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Article: Chaucer and his English Contemporaries: Prologue and Tales in 'The Canterbury Tales'.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Modern Language Review
- Article date:
- July 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Modern Humanities Research Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Chaucer and his English Contemporaries: Prologue and Tales in 'The Canterbury Tales'. By W. A. DAVENPORT. Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press. x + 245 pp. 42.50 [pounds sterling] (paperbound 14.99 [pounds sterling]).
This book began, W. A. Davenport tells us, as an attempt to answer two questions: what Chaucer thought a prologue and a tale to be, and how far the Canterbury Tales was experimental compared with the practice of contemporary, and earlier, English writing in these genres. Criticism that asks apparently simple questions can often, as here, yield some interesting answers. Among Davenport's most welcome contentions is that the Canterbury ...