The following books, all from the SRU library, have been put on reserve behind the reserve desk. I have picked these books to reserve because they are the most useful, and/or I will be referring to them in class. Take advantage of them, but please respect the fact that others will want to use them as well. If a book is out, feel free to recall it, or ask me for help!
Here is how to get to the Electronic Reserves page for this course.
Library copies of our textbooks are on "LUO" Reserve at the library: The Riverside Chaucer, and Donald Howard's Chaucer: His Life, His Work, His World.
Dictionaries and Reference works: these are all on "LUO": Library Use Only. You may not remove them from the library. Note that there are also some on-line Bibliographies which provide indices of more current work. The advantage to the Bibliographies listed here is that they have much more extensive discussions to lead you through the lists.
- Tatlock and Kennedy, A Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. The most complete concordance there is. You'll be using this.
- Helen Cooper, The Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. You'll be using this.
- DeWeever, Chaucer Name Dictionary: A guide to astrological, biblical, historical, literary, and mythological names in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer--a very helpful resource!
- Dillon, A Chaucer Dictionary: Proper Names and Allusions, excluding place names. Another one!
- Norman Davis, A Chaucer Glossary. This is the most complete Glossary to Chaucer's works, giving not just definitions, but also word origins, and under each word the places it appears in the text--it can also, that is, be used as a concordance. You'll be using this.
- Helge Kökeritz, A Guide to Chaucer's Pronunciation. A brief linguistic explanation of the sounds of Chaucer's language.
- Crawford, Bibliography of Chaucer, 1954-63
- Baird, Bibliography of Chaucer, 1964-73
- Beryl Rowland, Companion to Chaucer Studies. A helpful introductory Bibliography, though now a bit out of date.
- Derek Pearsall, The Life of Chaucer: A Critical Biography. Another excellent biography.
- Crow, Chaucer Life-Records. This volume collects almost all of the original documents which contain information about Chaucer's life. This is the primary source for Howard's and Pearsall's biographies, above.
- J. Fisher, The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer. Another edition. The advantage of another edition is that you can look at the notes about a specific line. This one, however, has many fewer notes than the Riverside.
- Robert Miller, Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds. This a collection of texts Chaucer either used as he was writing, or texts which are really, really similar to what he wrote.
- Bryan and Dempster, Sources and Analogues to the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Another collection of texts Chaucer either used as he was writing, or texts which are really, really similar to what he wrote.
- "The General Prologue." A cassette tape by York Productions. Use this to learn your pronunciation. Take care of this, please!!!
- Boitani and Mann, eds., The Cambridge Chaucer Companion. A very helpful, introductory collection of essays giving contexts for his life and works.
- Derek Brewer, ed., Writers and Their Background: Geoffrey Chaucer. A collection of essays giving contexts for his life and works which are more in-depth than Boitani and Mann's collection.
- E.T. Donaldson, Speaking of Chaucer. Yet another collection of excellent essays, all by one author, one of the greatest of all critics on Chaucer.
- Donald Howard, The Idea of the Canterbury Tales. A wonderful reading of the Canterbury Tales as a whole (which focuses primarily on what the text itself can show us) by the author of the biography we are reading. It contains many illuminating discussions of the tales. This is the only book on reserve which is not a collection of essays because this is a great place to start if you are looking for work on the Tales as a whole.
- C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image. I very very highly recommend this book. It does not concern Chaucer per se, but rather presents an introductory discussion of the medieval "universe"--of how medieval culture believed the world around them worked. It is a fascinating read by a great writer.
- Dieter Mehl, Geoffrey Chaucer: An Introduction to his Narrative Poetry. What it says.
- Phillips, Heather. An Introduction to the Canterbury Tales. This book takes each tale in order to give an introductory discussion of each one.
- Saunders, Corinne. Chaucer (in the Blackwell Gu ides to Criticism series). This is a collection of critical pieces excerpted from longer studies--a great selection of some of the "greatest hits" from the last several decades.