This comprehensive guide to the English language was first published in 1992. It features carefully chosen extracts that illustrate the development of English, examining particularly the stylistic variety of the language.

This book is designed to explore the various kinds of association found in Chaucer's lexical usage, and so to alert the reader to the wider implications of particular words and phrases. By concentrating on the architecture' of the language, Dr Burnley offers what is in some respects an antidote to the skilled contextual glossing of the editor, whose activities may often obscure important connections. Such connections are vital to the interpretation of any work as a whole, and awareness of them is what distinguishes the scholar from the student who can translate' Chaucer perfectly adequately...