Synopses & Reviews
The most comprehensive guide to Chaucer's work available, this volume features thirty-seven specially commissioned chapters by an international team of esteemed contributors. Offering work from both academics with long-standing reputations and newer voices in the field, it combines general essays that provide background and contextual information with detailed readings of specific Chaucerian texts. The book devotes an entire section to Chaucer's "afterlife," which considers his reputation in later periods, his influence on later writers, and his presence in modern and contemporary culture. Guides to further reading for each chapter and a chronology are also included.
About the Author
Steve Ellis is Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham. He has published widely on medieval and modern literature. Publications on Chaucer include:
Geoffrey Chaucer, Writers and their Work (1996),
Chaucer: the 'Canterbury Tales', (Longman Critical Readers, 1998) and
Chaucer At Large: the Poet in the Modern Imagination (2000).
Table of Contents
Part 1. Historical Contexts 1. Chaucer's Life, Ruth Evans
2. Society and Politics, S.H. Rigby
3. Nationhood, Ardis Butterfield
4. London, C. David Benson
5. Religion, Jim Rhodes
6. Chivalry, Mark Sherman
7. Literacy and Literary Production, Stephen Penn
8.