Best Selling Books by Geoffrey Chaucer

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library T076319 Edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt. Vol.5 is the glossary. The catchwords are irregular. The imprint of vol.5 reads: ''printed for T. Payne and Son''. London: printed for T. Payne, 1775-78. 5v.; 8°

Chaucer''s ''Parliament of Fowls'' is a story about love, lust, honour, nature . . . and ducks. Simon Webb''s highly accessible modern English verse translation conveys the humour and colour of Chaucer''s original, and Simon''s introduction explains why the poem is now considered to be the work that first introduced the idea of Valentine''s Day as we know it. With introduction, glossary and further reading.

A collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century that follows a group of pilgrims who are traveling to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury and decide to tell each other stories to pass the time.

Troilus and Criseyde is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war in the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid 1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it as the poet''s finest work.

The Canterbury Tales (Middle English: Tales of Caunterbury is a collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer. In 1386, Chaucer became Controller of Customs and Justice of Peace and, three years later, Clerk of the King''s work in 1389. It was during these years that Chaucer began working on his most famous text, The Canterbury Tales. The tales (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from London to Canterbury in order to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.After a long list of works written earlier in his career, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, The Canterbury Tales is near-unanimously seen as Chaucer''s magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of its characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Chaucer''s use of such a wide range of classes and types of people was without precedent in English. Although the characters are fictional, they still offer a variety of insights into the customs and practices of the time. Often, such insight leads to a variety of discussions and disagreements among people in the 14th century. For example, although various social classes are represented in these stories and all of the pilgrims are on a spiritual quest, it is apparent that they are more concerned with worldly things than spiritual. Structurally, the collection resembles The Decameron, which Chaucer may have read during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.It is sometimes argued that the greatest contribution The Canterbury Tales made to English literature was in popularising the literary use of the vernacular, English, rather than French, Italian or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer''s time, and several of Chaucer''s contemporaries-John Gower, William Langland, the Pearl Poet, and Julian of Norwich-also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was responsible for starting a trend as opposed to simply being part of it.While Chaucer clearly states the addressees of many of his poems, the intended audience of The Canterbury Tales is more difficult to determine. Chaucer was a courtier, leading some to believe that he was mainly a court poet who wrote exclusively for nobility.