The Portable Chaucer In the fourteenth century Geoffrey Chaucer,
who served three kings as a customs official and special envoy,
virtually invented English poetry. He did so by wedding the
language of common speech to metrical verse, creating a medium
that could accommodate tales of courtly romance, bawdy fabliaux,
astute psychological portraiture, dramatic monologues, moral
allegories, and its author’s astonishing learning in fields from
philosophy to medicine and astrology. Chaucer’s accomplishment
is unequalled by any poet before Shakespeare and—in The
Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Cressida—ranks with that of the
great English novelists. Both The Canterbury Tales and Troilus
and Cressida are presented complete in this anthology, in fresh
modern translations by Theodore Morrison that convey both the
gravity and gaiety of the Middle English originals. The Portable
Chaucer also contains selections from The Book of Duchess, The
House of Fame, The Bird's Parliament, and The Legend of Good
Women, together wit