Geoffrey Chaucer: The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231121865 ISBN 13: 9780231121866

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Taught in schools and universities around the world, and the constant subject of books, essays, and articles down the years, The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales has long been central to the English literary canon. Jodi-Anne George provides a detailed introduction to the most important critical debates surrounding The General Prologue. The extracts and essays included here date from early as 1368, when Eustace Deschamps paid the first recorded tribute to Chaucerīs genius, and move chronologically through to the late 1990s. The selections address the opinions of early editors of Chaucer as well as the continuing interest in the poet by other writers throughout the ages. Sociological, gender-based, historical, and structural readings of The Prologue are also represented.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is probably the most widely read of Chaucer's works. Taught in schools and universities around the world, and the constant subject of academic books, essays and articles down the years, its centrality to the English literary canon has never been in dispute. The Prologue offers a lively and often satiric introduction to Chaucer's diverse group of pilgrims as they set out on the road to Canterbury, and raises issues of class, gender and power relations that are as relevant today as they were in the late fourteenth century.

In this Readers' Guide, J.-A. George provides a detailed introduction to the most important critical debates surrounding The General Prologue. The extracts and essays included here date from as early as 1368, when Eustace Deschamps paid the first recorded tribute to Chaucer's genius, and move chronologically through to the late 1990s. This carefully chosen selection of secondary sources addresses the opinions of early editors of Chaucer, and the continuing interest in the poet by other writers throughout the ages, as well as sociological, gender-based, historical and structural readings of The Prologue. This Guide is an invaluable sourcebook for the study of one of the most enduring texts of the Middle Ages.

About the Author

Jodi-Anne George teaches at the University of Dundee.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0231121865
• ISBN 13: 9780231121866
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: George Jodi-Anne