A. C. Cawley Books

The procession that crosses Chaucer's pages is as full of life and as richly textured as a medieval tapestry. The Knight, the Miller, the Friar, the Squire, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and others who make up the cast of characters -- including Chaucer himself -- are real people, with human emotions and weaknesses. When it is remembered that Chaucer wrote in English at a time when Latin was the standard literary language across western Europe, the magnitude of his achievement is even more remarkable. But Chaucer's genius needs no historical introduction; it bursts forth from every page of "The Canterbury Tales."

Apart from the morality play Everyman this volume contains a selection of fifteenth-century biblical pageants, some of which are influenced by the Latin liturgical dramas of the medieval Church. Most of them are Corpus Christi pageants, chosen for their intrinsic merit from the cycles of York, Chester, Wakefield, Coventry and 'N.town'. There is also a translation of the Cornish Death of Pilate to represent this unique branch of Celtic literature. Professor Cawley has preserved the original words of the plays, but for the convenience of the general reader many archaic forms and spellings are modernized both within the line and in rhyme. Original stage directions are given and those in Latin are translated; difficult words and short phrases are glossed in the margin, while longer word-groups needing explanation are paraphrased in footnotes.