Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 972. dj, 1386. Hardcover first edition - A fresh and detailed assessment of Chaucer's "The Legend of Good Women" (probably begun in 1386, after he had finished 'Troilus and Criseyde' and before 'The Canterbury Tales'), a work almost unknown, usually ignored except for the prologue, and often dismissed as a 'fragmentary failure.' Yet according to Frank, this work, containing nine stories about such women of antiquity as Cleopatra, Dido, Thisbe, Ariadne. Lucrece, Medea and Hypermnestrae, also marked Chaucer's movement into pure narrative poetry - a move which culminated in his masterpiece. Index. ix, 219 pp. ISBN: 0-674111907.