Oxford Guides to Chaucer

by Helen Cooper

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.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Medieval, Literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, English Literature, Poetry

450 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge, and fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Reviews

[Thomas Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I spent over three decades teaching "The Canterbury Tales," and for the last fifteen years, I required Cooper's Oxford Guide and Lillian Bisson's "Chaucer and the Late Medieval World" as indispensable supplements to the Riverside Chaucer. Cooper's concise surveys of all of the relevant contexts of each of the poems--manuscript traditions, sources, genre, rhetoric, form, relationship to the other poems, etc.--enrich beyond measure our understanding and appreciation of the oft-called Father of English Poetry. This is a perfect example of practical scholarship and criticism, well written, sensible, and compelling.

[briisreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book saved my life in my Chaucer course during Zoom University where you have to do a lot of teaching yourself!

[David Withun · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

like 90210 - but based in the 13th century