This book reads theLegend of Good Womenas one of Chaucer’s major texts, a thematically and artistically sophisticated poem whose veneer of transparency and directed focus mask a vital inquiry into the most basic questions of value and sincerity in a society increasingly aware of what Richard Firth Green has described as a crisis oftrouthe.¹ To do so it places Chaucer within a broad European intellectual context, at the intersection of translation and the development of the vernacular, recognizing his ‘Englished’ stories as part of humanist interest in stories of exemplary women’s conduct, a paradoxical combination of ideal...

Books appear in virtually all of Chaucer’s poems, referred to in passing, part of the staging of the scenes and action, constantly invoked as arbiters of status, of moral orientation and authority. Almost 150 references to books occur inThe Canterbury Talesin stories as varied as the Miller’s, the Friar’s, the Shipman’s (where books refer to account books), the Merchant’s tale, and of course in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. They are consistently mentioned in theTroilusand in theLegend of Good Women, where books are invoked as sources, both of literary authority and as narrative guides. In...

It is a commonplace that Chaucer’s genius lay in his seemingly infinite capacity to adapt stories and forms to serve his particular purposes. In his work readers constantly hear multiple echoes and perceive shadowy antecedents. His sources are often identifiable but so altered by his imagination as to function as analogues, as the well-known relationship of Chaucer’sTroilusto his source in Boccaccio’sIl Filostratodemonstrates. In the same way that theTroilusadapts and renovatesFilostrato, Chaucer’sLegendis paradoxically both derivative and an original conception. It is a singular adaptation of a series of narratives which appear as...

Presented as tales of women’s fidelity in love, the nine legends of good women tell other, more complex stories about the danger of lust and of loving, of the insidious nature of deception masquerading as benign intent, and of the paradoxical dangers inherent in generosity – for both giver and recipient. Such perennial issues of social and moral behavior were rendered highly visible and highly topical by the popularity of Aristotle’sPoliticsandEthicsin the learned secular culture of late medieval Europe. TheEthicsin particular, with its explication of the value of moderation and the psychological dynamics of gift...

TheLegend of Good Womenis arguably Chaucer’s most problematic poem. Critics have wrestled with its uncertain tone, its oddly elliptical relation to its classical sources and its fragmentary nature. While few would still argue that the unfinished state of the poem we have now testifies to the author’s having abandoned a boring project, there has been little effort to imagine the completed project Chaucer envisioned and its place in his poetics. Working on the assumption that what we have today is a truncated version of an original text likely much richer, longer and more directly related toTroilus and...

Chaucer’s women inThe Canterbury Talesdo not suffer, are not betrayed and usually prevail, even if at great cost. TheTalesare the site of comedy, a collection where rough justice, as in the Miller’s and Reeve’s fabliaux and the Merchant’s tale, prevails; where suffering and struggle are rewarded, if only in part, by a degree of happiness, as in the Man of Law’s and Second Nun’s tales; wheretragedieis repudiated in favor of tales of ‘joye and greet solas’. These are comic tales in the tradition of medieval comedy, which Lee Patterson has argued focuses on character:...

This book has put the case for reading theLegend of Good Womenwithin a series of contexts that suggest its close ties to major intellectual and artistic developments in late fourteenth century European culture. A fragmentary text at once clear about its theme and yet often seemingly at odds with its announced purposes, the poem is a challenge to reconcile with the success of its apparent predecessorTroilus and Criseydeand its putative successorThe Canterbury Tales, with which it has strong links.¹ As I said in my introduction to this volume, the purpose of this book is not...