SOURCE: "The Legend of Good Women," in The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957, pp. 480-82.

F. N. Robinson is the editor of the widely used The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer noted for its extensive textual notes and introductions to Chaucer's works. In the following essay originally published in 1933, Robinson discusses the Legend of Good Women in relation to its sources and other works by Chaucer.

Next to the description of April "with his shoures sote" at the beginning of the Canterbury Tales, probably the most familiar and best loved lines of Chaucer are those in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women which tell of his adoration of the daisy. Both passages are notable examples of the freshness and simplicity—the "vernal spirit which soothes and refreshes"—long ago praised by [James Russell] Lowell as characteristic of Chaucer. The quality is truly Chaucerian, and by...