The Canterbury Tales: Seventeen Tales and the General Prologue: A Norton Critical Edition

by Geoffrey Chaucer, V.A. Kolve (Editor), Glending Olson (Editor)

- The medieval masterpiece's most popular tales, including--new to the Third Edition--The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale and The Second Nun's Prologue and Tale.
- Extensive marginal glosses, explanatory footnotes, a preface, and a guide to Chaucer's language by V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson.
- Sources and analogues arranged by tale.
- Twelve critical essays, seven of them new to the Third Edition.
- A Chronology, a Short Glossary, and a Selected Bibliography.

About the Series

Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format--annotated text, contexts, and criticism--helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, School, Literature, Read For School

695 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

About the author

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Among Chaucer's many other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage" (i.e., the first one capable of finding poetic matter in English). Almost two thousand English words are first attested to in Chaucerian manuscripts. As scholar Bruce Holsinger has argued, charting Chaucer's life and work comes with many challenges related to the "difficult disjunction between the written record of his public and private life and the literary corpus he left behind". His recorded works and his life show many personas that are "ironic, mysterious, elusive [or] cagey" in nature, ever-changing with new discoveries.

Reviews

[marie]

ok technically i did not read all of this but after spending an entire semester reading/discussing a majority of the tales i feel like i deserve to count this as a read 😭

[Kayleigh Baetens · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a legend. Reding this boke in Middle English is a trewe experience!

[niamh · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’ve never disliked reading anything as much as i disliked reading the clerk’s tale. i’m sure in a year or two i’ll change my mind about the text as a whole but today i say goodbye and good riddance

[Joshua Lister · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful poetry, great tales, and some strange ones.

[Melina]

thanks i hate it

[Christy George · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was *really* not in the right mindset for this right now in my life/online learning is completely the wrong arena for this and it was a struggle. But at least now I can say that I read it, right?

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

*only read the general prologue and seven tales

[Meri Monfort]

dur

[Shaina Olbrys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic

[Anna Snader]

Plenty of “sentence,” “solace,” and weirdness.

[Olga Tsygankova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Шо сказать. I have tales rede. I hadde myn plesaunce. Easy was it not.

[Bill Homan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read classic.