Geoffrey Chaucer

This guide has a broad focus but one very clear aim: to equip you with all the knowledge you need to make your own new readings of Geoffery Chaucer's work. This comprehensive, user-friendly guide provides information on Chaucer's life, contexts and works, also outlining major critical views and interpretations from initial publication to the present.

Series editors' preface

ix

Acknowledgements

xi

Abbreviations and referencing

xiii

Introduction

1

(2)

Part I LIFE AND CONTEXTS

3

(42)

Chaucer's biography

5

(24)

Establishing dates

5

(2)

Family background and early years

7

(1)

Education

8

(2)

The Ulster household

10

(3)

Royal service and connections with John of Gaunt

13

(2)

Travels to Italy

15

(2)

The case of Cecily Champaign

17

(1)

Controller of Customs and the London years

18

(3)

The Peasants' Revolt and the move to Kent

21

(1)

Time in Kent

22

(1)

Clerk of the King's Works

23

(3)

The return to London: the last years

26

(3)

Social, literary and historical contexts

29

(16)

War and chivalry

29

(1)

Chivalry

30

(2)

Courtly love and marriage

32

(1)

Marriage and remarriage

33

(1)

Death, plague and revolt

34

(1)

Church as institution

35

(2)

Religion and philosophy

37

(2)

Literary contexts

39

(6)

Part II WORK

45

(106)

Short verse

47

(14)

Three early short poems

48

(3)

Other complaints

51

(4)

Boethian ballades and envoys

55

(6)

The dream poems

61

(22)

The Romaunt of the Rose

62

(3)

The Book of the Duchess

65

(6)

The House of Fame

71

(6)

The Parliament of Fowls

77

(4)

Prologue to The Legend of Good Women

81

(2)

Non-fiction prose

83

(6)

Boece

83

(3)

A Treatise on the Astrolabe

86

(2)

The Equatorie of Planetis

88

(1)

Troilus and Criseyde

89

(11)

Collections of Tales: The Legend of Good Women

100

(6)

The Legend of Good Women

102

(1)

The pretext for writing the Legend

102

(4)

Collections of Tales: The Canterbury Tales

106

(45)

The `whole' collection: manuscripts, texts and dates

106

(1)

The General Prologue

107

(3)

The Knight's Tale

110

(3)

The Miller's Tale

113

(2)

The Reeve's Tale

115

(2)

The Cook's Tale

117

(1)

The Man of Law's Tale

118

(2)

The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

120

(3)

The Friar's Tale

123

(2)

The Summoner's Tale

125

(1)

The Clerk's Tale

126

(2)

The Merchant's Tale

128

(1)

The Squire's Tale

129

(1)

The Franklin's Tale

130

(2)

The Physician's Tale

132

(1)

The Pardoner's Tale

133

(2)

The Shipman's Tale

135

(1)

The Prioress's Tale

136

(2)

The Tales of Sir Thopas and Melibee

138

(2)

The Monk's Tale

140

(1)

The Nun's Priest's Tale

141

(1)

The Second Nun's Tale

142

(2)

The Canon's Yeoman's Tale

144

(2)

The Manciple's Tale

146

(2)

The Parson's Tale

148

(1)

The Retraction

149

(2)

Part III CRITICISM

151

(32)

Biography

156

(1)

Text, manuscripts, editing

157

(4)

Chaucer's language

161

(1)

Sources, literary background, rhetoric and poetics

162

(3)

Narrators, irony and satire

165

(4)

Historicism, old and new

169

(3)

Politics and ideology

172

(2)

Feminism and gender

174

(5)

Imitation, modernisation, allusion

179

(4)

Chronology

183

(4)

Bibliography

187

(10)

Index

197

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Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials