THE book to pick up if you want to enjoy Chaucer. Excellent work. Highly recommended. The Canterbury Tales are, of course, fantastic but pay attention to Chaucer's shorter works, especially The Book of the Duchess. The high medieval dream vision motif is employed in Duchess in a very interesting way. If you enjoy reading tales about Courtly Love (as in the Arthurian legends) then Book of the Duchess is for you.

Everything you need, including the under-read House of Fame, a loopy, beguiling riff on Dante and auctoritee that predates and thoroughly bitch-slaps any of your postmodern "death of the author" nonsense.

This is a massive doorstop of a book, but it's invaluable for a student or scholar: Chaucer's works in their original Middle English with definitions of words in the margins, allowing students to learn as they go and minimize disruptive flipping back and forth between the text and a dictionary.

All of the linguistic subtlety of Chaucer's original work is made clear here in a way that is lost in even the best translations. Chaucer's sense of structure and character are literary game-changers that shine through in any version, but one thing that does get lost in translation is the way Chaucer shifts between words with French or Old English roots to show each character's class and background, a technique of regional dialect that eighteenth-century novelists mistakenly patted themselves on the back for inventing.

All in all, this edition is challenging but rewards serious effort.

Completely edited with the attitude, 'Well, psh, if you don't know what 'scarpenfradish' means then too bad, NO GLOSS FOR YOU. However, we will happily tell you that 'wyf' is 'wife'. Neener Neener.'

Chaucer rocks, though.

I highly recommend this edition of the Caunterbury Tales. The editor, Larry Benson relies on the Ellesmere manuscript which is my personal favorite. Also included in the Riverside are a number of Chaucer's poems, his Book of the Duchess, and several other pieces. The notes are impeccable and the introduction very solid. Definitely worth a read and don't be put off by the enormous size (and weight) of the book. It's manageable if you read it in small chunks.

I am not pretentious enough to 'review' this. I haven't even read all of it: the Treatise on the Astrolabe, fascinating as it looks, is probably way beyond my abilities; I read the Romance of the Rose in modern translation, and intend to do the same with Boethius.

I might also mention that Chaucer was an excellent poet, and far easier to read in the original than some people think.

the first time i read this was in college - in middle english. i find middle english fascinating. chaucer was one of the first authors to write entirely in middle english which is a combination of german, latin, and modern english. actually, at the time it was written, it was modern english.

i am re-reading it now as i try to come up with ideas for a novel. the themes in the canterbury tales are universal.

II
"The sore spark of peyne doth me spille;
This love hath [eek] me set in swich a place
That my desyr [he] never wol fulfille;
For neither pitee, mercy, neither grace
Can I not finde; and fro my sorwful herte,
For to be deed, I can hit nat arace.
The more I love, the more she doth me smerte;
Through which I see, with-oute remedye,
That from the deeth I may no wyse asterte;
For this day in hir servise shal I dye."
-"A Compleint to his Lady"

Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the most influential poets to ever live, as well as one of the most talented. As well as being the primary writer of his time and basically every English student's introduction into medieval literature, his poetry is so precisely metrical in a way that makes a natural flow easy to catch onto while reading. Additionally, his work is undoubtedly the smoothest way to start reading Middle English, so that when you feel like moving on to somebody else's work (ex. The Pearl Poet, Langland, etc.), it won't be quite so hard to get into.

Another reason why Chaucer is so great is that his philosophies are simply wonderful to read about. Sometimes it can hinder a work from being really great (Troilus and Criseyde, for example), but for the most part it makes for a really great insight into medieval standards of life. There are plenty of allegorical dreams to be read about, which is almost kind of a trope for medieval literature; however, Chaucer's accounts are a lot less cryptic than something like Piers Plowman, which is basically the Inception of allegories. So really, it all ultimately comes back to me saying that Chaucer is the backbone of medieval literature. He's a wonderful starting point, but he's also such a relief to come back to after reading more some of his more challenging contemporaries.

Another final note I must make is one universal truth: read Chaucer in his original language and Shakespeare will never be difficult to read ever again.

Here are links to longer works of his that I reviewed separately:
My review of Troilus and Criseyde
My review of The Canterbury Tales
My review of The Romaunt of the Rose
My review of The Book of the Duchess
My review of The Parliament of Birds
My review of De Consolantione Philosophae

I remember when Professor Savoia told us this was, and I believe still is, the only complete collection of Chaucer's opus, I hurried to buy this tome, and did not think I would ever read it all, but, it looks, years on, many, to be honest, only a few 'minor' poems still elude me.

In terms of structure, there is as much as you can expect in a single volume collection of a pretty prolific poet; a general introduction, a rather detailed exposition of Chaucer's language, introductions to the major works, notes at the end. All compacted in one 'manageable' volume. For those who are still stuck with reading 'The Canterbury Tales', I suggest they skip around a bit, Chaucer is really much, much more than them. 'the Hus of Fame', 'The Parliament of Fowls', 'The Bok of the Duchesse' are just some of the great treasures this son of a vintner has given us, often left to the enjoyment of a a few geeks like me...

General prologue
Fragment VII

I am working on my thesis and this is by far the most comprehensive compilation, and the foremost translation, of Chaucerian composition. I purchased it as part of an undergraduate course at UCLA and find the index and glossary as well as textual notes to be superbly helpful.

Full confession: I haven't read the entire thing. I have read most of it. Yes, it's in Middle English. Yes, it is awesome. Also, you totally feel accomplished once you've read a good chunk of it. Makes you feel all hardcore and stuff. Chaucer is the mad note.