"A remarkably accessible account of individual tales, tellers, and the poem-as-a-whole, with a voice of such authority and appreciative command that it could be recommended to any undergraduate or graduate student. . . . To anyone who doubted the survival of practical criticism in the current sea of theory, this book will come as a tonic."--Dolores Warwick Frese, University of Notre Dame

Arguing from the evidence of extant manuscripts, Edward Condren describes the overall design of the Canterbury Tales--one of the most enigmatic puzzles in Chaucer studies--as a structural...