INTRODUCTION TO CHAUCER
4HE POLL CHAUCER, by Nevill Coghill, Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press. English price, 5/-. "HIS is a most welcome addition to the Home University Library, and may help (as Mr. Coghill’s BBC programmes undoubtedly have done) to increase popular appreciation af "our greatest comic poet." Mr. Coghill’s writing is always lively, and ~ his medieval scholarship-though — lightly worn-is such that no serious student of Chaucer can afford to neglect his book. Above all, he has_the knack of making literary judgments in modern terms, so that he can, use Uccello or Proust with equal facility to point back to his originals, and rekindle interest even in something as dusty as the Tale of Melibee by referring it to a barroom argument. He is particularly good on Chaucer’s Troilus and on\The Wife of Bath, and by combining an outline of the poet’s life with a study of. the content and development of his work he is able to give at the end a balanced and reasonably convincing portrait of one whom he considers, with Shakespeare, as the most English of writers. This is not, of course, the full literary study that Chaucer deserves (and rather surprisingly has not yet received), but it is an admirable and stimulating introduction, and as such mav be recom.
mended. without reserve,
J.
B.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 553, 27 January 1950, Page 18
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219INTRODUCTION TO CHAUCER New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 553, 27 January 1950, Page 18
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