Book excerpt: "When Lady Philosophy, coming to rescue the ailing Boethius, castigates the "poetical muses" around his bed as "comune strompettis," she poses a problem for any medieval poet who seeks to reconcile art with morality. According to medieval theory, it was the poet's duty to instruct and uplift through moral wisdom, but Chaucer's gifts led him to an artistic vision independent of moral sanctions, one with the energy and vitality of life itself. Although he set out to put his art in the service of moral truth, he was aware of an equivocal worth in the truth of his poems that ultimately led him to retract the best of them in the moving conclusion to the Canterbury Tales. This book presents a comprehensive interpretation of Chaucer's work by tracing his changing conceptions of his craft. Its theme is Chaucer's constant struggle to reconcile the moral "auctorite" of his age with the "experience" of his vision as an artist. Although the book takes a stand on current critical disputes about Chaucer, it also serves the students and general reader and an introduction and companion to a first reading of the poet. The main emphasis of the book falls on the Canterbury Tales, but the tales are set within an overall picture of Chaucer's development, and there are key chapters on Troilus and the Legend of Good Women. The author concentrates on the texts themselves in extremely successful effort to provide original interpretations of individual tales within the frame of a larger story: Chaucer's evolution as a poet both for his age and for all of time." -Publisher.