This volume offers a fresh interpretation of Geoffrey Chaucer both as a poet and as a man. Taking as its starting point the idea of Chaucer as the 'Father of English Poetry', the book explores how the poet's thoughts on paternity and creativity lie at the heart of The Canterbury Tales.

• Introduction: The Dream of Father Chaucer


• Part I. On Certainty


• 1: Sexual Exegetics and the Female Text


• 2: The Uneasy Institution: Lineage and the Wife of Bath


• Part II. On Creation


• 3: Uncertain Labor: Conception and the Problem of Productivity


• 4: Adultery's Heirs: Multiplying Excess


• Part III: On Likeness


• 5: Almost Heirs: Daughters and Disappointments


• 6: Father Chaucer's Heirs

Samantha Katz Seal is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. She received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University in 2013. Her work has appeared in The Chaucer Review, Religion & Literature, postmedieval, and multiple edited collections. She is co-editor, with Nicole Nolan Sidhu, of two special journal issues: 'New Feminist Approaches to Chaucer' for The Chaucer Review, and 'New Feminisms' for postmedieval.