The Yale Companion to Chaucer. Edited by Seth Lerer. New Haven, Ct: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. x + 420. $65.

The Yale Companion to Chaucer makes its appearance in a field already populated by guides and companions from Blackwell, Cambridge, and Oxford (the last in multiple forms), by specialized bibliographies from other publishers, and by internet sites that increasingly serve as a first-choice resource for teaching and research. Seth Lerer presents a three-fold rationale for a new volume. The Yale Companion, he explains, offers work from a generation of Chaucerians whose approaches reflect a close engagement with current scholarship and criticism. Though the team of contributors is international, the volume addresses an audience of American rather than British students, and it presents long essays rather than short topical entries. Each of these rationales tells us something important about our current moment in medieval literary scholarship.

Robert R. Edwards
The Pennsylvania State University