Examines the political, social, and religious factors that contributed to the formation of a literary canon in fourteenth-century England. This book tracks the reputations of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland into the fifteenth century, when studies of 14th-century literature became configured in terms of a double, antagonistic dynamic.

Originally published in 1981, this second edition built on the success of the first which had established itself as a standard introduction to the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. It shows Chaucer not only in the context of his own age, but, more important, as a writer and a man who is still vivid to us so many years later. As well as examining the early poems, Troilus and Criseyde, and The Canterbury Tales the author gives a thorough account of Chaucer's background. He examines the traditions in which he wrote, his audience, and his position among his contemporaries. The second edition was updated throughout and included a number of revisions and additions, in particular on the second part of the Roman de la Rose and on The Knight's Tale.