Oxford Guides to Chaucer

By Helen Cooper

Book Overview

Written by a group of internationally renowned scholars, the Oxford Guides to Chaucer offer complete summaries of all that is known about Chaucer's work and include fresh interpretations based on recent advances in both historical knowledge and theoretical understanding. Providing essential and up-to-date information on dating and sources, and original analyses of thematic issues, structure, style, rhetoric, and generic relations, the Guides will inspire readers to find new ideas and meaning in Chaucer's works.
This premier volume, easily the most comprehensive single-volume guide to The Canterbury Tales available, brings together a wide range of disparate material, including useful commentary on all aspects of the work. Sure to establish itself as the standard guide to Chaucer's Tales, the book throws new light on the work as a whole, critically discusses each individual tale, and provides a survey of literary responses to the Tales over the two centuries following Chaucer's death.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019811978X
• ISBN13: 9780198119784
• Release Date: July 1991
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 450 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A Classic

This and Elaine Tuttle Hansen's _Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender_ are, I think, the two single best books of Chaucerian criticism out there. This book provides everything you need to know about the CT: the sources and influences of the Canterbury Tales, the themes and issues for each teller and his/her tale, and the dominant interpretations out there. Plus there's the Cooper-type insight into the tales you just come to expect from her work. This one's a classic.