The General Prologue To The Canterbury Tales (Worldview Critical Editions)

"This edition of Geoffrey Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is aimed at both the first time reader of Chaucer and the MA student. It presents the text in Chaucer's Middle English with Substantial explanatory notes on the facing page also supply full background information on each of the social groups and occupations represented in Chaucer's gallery of characters The Introduction covers Chaucer's life and experience inside and outside the court, the nature of his audience, and the significance of his choice of English as his medium. It also looks at the social upheavals and changing economic conditions of the period which were giving rise to a new social mobility and self assertiveness especially among the middling sections of society that are so amply represented in Chaucer's Prologue. The old feudal social arrangements and ideas are challenged or made to seem irrelevant and outdated in a world filled with commercial and materialist attitudes that infect even the Church. This new competitiveness also appears in the story-telling game that the pilgrims embark on and their 'felaweship' rapidly displays tensions and rivalries that perhaps indirectly reflect the turbulence and social changes of the period. . Chaucer handles these matters with his inimitable sly humour and perceptiveness. His experiments with style and genre, his exploration of the nature of fiction, and his refusal to confine readers to a single viewpoint. him particularly attractive to a modern audience. Above all he reminds literature is of no use unless it is both interesting and entertaining.This edition includes an introduction to Chaucer's language, critical essays by noted Chaucer critics and a bibliography to guide fur reading.Harriet Raghunathan is Reader in the Department of English, Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University. She is the editor of Chaucer's Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale."