Blamires, Alcuin. Chaucer, Ethics, And Gender. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Blamires analyzes key ethical themes in The Canterbury Tales in the context of gender, connecting the ethics of The Canterbury Tales with classical and medieval ethical frameworks. He focuses on examples such as the flood prediction in “The Miller’s Tale” and the Wife of Bath’s prologue to support his argument.

Brown, Peter, Ed. A Companion To Chaucer. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, Reprint Edition 2002.

 

Meant for students reading The Canterbury Tales, this text synthesizes and articulates key research on Chaucer in a clear, helpful manner.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

 

One of the best-known works on Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer includes the full text of The Canterbury Tales along with helpful interpretive additions, such as an introduction, a guide to pronouncing and reading Middle English, and footnotes.

Cooper, Helen. The Structure Of The Canterbury Tales. London: Duckworth Press, 1983.

Contrasting The Canterbury Tales with common medieval literary conventions, Cooper analyzes a series of structuring relationships within the Tales, including connections among the various narratives and themes that persist across tales.

Howard, Donald. The Idea Of The Canterbury Tales. Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1976.

Howard explores key ideas, genres, and stylistic choices that persist across the individual tales of The Canterbury Tales and bind them together.

Knapp, Peggy A. Chaucer And The Social Contest. New York: Routledge, 1990.

A wide-angle view of Chaucer’s work, this text situates the pilgrims in their dynamic medieval context. The work particularly explores what The Canterbury Tales has to say about gender relationships, the interaction of classes, and the rising Protestant movement.

Pearsall, Derek. The Canterbury Tales. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1985, Reprint Edition 1993.

Pearsall’s work provides a useful interpretive introduction to The Canterbury Tales, providing analysis of the work as a whole as well as individual tales and comparing the existing manuscripts of the work.

Wetherbee, Winthrop. Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2nd Edition 2003.

This book provides a wide-ranging guide to The Canterbury Tales, exploring the interactions among the characters, the language choices, its literary contexts, and a history of the relevant time period.

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