This book explores the Chain of Love, a Platonic metaphor for the invisible bond between Creator and Creation, for the space between beginnings and ends of temporal succession, and for the heard, or unheard, word between thought and deed, or between contrition and satisfaction in the process of penitence.

Substantial new readings of Chaucer's poems, offering a fresh perspective on some of the major controversies in Chaucer scholarship.

The social system of 'courtly love' soon spread after becoming popularized by the troubadours of southern France in the twelfth century. This book codifies life at Queen Eleanor's court at Poitiers between 1170 and 1174 into "one of those capital works which reflect the thought of a great epoch, which explain the secret of a civilization."

A superb volume, fully worthy of these famous but often misunderstood poems. P. G. Walsh's unmatched erudition in Latin literature furnishes lucid grammatical explanations, incisive analysis of goliardic literary values and technique, and illuminating references to ancient and medieval parallels. His prose translations make the poems accessible also to those with little or no Latin. Janet M. Martin, Princeton University

Mark Miller's innovative study argues that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales represent an extended mediation on agency, autonomy and practical reason. This philosophical aspect of Chaucer's interests can help us understand what is both sophisticated and disturbing about his explorations of love, sex and gender. Partly through fresh readings of the Consolation of Philosophy and the Romance of the Rose, Miller charts Chaucer's position in relation to the association in the Christian West between problems of autonomy and problems of sexuality and reconstructs how medieval philosophers and literary writers approached psychological phenomena often thought of as distinctively modern. The literary experiments of the Canterbury Tales represent a distinctive philosophical achievement that remains vital to our own attempts to understand agency, desire and their histories.

The latest volume in the Chaucer Bibliographies series, meticulously assembled by Kenneth Bleeth, is the most comprehensive record of scholarship on Chaucer's Squire's Tale, Franklin's Tale, and Physician's Tale.

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