Name: Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: An Annotated Bibliography 1900-1984
Price: 111.53 USD
Availability: BackOrder
Author: Eckhardt, Caroline D
ISBN: 9780802025920

Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: An Annotated Bibliography 1900-1984

No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780802025920

The General Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is one of the most enduring works of English literature. Beloved by scholars, teachers, students, and general readers, it has been given a great many different interpretations. This annotated, international bibliography of twentieth-century criticism on the Prologue is an essential reference guide. It includes books, journal articles, and dissertations, and a descriptive list of twentieth-century editions; it is the most complete inventory of modern criticism on the Prologue. The extensive annotations provide uniquely convenient access to many publications that are otherwise difficult to obtain.

In her introduction, Caroline Eckhardt provides a careful and comprehensive overview of modern trends in criticism, trends which can be traced through the bibliography. At the beginning of the century, for example, Chaucer's Prologue was often described as a 'portrait gallery' and praised for its realism - social, psychological, and dramatic. Later in the century came emphases on irony, rhetoric, Freudian interpretations, elaborate allegories, and stylistic complexities. At present, the Prologue is often interpreted as a system of signs and symbols in which realism, if it exists at all, serves purposes beyond itself. The smiling and serene poet of the earlier period has been replaced by a self-conscious ironist, sometimes with a split personality. The portrait gallery of the beginning of the century is still there, though the spectator who walks along it tends to see something less fixed textually (the Prologue is now commonly discussed as work-in-progress) and more complicated structurally, generically, and thematically. It is the spectator, of course, who has changed.

About the author

Product details

Pub dateJun 1, 1990

ISBN-100802025927

ISBN-139780802025920

LanguageEnglish

Last updated 2026-08-20 03:34

What are the books that helped shape and define the last hundred years? This was the question put to the librarians of The New York Public Library as part of the Library's 100th anniversary celebration. Which books had influenced the course of events for good or ill? Which interpreted new worlds? Or delighted millions of readers? Their answers to these questions formed Books of the Century, a highly popular exhibit during the Library's centennial celebration (1895 to 1995), highlighting an exhilarating collection of important works by some of the greatest writers of our times. Now, the companion volume, The New York Public Library's Books of the Century takes readers on a thought-provoking tour of the last hundred years, through the medium of the printed word. Here readers will find over 150 pivotal works organized into topical categories, reflecting themes that have informed the century, among them Mind & Spirit, Protest & Progress, Women Rise, or Nature's Realm. Each is introduced with a brief commentary illuminating the themes and issues the books in that section address, followed by an annotation for each title offering a brief description and a key to its significance. The range of books is remarkable, embracing Chekhov's Three Sisters and Bram Stoker's Dracula, as well as Galbraith's The Affluent Society and Durkheim's Suicide, or Timothy Leary's The Politics of Ecstasy and W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk. Readers will find many illuminating juxtapositions. In Utopias & Dystopias, for instance, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, and Lost Horizon are in the unexpected company of Nineteen Eighty-four, A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, and The Time Machine. The century's darkest moments are mirrored in War, Holocaust, Totalitarianism, where we find Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Hersey's Hiroshima, Anne Frank's Diary, and Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. But the volume ends on a happier note, with Optimism, Joy, Gentility, and such wonderful works as Helen Keller's The Story of My Life, Shaw's Pygmalion, Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Illustrated throughout with imaginative paper cut-out murals by artist Diana Bryan, The New York Public Library's Books of the Century is a reflection of our times, featuring both the books we love--whether The Cat in the Hat or Ulysses--and books like The Surgeon General's Report or Mein Kampf that, for better or worse, have been an inescapable part of our century. For 100 years, the librarians of The New York Public Library have shared our passion for books with a diverse and literate public, said curator and editor Elizabeth Diefendorf. That experience has given us a unique perspective in making our choices for the books of the century. We hoped that visitors to the exhibition, and now the readers of this book, will be drawn into our choices and reflect on what their own selections would be. A result of the outcome of a survey presented to the librarians of The New York Public Library on the occasion of its centennial anniversary, this book takes readers on a thought-provoking tour of the last 100 years, through the medium of the printed word. From Ulysses to Mein Kampf, from Hisroshima to Goodnight, Moon, over 150 pivotal works are annotated, each introduced with a brief commentary illuminating the themes and issues the book addresses. 60 illustrations.

Books

Fiction

Children's Books

Bestsellers & Award Winners

Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: An Annotated Bibliography 1900-1984

About the author

Product details

Payment received

Readers who bought this also bought