The Age of Chaucer: Pelican Guide to English Literature

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
In introducing this Guide to English Literature, it is as well to remember that this is the age of the Digest and the Headline, of the Comic and the Tabloid, of the Bestseller and the Month's Masterpiece: an age when a 'deep-seated spiritual vulgarity... lies at the heart of our civilization' in the words of the novelist, L. H. Myers.

A SURVEY OF MEDIEVAL VERSE
By John Speirs
Lecturer in English, the University of Exeter
Anyone interested to read English medieval literature, for its own sake and as a preliminary to a fuller enjoyment of modern English literature, will first ask himself a number of questions.