Overview

Shakespeare and Milton were the greatest sons of their country, said G.K. Chesterton, but Chaucer was the father of his country. The Canterbury Tales have sometimes been thought dry, even intimidating, of little relevance to the modern world. Nothing could be further from the truth, argues the distinguished literary critic Stephen Fender. Wise, moving, whimsical, funny, bawdy and vivid in the extraordinary picture they paint of medieval England, The Canterbury Tales also explore themes which have preoccupied us for hundreds of years, such as the conflict between fate and free will, the gap between rhetoric and truth and the extent to which we can trust any authority. It is no wonder, perhaps, that The Canterbury Tales have come to be seen as a founding statement of English national identity.

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9781907776250

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These guides are exceptionally well written, genuinely illuminating without sacrificing complexity to clarity. Professor Kiernan Ryan, Royal Holloway University of London

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Steven Fender holds degrees from Stanford, Wales and the University of Manchester. He has taught at the University of Santa Clara, Williams and Dartmouth Colleges, the University of Edinburgh, University College London and the University of Sussex, where he was Professor and Chair of American Studies from 1985 - 2001. His books include a study of the rhetoric of the California gold rush, called Plotting the Golden West (1982), Sea Changes: British Emigration and American Literature (1992), and Nature Class and New Deal Literature (2011), about how the American country poor got treated in the novels, documentary photographs and bureaucratic prose of the New Deal liberals. He is now Honorary Professor of English at University College London.

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