Chaucer and His English Contemporaries: Prologue and Tale in The Canterbury Tales by W. A. Davenport epub fb2 djvu

Modern ways of presenting Chaucer have often made his work seem "normal," so that The Canterbury Tales and its much-studied General Prologue are seen as archetypes of narrative and prologue. The author of this book argues that study of Chaucer's major work alongside contemporary English poems reveals the odd and extreme aspects of Chaucer's writing as well as the daring and experimental qualities in his work. The focus of the book is on strategies of narrative and discourse, but it includes discussion of famous middle English poems--Confessio Amantis, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, --and some less familiar romances, such as Gamelyn and Emaré, as well as the idea of the tale-collection.