Chaucer Bibliographies – serie

This volume, the work of a group of Chaucerians from the University of Adelaide, is the latest in the University of Toronto Press's Chaucer Bibliography series, a series which aims to provide annotated bibliographies for all of Chaucer's works. It summarizes twentieth-century commentary on the three fabliaux of Fragment 1 of The Canterbury Tales: the Miller's, the Reeve's, and the Cook's tales. There are separate sections for editions, translations and modernizations, sources and analogues, lexicographical and linguistic studies, for the tales considered as a group and for each tale considered separately. Annotations are arranged chronologically within each section, facilitating a quick grasp of the changing critical attitudes towards these tales, and showing how earlier neglect (resulting from embarrassment at the naughtiness of their subject matter) has given way, in the second half of the twentieth century, to universal admiration for their astonishing artistry. The general introduction and the separate section introductions comment on and evaluate the varying critical approaches. The detailed index facilitates research on particular characters, themes, or approaches, as well as on the work of individual commentators.

The General Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is one of the most enduring works of English literature. Beloved by scholars, teachers, students, and general readers, it has been given a great many different interpretations. This annotated, international bibliography of twentieth-century criticism on the Prologue is an essential reference guide. It includes books, journal articles, and dissertations, and a descriptive list of twentieth-century editions; it is the most complete inventory of modern criticism on the Prologue. The extensive annotations provide uniquely convenient access to many publications that are otherwise difficult to obtain.In her introduction, Caroline Eckhardt provides a careful and comprehensive overview of modern trends in criticism, trends which can be traced through the bibliography. At the beginning of the century, for example, Chaucer's Prologue was often described as a 'portrait gallery' and praised for its realism - social, psychological, and dramatic. Later in the century came emphases on irony, rhetoric, Freudian interpretations, elaborate allegories, and stylistic complexities. At present, the Prologue is often interpreted as a system of signs and symbols in which realism, if it exists at all, serves purposes beyond itself. The smiling and serene poet of the earlier period has been replaced by a self-conscious ironist, sometimes with a split personality. The portrait gallery of the beginning of the century is still there, though the spectator who walks along it tends to see something less fixed textually (the Prologue is now commonly discussed as work-in-progress) and more complicated structurally, generically, and thematically. It is the spectator, of course, who has changed.

The Pardoner's Tale is unique among the Canterbury Tales in that it showcases a character who also makes several other appearances throughout the Tales. One of only three pilgrims to be given a full-length prologue by Chaucer, the Pardoner takes on a dramatic force unequaled among the pilgrims. A research tool for specialist and graduate student alike, this volume on Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale offers an exhaustive collection of material from the period 1900 to 1995, abstracting and cross-referencing book-length and chapter-length studies, sections of books and chapters, articles, portions of articles, notes, extensive commentary in editions, and representative study guides. There are separate sections for editions and translations; bibliographies, indexes, studies of the manuscript, and textual studies; sources, analogues, and influences for the Pardoner's Prologue and Tale; the Pardoner portrait in the General Prologue; studies of the Pardoner's interruption of the Wife of Bath, the wordes of the Hoost to the Phisicien and the Pardoner; the Pardoner's Prologue; and The Pardoner's Tale.The Chaucer Bibliographies are designed to encompass a complete listing and assessment of scholarship and criticism on the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, his life, times, and historical context.

The latest volume in the Chaucer Bibliographies series, meticulously assembled by Kenneth Bleeth, is the most comprehensive record of scholarship on Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, Franklin’s Tale, and Physician’s Tale. The bibliography treats each tale as a unit, enables the reader to track the many connections between the Squire's　and Franklin's Tales, and records the recent resurgence of interest in the Physician's Tale. Each bibliographical entry includes an annotation summarizing the content or key argument of the publication. Each of the three chapters includes a section on the work's sources, analogues, and later influence, and is prefaced by an essay that surveys the critical reception of the work. Containing almost two thousand entries, this volume covers publications both major and minor from 1900 to 2005.