At last available in a single volume: comprehensive overviews and concise analyses of the key critical texts and approaches to the most-studied works of literature. By assembling extracts from essays, reviews, and articles, the columbia critical guides provide students with ready access to the most important secondary writings on one or more texts by a given writer. each volume: -- Offers a balanced and nuanced approach to criticism, drawing on a wide array of British and American sources -- Explains criticism in terms of key approaches, allowing students to grasp the central issues for each work -- Is edited by a noted scholar who specializes in the writer or work in question -- Includes notes and a comprehensive bibliography and index. The General Prologue to the canterbury tales has long been central to the English literary canon. Jodi-Anne George provides a detailed introduction to the most important critical debates surrounding The General Prologue. The extracts and essays included here date from as early as 1368, when Eustace Deschamps paid the first recorded tribute to Chaucer's genius, and move chronologically through to the late 1990s. The selections address the opinions of early editors of Chaucer as well as the continuing interest in the poet by other writers throughout the ages. Sociological, gender-based, historical, and structural readings of The General Prologue are also represented.