Author Description

This New Companion to Critical Thinking on Chaucer brings together preeminent scholars from around the world and adopts a novel approaching, beginning with the basics: Chaucer's words. Each chapter explores a single word from the Chaucerian corpus to develop readings that extend across the author's works. Without being limited to a particular text or theoretical approach, contributors model scholarly thinking in action, posing questions and offering analyses from textual, theoretical, historical, and material approaches. The result is a comprehensive collection of essays that illuminates Chaucer's aesthetics, philosophical complexity, and continued relevance. Part innovative scholarship, part how-to manual, the volume includes apparatus to help less experienced readers of Chaucer negotiate its contents. In addition to fourteen main essays, the volume also includes three response essays, each modelling how a seasoned scholar uses the chapters to develop his or her own thinking about Chaucer. Thus, the companion offers something to audiences of all levels who wish to read, research, and enjoy Chaucer, his language, and his works.