Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (born 1340/44, died 1400) is remembered as the author of The Canterbury Tales, which ranks as one of the greatest epic works of world literature. Chaucer made a crucial c...

Janet Cowen

George Kane

Legend of Good Women, The

Geoffrey Chaucer

 Edited by

Janet Cowen

George Kane

The long-awaited critical edition of Chaucer's text brings together, for the first time, full manuscript variants and the results of recent paliographical and codicological work. The editors address the problem of distinguishing between authorial and scribal variation, and the results of this examination challenge traditional theories about Chaucer as a reviser.

The Legend of Good Women is a poem in the form of a dream vision; the third longest of Chaucer's works and is possibly the first significant work in English to use the iambic pentameter or decasyllabic couplets, which he later used throughout the Canterbury Tales.