Just who is this book supposed to be for?

The idea of this volume, and the other volumes in this series, is to take a great literary work, present its text, then present information to help students study it. This approach is probably effective -- when the work is in modern English and the level of the notes matches the audience.

That is hardly the case with Chaucer. He wrote, of course, in Middle English. Most of what he wrote is still comprehensible, with work, but all save the most advanced students will need a glossary. Most texts gloss the harder words in Chaucer. Not this one.

That, on its face, would clearly mark it as a volume for college students.

Then why, oh why, are the "activities" and "discussions" at the end so elementary? Frankly, based on the material at the back, I would have guessed this volume to be intended for middle schoolers. "Make a list of some of the exempla that the Pardoner uses in his tale, and the purpose of each reference," indeed!

Oh, and the artwork has been printed so dark that its quality is almost obscured. And couldn't they have gotten actual photographs of the Ellesmere manuscript rather than woodcuts based on it? The whole work gives an impression of a slapdash job.

In one sense, it hardly matters. The Pardoner's Tale is such a brilliant work that it's hard to mess it up. Indeed, that may be one of the problems here -- gilding a lily is not only pointless, it is extremely hard work! But I have to think a good copy of The Canterbury Tales, with glossed text and short introduction and notes, would be far more effective in dealing with this particular tale than is this book. The format surely is more suited to tales such as the Monk's. ( )