The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer

This comprehensive guide to Chaucer studies offers a fresh perspective on how each generation reinterprets the medieval poet's enduring legacy, moving beyond traditional literary analysis to explore how contemporary scholarship continues to find new relevance in his work. The collection examines Chaucer's position as foundational to English literature while demonstrating how modern critical approaches—from postcolonial theory to digital humanities—reveal unexpected dimensions in texts that have been taught for centuries. Rather than presenting Chaucer as a static monument, the handbook illuminates the dynamic conversation between his fourteenth-century world and our own contemporary concerns.

What distinguishes this volume is its commitment to showing rather than telling how Chaucer remains vital, with contributors demonstrating through specific textual analysis how familiar works speak to modern readers across temporal and cultural divides. The essays collectively argue that Chaucer's true timelessness lies not in universal themes but in his works' remarkable capacity to generate new meanings with each generation of readers and scholars. Students encountering Chaucer for the first time will appreciate how the handbook makes medieval literature feel urgently contemporary, while established scholars will value its synthesis of current critical trends. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand why Chaucer continues to matter in the twenty-first century and how his poetry remains surprisingly responsive to our evolving understanding of identity, language, and power.