chaucer. The Tales are a bit bawdy, and the Companion did not flinch at explaining this.

For studying Chaucer, I had the following:
The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics) by Geoffrey Chaucer and Nevill Coghill
The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer by F. N. Robinson
The Canterbury Tales [UNABRIDGED] (Audio CD)-- Michael Murphy ISBN 1402548931

I have studied Medieval work quite profusely, and this is one of the most extensive and interesting works I have read regarding Chaucer. Brilliant!

I cannot believe that this brilliant book was permitted to go out of print, containing as it does not only all of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in verse, but also a generous selection of Chaucer's earlier poetry, under the perhaps unfortunate title of "Minor Poems," together with his probable masterpiece, Troilus & Criseyde, and also, especially, Donaldson's brilliant, pellucid commentary on the works. It should also be noted that the poetry is presented in an uncrowded format, in a single column across the page, rather than with two columns, and has very handy fotnotes for further ease in reading, along with, of course the standardized spelling which makes this a very easy-to-read introduction to the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer by a major scholar and critic. I hope it will soon come back into print again; it is a wonderful book.