This title was first published in 2002: The purpose of "Chaucer's Church" is to provide clear, concise and reliable explanations of every term Chaucer uses that has a religious, liturgical, or ecclesiastical meaning. It uses a dictionary format, arranged according to Chaucer's spellings, to make information readily accessible for students, teachers, critics, and the general reader. The shorter entries present brief definitions which are more lively and illuminating than those in standard dictionaries or glossaries; the longer entries are in fact short essays, with suggestions for further reading, on broader or more complex topics. In all cases the entries concentrate on lucid and accurate presentation of the meanings that the terms had or could have had for Chaucer and a 14th-century audience. The book is a compact but precise reference for readers of all levels of experience on the vocabulary of fourteenth-century religion, which is often unfamiliar or only hazily understood. A careful system of cross-references guides the reader to related terms, so that individual entries can be further explored in related or larger contexts. The book may also be browsed or read on its own, for the entries taken together, especially the brief essays, provide a coherent introduction to the Christian world of the late fourteenth century. In Chaucer's Church, the editors have succeeded in compiling a volume that combines ease of use with readability and rigorous accuracy. This book provides convenient and trustworthy access to Chaucer's religious world.

Praised by reviewers as highly recommended, indispensable, and thorough, comprehensive, usable, and unquestionably useful, theChaucer Name Dictionary is the ultimate A-Z guide to the writer who stands at the head of the English curriculum. It provides full information on all the hundreds of proper names mentioned throughout Chaucer and essential to an understanding of his works. Each entry provides historical and/or literary definition, references to occurrences in Chaucer's works with explanations of the context, a list of related words, etymology, and a bibliography of primary and secondary works. Special Features The only reference source that identifies the hundreds of historical, literary, and mythological names mentioned in Chaucer, Provides reliable background information essential to understanding Chaucer's text, Alphabetical arrangement and clear format allow quick answers to reference questions, Includes an important Glossary of Astronomical and Astrological Terms, along with six astrological maps Suitable for courses in:Chaucer, Medieval English Poetry, Medieval Literature in Translation, Old and Middle English Literature, Glossary Also includes maps.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of English poet GEOFFREY CHAUCER (c. 1343 c. 1400) to the development of literature in the English language. His writings which were popular during his own lifetime with the nobility as well as with the increasingly literate merchant class marked the first celebration of the English vernacular as a tongue worthy of literary endeavor, most notably in his unfinished narrative poem The Canterbury Tales, the format and structure of which continues to be imitated by writers today. But the impact of Chaucer s work was felt even into the 16th and 17th centuries, when the first major collections of his writings set a high standard for how authors should be presented to the reading public. This widely esteemed seven-volume set first published in the 1890s by British academic WALTER WILLIAM SKEAT (1835 1912), Erlington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge University is based solely on Chaucer s original manuscripts and the earliest available published works (with any significant variations or deviations between versions highlighted in the extensive notes), and comes complete with Skeat s informative commentary on many passages. Volume VI features: Skeat s general introductory to the seven-volume set a glossarial index to Chaucer s language an index of proper names an index of authors quoted or referred to by Chaucer an index of books referred to in Skeat s notes a general index to the seven-volume set and more.

The first extended study of the reception of Chaucer's medieval manuscripts in the early modern period, this book focuses chiefly on fifteenth-century manuscripts and discusses how these volumes were read, used, valued, and transformed in an age of the poet's prominence in print. Each chapter argues that patterns in the material interventions made by readers in their manuscripts – correcting, completing, supplementing, and authorising – reflect conventions which circulated in print, and convey prevailing preoccupations about Chaucer in the period: the antiquity and accuracy of his words, the completeness of individual texts and of the canon, and the figure of the author himself. This unexpected and compelling evidence of the interactions between fifteenth-century manuscripts and their early modern analogues asserts print's role in sustaining manuscript culture and thus offers fresh scholarly perspectives to medievalists, early modernists, and historians of the book. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

This study aims to provide readers with a convenient source of reliable, scholarly, and accessible information on Chaucer's work, life, and times. Topics include Chaucer's works, major fictional characters, social, and political contexts, writers who influenced Chaucer or influenced by him, people and places of significance in Chaucer's life.