this volume and who has given me encouragement and
advice along the way. I have had much valuable advice
and criticism from a number of my former pupils. Their
diffidence forbids my making more specific acknowledg-
ment of my great obligation to them, but they know that
they have my gratitude.

The second edition of this handbook represents a revision
rather than a rewriting. Much of the material presented
in the original edition, based on foundations laid by the
mighty figures of the Golden Age of Chaucerian scholarship,
remains valid after twenty years of continuous exploration
of the field. My revision has attempted to take note, so far
as limitations of space permit, of studies that have appeared
during that score of years. In sifting some hundreds of notes
on books and articles, I am sure to have overlooked or to
have excluded material that will seem important to other
teachers of Chaucer. To them and to the scholars whose
studies I have not recorded, though I may have read them
with much interest, I must plead once more the largeness of
the "feeld to ere." I could not hope to do more than indicate,
in the body of the text or in the bibliography, the unfailing
stream of learning which has its source in a poet who has
never failed to quicken and broaden every mind that has
devoted itself to the study of his works.

I would record my especial gratitude to Professor Robert
Armstrong Pratt for invaluable suggestions and to my secre-
tary, Miss Margaret Sturgeon, and to Mr. Ignatius Matt-
ingly, Bursary Aide to the Department of English at Yale,
for their assistance in the preparation of my manuscript.

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