In this key anthology Derek Pearsall offers a radically new approach to those teaching and studying English writing from Geoffrey Chaucer to the early work of Edmund Spenser.

Derek Pearsall is the Gurney Professor of English at Harvard University and was Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, 1965-85. His numerous publications include John Lydgate (1970), Old English and Middle English Poetry (1977), The Canterbury Tales: A Critical Study (1985), An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Langland (1990) and The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (1992).