Books by Alastair (Yale University Minnis

A lively and accessible introduction that will be invaluable to readers new to Chaucer or familiar with his work through The Canterbury Tales. Leading Chaucer scholar Alastair Minnis offers an account of the poet's known writings, their historical and literary contexts, and the diverse ways in which they have been interpreted over the centuries.

Leading critic Alastair Minnis investigates the relationships between authority and the vernacular in a range of texts from late medieval England. The significance of 'vernacularity' is discussed with reference to court patronage of literature, textual commentary, heretical doctrine, and tales of suspicious saints and relics.