The Canterbury Tales: The First Fragment

The First Fragment of The Canterbury Tales contains some of Chaucer's most popular and widely enjoyed work. Chaucer introduces his pilgrims in The General Prologue, a set of speaking portraits drawn with a loving clarity that makes no attempt to conceal imperfections. The pilgrims represent human society, and the tales of the Knight, Miller, Reeve and Cook reveal a variety of human preoccupations, particularly romantic and sexual love. Each tale is alive with Chaucer's skills as a poet, as a storyteller and as a creator of comedy. This edition is designed so that the First Fragment can be read as a unit. A very full glossary faces Chaucer's text, and a detailed set of explanatory notes follows it, so that students and readers approaching The Canterbury Tales for the first time can enjoy and appreciate the language of Europe's first great English poet.