Chaucer: A European Life.

Physical Description: [xxii], 599 pp.; 19 plates; 3 maps; 2 family trees.Chau

Description: Provides a critical biography of Chaucer that tells “the story of his life and his poetry through places and spaces, rather than through strict chronology,” with a “General Prologue,” an “Epilogue,” and twenty chapters pertaining to, for example, the Vintry Ward, Lancaster, Parliament, the Inn, the Cage, Peripheries, and the Threshold. Emphasizes Chaucer’s physical, emotional, and intellectual movements among such spaces, and how he emerged “as the confident innovator” of the CT. Uses archival sources, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, to trace in Chaucer’s life and works a sustained “interest in subjection, mediation, and identity.” The volume includes an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources and a comprehensive index.