The Oxford Chaucer: Volumes 1 and 2

This authoritative edition of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer presents Chaucer’s works for a new generation of students, and for a wide range of general readers. It provides all that undergraduates and graduate students will need to understand and appreciate Chaucer in his original Middle English, as well as an extensive scholarly apparatus. A detailed introduction situates Chaucer’s works in his life and culture and offers a guide on how to read and enjoy his language and verse forms. The edition contains all of Chaucer’s surviving poetry and prose, edited using a coherent editorial practice that is explained to the reader; detailed glosses on each line to aid reading; literary introductions to each text; extensive explanatory notes designed both to help the beginner with the text and to guide the scholar; and textual introductions and notes to every text, providing a detailed rationale and all of the empirical evidence for the editing practice by which the texts have been presented.

Christopher Cannon, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and Classics, Johns Hopkins University, James Simpson, Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English, Harvard University

Christopher Cannon is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and Classics at Johns Hopkins University. He was educated at Harvard and has taught previously at UCLA, Oxford (as a Fellow of St Edmund Hall), Cambridge (as a Fellow of Girton College), and New York University. He works primarily on writings in Middle English from 1100DS1500 and, in particular, on the emergence of ’English literature’ as a meaningful category in this period.

James Simpson is Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University (2004DS). He was educated in the universities of Melbourne and Oxford. Previously Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge (1999DS2003), he is a Life Fellow of Fellow of Girton College and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He works across the broad period from 1200DS1700 at the intersections of literary, theological, and political writing.