Susanna Fein and David Rabin, ed., Chaucer: Visual Approaches. University Park, Penn.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016, pp. 302.

When Susanna Fein and David Rabin, the editors of The Chaucer Review, set out to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their journal, they chose an excellent theme for a book: visual approaches to Chaucer. The result of their choice and their collaboration with other Chaucerian scholars is a valuable book: Chaucer: Visual Approaches. In an age when it is possible to view myriad images of Chauceriana online just through a Google keyword search, it is necessary to articulate logical ways of analyzing the available visual materials and relating them to Chaucer’s literary works. As Fein and Rabin state in their preface: “In offering to Chaucerians and other medievalists an amply illustrated volume of essays, we hope to display an array of models for how Chaucer may be read alongside visual evidence” (xv). Their book does indeed achieve this aim, and it does so in part through its organization. The volume is divided into three parts: “Ways of Seeing,” “Chaucerian Imagescapes,” and “Chaucer Illustrated.”