The Riverside Chaucer

Riverside 3 has all of Chaucer's major poems and two major prose works, a translation of Boethius and the Treatise on the Astrolabe, in Middle English. In addition to these, it includes several (relatively) short lyrics, some of doubtful authorship, and a Middle English translation of the (French) Romance of the Rose, done partly by Chaucer. Spelling and punctuation have been regularized throughout, to make the poems more accessible. The insertion of commas is often dubious (for instance, in the Envoy to the Clerk's Tale, "lat him care and wepe and wrynge and waille" becomes "lat hym care, and wepe, and wrynge, and waille" for no evident reason) but maybe that's inevitable. If one is very particular one can always look up the textual notes. The bottom-of-page glosses and explanatory notes could be better; there are several passages that an inexperienced reader of Middle English might find difficult but that are not explained in either place. The notes on mythological references etc. are more consistently helpful. The Introduction is all right with grammar/pronunciation, but could be more thorough. The glossary takes a little getting used to, because not all variants are considered (esp. i and vowel y are treated as the same letter), but is pretty good once you get used to it. You don't need to use it very often because the obviously difficult words are glossed at the bottom of the page. The poetry, of course, is as good as it gets, and also very entertaining. Chaucer's range of styles is particularly amazing.And as in winter leves been biraft,Eche after other, til the tree be bare,So that ther nis but bark and braunche y-laft,Lyth Troilus, biraft of ech wel-fare,Y-bounden in the blake bark of care. -- Troilus and Criseyde Bk IVHe stoupeth doun, and on his bak she stood, And caughte hire by a twiste, and up she gooth - Ladyes, I prey yow that ye be nat wrooth; I kan nat glose, I am a rude man - And sodeynly anon this Damyan Gan pullen up the smok, and in he throng. -- The Merchant's Tale"What is this world? What asketh men to have? Now with his love, now in his colde grave, Allone, withouten any compaignye." -- The Knight's Tale

The Riverside Chaucer has managed to do the impossible- preserve the pristine vigor of the original texts, while providing informative glosses for those readers unfamiliar with Middle English. I have read several editions of Chaucer's various works, both in the original dialect, and in translation, and this is by far the best text available for both the casual reader who wishes to appreciate the vitality of the author's repertoire, and the serious student of literature.

Why read Chaucer? Well, in the first place for the beauty and masculine vigor of his English, an English one soon catches on to after a bit of practice. Why else? Well, because Chaucer was intensely human and his stories are interesting, and either truly poignant or richly comic and sometimes even both. Also for the rich gallery of unforgettable human types his stories bring before us, types such as:The rejected Griselda - 'Lat me nat lyk a worm go by the weye;' the frisky Alisoun - ''Tehee!' quod she, and clapte the wyndow to;' the amorous Wife of Bath - 'Allas! Allas! that evere love was synne!', the scurvy Pardoner - 'Of avarice, and of swich cursednesse / Is al my prechyng, for to make hem free / To yeven hir pens, and namely unto me', and a host of others both high and low, noble and despicable, lovable and contemptible.Of course, Chaucer isn't for everyone. Those with no feeling for his language and no sense of humor, and whose own humanity is not their strongest point, may lack what is needed to appreciate Chaucer at his true worth.The present edition is a mammoth volume of 1327 pages which includes the complete and newly edited texts of everything Chaucer wrote - The Canterbury Tales, The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, Anelida and Arcite, The Parliament of Fowls, Boece, Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women, The Short Poems, A Treatise on the Astrolabe, The Romaunt of the Rose. Brief language glosses are given at the foot of each page, while fuller Notes are found at the end of the book.Unfortunately the lines of the texts are numbered in the conventional way - 10, 20, 30, etc. - instead of having numbers occur _only_ at the end of lines which have been glossed or given Notes - e.g., 9, 12, 16, 18, 32. Such conventional numbering involves readers in the tedious and time-wasting hassle of line counting, and the equally time-wasting frustration of searching through notes only to find that no note exists. The book also includes a full Introduction (Chaucers' Life, The Canon and Chronology of Chaucer's Works, Language and Versification, The Texts), a General Bibliography, 300 pages of Explanatory Notes, 100 pages of Textual Notes, an extremely detailed 100-page Glossary, and an Index of Proper Names.Despite the many helps provided by the editors, and since the needs of readers are insatiable, no-one is going to find everything they would like to find. A complete text of this nature is best considered as one for the beginning student; scholarly texts of individual works are going to be needed by anyone who wishes to go deeper, and the Bibliography is there as a guide for those wishing to explore critical and other issues in greater depth. But in the presence of so much scholarship, there is a danger of forgetting that so much of Chaucer's power is in the sheer music of his lines. Those new to Chaucer would be well advised to learn how to read Middle English _aloud_ as soon as possible by listening to one of

Being a typical "ugly American":), I saw no real significance to the saying that, "to truly understand a text, you must read it in its original language." Middle English, being so close a derivative (or so I thought!) to modern English, didn't count. When reading the Riverside Chaucer, I found out how wrong I was, to have assumed that just because I read the Canterbury Tales' translations, that I knew the true magic of the tales, as well as the other texts that Chaucer had written. You will find the double entendres (some refined, some humorously crude - e.g. to call a woman quente [sp?] is to call her genteel AND a rather disparaging reference to her anatomy!), tons of puns, and political references that no modern translation can properly address (read the Knight's Tale, friends, and ask yourself how noble this man was, dressed in a rusting tunic, and having participated in some of the worst massacres in then-modern Christendom). This book is THE AUTHORITATIVE source on Chaucer, and with its constant referencing to help one through difficult Middle English meanings, background information, and details about the writings itself, you gain a better appreciation of the text, the world in which it was presented, and the magic woven by a true master of literature. Well worth it!