This book justified my decision to major in history and not English or literature. Literature criticisms and analysis bore me to tears. I read deeply the introduction, the section on the prologue to Canterbury Tales, and the conclusion. I skimmed a lot of the middle book, just trying to pick up on the major theme(s) of each of the featured tales. The two authors really dig Chaucer and praised him often. I had a hard time reading the English of the medieval world, so I just guessed at what the words were when lines from the Canterbury Tales were quoted. Michael Hoy's work (chapters are written by individuals, this was not a group effort) was much more accessible to me than Stevens; it seems Stevens was trying to write for a Masters or PhD level essay and not the lay person.
I basically picked this up to fill a Pop Sugar prompt and it did its job but did not convince me to read the full work.
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