Since its first publication in 1989, Helen Cooper's guide to The Canterbury Tales has established itself as the standard work on the poem. This second edition continues to offer the most comprehensive scrutiny of the Tales both as a whole and individually. In addition, Cooper incorporates the most significant recent scholarship and criticism, reflecting current research in the areas of Chaucer's historical and social context and developments in the interpretation of Chaucer's presentation of women.
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.