These fifteen essays, four of them commissioned for this volume, along with a discursive introduction which sets each essay into place and comments on its distinctive features, represent a gathering never before attempted: a symposium on Chaucer's craft that concentrates on his poetic forms, his rhythms, his riming, his versification, his prosody. In his seminal essay, Scanning the Prosodists, Alan Gaylord (the editor of this volume) had asked: To show how Chaucer moves, and in moving, moves us: is that not what the study of his prosody should do? Should it not identify a pattern of sounds in motion, a regular and expressive succession which is part of the order of verse and a major component of its effectiveness? In the two decades that followed that essay, a number of distinguished scholars provided a variety of answers for such questions, arising from the authors' work as metrical theorists, or editors of medieval verse, or literary historians, or critics -- but in every case, such work connected to the initiatives and discoveries of the classroom. The best written and most useful of those essays, by recognized authorities in their fields, have been included in this volume. The volume will be of use to the advanced student of Chaucer and medieval poetry, and to the teacher interested in identifying, explaining, and bringing to life the patterns of sound and sense in Chaucer's verse. The extensive master Bibliography for the whole volume comprises a library of references which will have been reviewed and discussed in the essays.

Part One This monumental edition, in two volumes, presents a full record of commentary, both textual and interpretive, on the best known and most widely studied part of Chaucer's work, The General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales. Part One A contains a critical commentary, a textual commentary, text, collations, textual notes, an appendix of sources for the first eighteen lines of The General Prologue, and a bibliographical index. Because most explication of The General Prologue is directed to particular points, details, and passages, the present edition has devoted Part One B to the record of such commentary. This volume, compiled by Malcolm Andrew, also includes overviews of commentary on coherent passages such as the portraits of the pilgrims.