The Norton Chaucer

by Geoffrey Chaucer, David A. Lawton (Contributor), Jennifer Arch (Contributor)

A comprehensive new edition, drawing on E.T. Donaldson's Chaucer's poetry: an anthology for the modern reader.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, School

1197 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2019

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

[mims ₊ ⊹]

okayyyy yes medieval lit class

[Sarah McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

First time reading the complete collection of tales in Middle English. This edition has great footnotes, helpful introductions, and a substantial glossary.

[Debby Tiner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for college. Chaucer wasn’t exactly everything I expected. Took a while to get into, but not bad. My favorite work was Parliament of Fowls.

[Dalimar · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content of this book is excellent, well presented, quite readable and enjoyable. The book on the other hand, no so excellent. The book is printed on MD/Tomoe River-like thin paper, not quite as thin as India Paper (i.e. Bible paper) but very close. The text is crisp, clear and easy to read with minimal ghosting. The case is fabric bound boards in a blue clath with a glossy printed dust jacket. This all sounds good until you look at the text block itself - it is Perfect Bound, i.e. the spine and pages are glued not sewn like in a Smyth-Sewn binding. This is disappointing for 2 reasons; 1) wear and use will destroy this style binding in time. 2) Perfect bound (glued) books suffer from bindings that harden, dry out and crack with age. Thus this book is not archival. For a reference scholarly work, meant to be collected into personal and public libraries it should be better constructed. This isn't a read once and set aside kind of book. You also don't read this kind of title cover to cover in a linear fashion (although you could) this is a title meant to be flipped through, accessed when needed and generally heavily used. I am afraid this sort of binding will not stand up to any kind of heavy use or the abuse most high school or college students subject their textbooks to.

I also could not register the book or get the eBook and online resources unlocked - keeps giving an error and site states student access not set-up.

[Reagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were definitely portions of the Canterbury Tales that I enjoyed more than others. Overall, it wasn't a collection I personally enjoyed much. I loved my class (mostly because my professor is a genius) but Chaucer's work isn't something I'm particularly interested in. Part of this could be because I don't know much about this specific era, and that lots of Chaucer's intelligent metaphors went way over my head. I found myself enjoying the stories much more after having class discussion, when my professor would explain the metaphors and give context that helped significantly.

That said, my favorite Tales were the Knight's and the Woman of Bath's. I liked the Knight's tale because the genre/time period were very interesting to me, and I loved the way Chaucer wrote the Knight's voice/nostalgia. I also really liked the Woman of Bath's Tale. Even though it's super sexist, that's actually why I liked it - it generated great class discussion, gave me lots to think about on my own, and was just generally really interesting to read. Goes to show that something with a gross moral message can still be of value in some way.

Anyway, I think the gist of this review is that I understand why it's taught in college and why the collection is so important to the history of literature, but it just personally wasn't my cup of tea!

[Adriana Gogioiu]

I’m very happy that I had the Norton Chaucer for my first time reading Chaucer’s works!

It managed to retain the sounds and rhythms and words while still making it readable for a first-timer like me. The lesson on how to read and pronounce Middle English was perfectly done and extremely helpful- it heightened my enjoyment of the various texts.

Occasional over-glossing BUT it didn’t really impact my experience as I could just ignore the gloss in order to enjoy the connotations that the original words have/had. The footnotes gave great context and pointed me in the right direction if I wanted to learn more. Additionally the scholarship that they relied on seemed very up to date and when there wasn’t a clear answer the footnotes usually drew on scholarship that was perfectly nuanced- again, as far as I can tell!

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't care much for Chaucer in high school, but I'm really enjoying his writing now. This book has a lot of great notes to help make sense of the Middle English writing and various references being made. Great introductions to the stories, and a pronunciation guide. However, I wish the font was a point or two larger and the pages were a bit less transparent, but perhaps I'm just getting old.

[Melina]

My take: Everyone should Quit teaching Canterbury Tales and instead teach Troilus and Criseyde (the only Chaucer I’ll give 5/5 stars). Book of the Duchess and House of Fame also honorable mentions, and both still better than CT.

[claire!! · Rating 4 out of 5]

My semester of queer and feminist readings of the Canterbury Tales

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

I am not a fan of Chaucer. I don't think he is a bad author by any means. In fact, after studying his work in depth over the course of my Spring 2021 semester, I am convinced he is brilliant. I just personally do not enjoy reading him. I fail to find a lot of his humor funny, but that's the thing about humor, it is subjective. I am not going to go very in-depth with this review because ultimately, there is nothing wrong with it. I just would not read this on my own time, but I acknowledge it is fundamental to my studies of medieval Western European literature. This Norton edition is your best option is you decide to not go with the Riverside Chaucer. I highly recommend the ebook because of the narrations so you can get an understanding of how Middle English is read and spoken.