Oxford Guides to Chaucer – serie

This third volume in the highly successful Oxford Guides to Chaucer series offers a much needed introduction to Chaucer's Shorter Poems.General chapters on the social and cultural contexts of the Shorter Poems are supplemented by a guide to the genre they mostly exemplify - the love-vision form. The volume then provides individual chapters on the Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Parliament of Fowls, the Legend of Good Women, and the short poems; there is also an extensive appendix on Chaucher's language. The views of critics who wrote over fifty years ago are interwoven with those of contemporary scholars; traditional work on dates and sources is combined with up-to-date theoretical approaches; established methods in literary history sit alongside today's historicist procedures; and medieval hermeneutics are discssed in the light of those of the modern era. Introducing Chaucer, the volume maintains, must entail the presentation of the diverse methods of reading Chaucer.Lively, provocative, and comprehensive, Chaucer's Shorter Poems will at last make accessible a crucial but often neglected part of Chaucer's oeuvre.

The three Oxford Guides to Chaucer are written by scholars of international repute, with the purpose of summarizing what is known about his work and offering interpretations based on recent advances in both historical knowledge and theoretical understanding.Barry Windeatt's contribution to the series offers students the most comprehensive introduction to Troilus and Criseyde yet produced. It includes the fullest and most convenient account of Chjauser's use of sources, the first exteded analysis of the poem's generic originality, and an invaluable commentary on all aspects of the poem that is Chaucer's most ambitious single achievement - its structure, themes, characterization, and style. It also contains a survey of literary responses to Troilus in the three centuries following Chaucer's death. 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.

The three Oxford Guides to Chaucer are written by scholars of international repute, with the purpose of summarizing what is known about his works and offering interpretations based on recent advances in both historical knowledge and theoretical understanding. They will provide readers at every level with new interpretations and ideas, with essential and up-to-date information on such matters as dating and sources and with analyses of thematic issues, structure, style rhetoric and generic relations brought right up-to-date for this second paperback edition. Helen Cooper's volume on The Canterbury Tales tackles these matters both for the whole work and for each individual Tale. It also includes a survey of literary responses to the Tales over the two centuries following Chaucer's death. The book is perhaps the most comprehensive single-volume guide to the Tales yet produced, bringing together a wide range of disparate material and providing a readable commentry on all aspects of the work. It combines the comprehensive coverage of a reference book with the coherence of a critical account and since its first publication in 1989, has established itself as a standard work on the Tales.

Recognised on its first appearance as the most comprehensive single-volume guide to The Canterbury Tales yet produced, this third edition brings the Tales up to date in relation both to recent criticism and to the changing expectations of modern readers. The Guide provide tale-by-tale information on textual variations and sources, together with a readable commentary on thematic issues, structure, style, generic affiliations, and the contribution of each tale to the work as a whole. It concludes with a survey of the many imitations of the tales down to the early seventeenth century. This new edition also takes account of the latest scholarship, theory, and criticism and new interpretations of the tales, including such matters as gender identity, consent, and racial and religious difference.The book is the most comprehensive single-volume guide to the Tales yet produced, bringing together a wide range of disparate material and providing a readable commentary on all aspects of the work. It combines the comprehensive coverage of a reference book with the clarity and coherence of a critical account. Since its first publication in 1989, the Guide has established itself as an indispensable aid for any reader looking to develop their understanding of The Canterbury Tales.

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.

Recognised on its first appearance as the most comprehensive single-volume guide to The Canterbury Tales yet produced, this third edition brings the Tales up to date in relation both to recent criticism and to the changing expectations of modern readers. The Guide provide tale-by-tale information on textual variations and sources, together with a readable commentary on thematic issues, structure, style, generic affiliations, and the contribution of each tale to the work as a whole. It concludes with a survey of the many imitations of the tales down to the early seventeenth century. This new edition also takes account of the latest scholarship, theory, and criticism and new interpretations of the tales, including such matters as gender identity, consent, and racial and religious difference.The book is the most comprehensive single-volume guide to the Tales yet produced, bringing together a wide range of disparate material and providing a readable commentary on all aspects of the work. It combines the comprehensive coverage of a reference book with the clarity and coherence of a critical account. Since its first publication in 1989, the Guide has established itself as an indispensable aid for any reader looking to develop their understanding of The Canterbury Tales.