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Rating: 
Summary: Great edition
Review: Excellent background materials. The price is right for most college students. The vast chronological distance between ourselves and Chaucer demands that we learn more of his world than we do of contemporary writers and the selections of Boccaccio go a long way toward facilitating this. Much more has to be asked of students than to merely put Chaucer into one's own words. We need to ask why Chaucer would want to put these words to paper. And this edition can get that process of historical investigation going.
Rating: 
Summary: Dry, completely dry.
Review: While this is a wonder of words, a piece completely in poetry form, this is perhaps the worst book I have ever read. Unless you are a lit major or have a lot of free time on your hands and can sit through pointless speeches consisting of endless pointless description, buy anything else.
Rating: 
Summary: A usefully annotated edition for the beginner.
Review: Why read Chaucer? Well, in the first place for the beauty and masculine vigor of his English, an English one soon catches on to after a bit of practice. Why else? Well, because Chaucer was intensely human and his stories are interesting, and are either truly poignant or richly comic and sometimes even both. Also for the rich gallery of unforgettable human types his stories bring before us.Of course, Chaucer isn't for everyone. Those with no feeling for his language and no sense of humor, and whose own humanity is not their strongest point, may lack what is needed to appreciate Chaucer at his true worth. And in the presence of critical editions such as the present one, there is a danger of forgetting that so much of Chaucer's power is in the sheer music of his lines. Those new to Chaucer would be well advised to learn how to read Middle English _aloud_ as soon as possible by listening to one of the many excellent recordings. If they were to do this they'd soon find their pleasure in Chaucer magnified enormously.
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