Temporal Circumstances provides powerful and detailed interpretations of the most important and challenging of the Canterbury Tales. Well-informed and clearly written, this book will interest both those familiar with Chaucer's masterpiece and readers new to it.

LEE PATTERSON, F. W. Hilles Professor of English at Yale University, USA, is the author of Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature and Chaucer and the Subject of History, awarded the Christian Gauss prize by Phi Beta Kappa. A Fellow of the Medieval Academy, he is the author of numerous essays on medieval literature.