Call it a split decision.

The technique in the Cambridge "Selected Tales from Chaucer" series is mostly good: Select a good text of a Canterbury Tale, print it in a modernized form that helps the relatively casual reader, supply a glossary and notes, and offer a good introduction to the sources and problems of the tale.

All of this is done in this edition, although I really wish there had been glossing on the page. And the introduction is detailed and useful -- and somehow just doesn't seem right. There is too much legalism. For example, it argues that the whole crux of the Tale -- Dorigen's promise to sleep with Aurelius if he can remove the rocks of Brittany -- is non-binding because it violated Dorigen's prior oath to her husband. This argument might prevail in a court of law. But it misses the point. Dorigen had created for herself a genuine moral dilemma, and she knew it even if the editor doesn't, and the whole point is that it works itself out because she maintains her trouthe. (That is, her truth, her troth, her integrity, her station in life, her honesty -- it's a very rich word.) Because "trouthe is the highest thing that man can keep." With that line, Chaucer justified his tale -- and, indeed, justified all his romances.

The editor downplays that. Not completely -- it's too important a point to brush aside. But it's almost as if trouthe is an inconvenience in the way of gentilesse (gentleness, nobility), the other virtue of the Tale.

This really grated with me. But I'm an oddity -- I really feel trouthe, and I regard it as the highest thing, and I find it hard to understand someone who seems to be writing it off. Set that aside and you have a very good book. I'm just not ready to set it aside. ( )