Originally published in 1986. This study asks ‘What problems confront the narrator of a religious story?’ and ‘What different solutions to those problems are offered by the religious narratives of The Canterbury Tales?’ The introduction explains the grounds for inclusion of the tales here studied then examined in three sections. The first includes the tales of the Clerk, Prioress and Second Nun, and Chaucer’s Melibee, and explores the parallels between the production of a religious narrative and that of a faithful translation. The second considers how the tales of the Man of Law, Monk and Physician, though formally similar to those in the first section, subvert the offered parallel by their creation of narrators who actively mediate them to their audience, and who seem as concerned with the projection of their own personalities as with the transmission of the given story. The final section shows how the tales of the Pardoner and Nun’s Priest highlight the dilemma and provide distinctive resolutions. The whole study aims to explore the dynamic relationships that exist between two contrasting positions: an artist’s commitment to the authority of a given story and his need to assert himself over it.

Originally published in 1972. This important work of Chaucerian scholarship deals with two aspects of the poet and his work - his individual achievement and his place in history - and demonstrates that in both these senses Chaucer is a maker of English poetry. The author assesses the extent of Chaucer’s debt to the English tradition. She considers the development of his ‘urbane’ manner as a new poetic technique and, with reference to such poems as the Parlement of Foules and the House of Fame, discusses new themes in the Love Vision. She concludes with a detailed study of Chaucer’s great debate on love Troilus and Criseyde.