Telling Images

Telling Imagesinvestigates certain symbolic traditions in Geoffrey Chaucer's major poetry and their relationship to the visual culture of his time. With more than 150 illustrations, it continues an inquiry begun in the author's prize-winning study,Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales. Here, intensive readings ofTroilus and Criseyde,The Legend of Good Women, and four moreCanterbury Talesfocus once again on imagery created by narrative itselfnot on passing metaphors or similes, but on the images we create in our minds as we imagine the action of a story. Their suggestive likeness to images embedded in yet other texts, realized in illuminated manuscripts and other visual arts of the age, is shown to ground and enrich our reading of these poems.

V.A. Kolve is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at UCLA. One of America's foremost Chaucer scholars, he is the co-editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1989; Second Edition, 2005). He has served as President of the Medieval Academy of America, as President of the International New Chaucer Society, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.