A Companion to Chaucer and his Contemporaries provides a detailed introduction to medieval culture, broadly considered. This sourcebook gives readers fuller access to Middle English literary works by situating these works within their sometimes alien historical and cultural contexts. Chapters open with an overview that suggests how contemporary debates and attitudes influence meaning in works like the Canterbury Tales, Piers Plowman, and Mankind. The main body of the text is thematically arranged primary documents and illustrations, such as excerpts from the chronicles, law treatises, sermons, court records, medical and alchemical tracts, and performance records, as well as maps and manuscript illustrations. Comments “This invaluable collection offers students a first-hand glimpse of the diversity of voices and ideas that underlie, complicate, and exceed the canonical literature of the later Middle Ages.” — Nathanial B. Smith, Pedagogy “A Companion to Chaucer and his Contemporaries will be essential to teaching Chaucer in the 21st century. It gives students direct and convenient access to the documents and texts that have changed the way we think about late medieval literature. From the dramatic vistas of rebellions, heresies and schisms to the practice of everyday life, the texts provided by Amtower and Vanhoutte demonstrate how history and literature shape each other, both in the Middle Ages and in our own time.” — John Ganim, Professor of English, University of California Riverside and former President of the New Chaucer Society
