The Legend of Good Women

Abstract

About the time Chaucer was at work on The Canterbury Tales, it is likely that he paused, perhaps in 1 386, and wrote the "Prologue" to The Legend of Good Women. This return to the form of the dream vi­ sion, which he had abandoned before composing Troilus and Cri­ seyde, has often puzzled readersunderstandablysince it ap­ parently interrupts the development of Chaucer's craft that can be traced from the early poems through Troilus and the Tales . l More unusual still, in 1 394 or 1 395 , when he was well under way with the Tales, Chaucer probably returned again to the first version of the "Prologue" (F) and revised it. The revision (G) differs from the ear­ lier F text in its elimination of certain personal and biographical matters, such as the directive toward the end of the poem: