Both The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Cressida are presented complete in this anthology, in fresh modern translations by Theodore Morrison that convey both the gravity and gaiety of the Middle English originals. The Portable Chaucer also contains selections from The Book of Duchess, The House of Fame, The Bird's Parliament, and The Legend of Good Women, together with short poems. Morrison's introduction is vital for its insights into Chaucer as man and artist, and as a product of the Middle Ages whose shrewdness, humor, and compassion have a wonderfully contemporary ring.

"Hattatal" is a treatise in Old Icelandic on the metres and verse-forms of Old Norse poetry. It forms the third part of the "Edda" (known as the "Prose Edda") of the Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Struluson (1179-1241). The first part, "Gylfaginning", deals with the mythological background to the diction of skaldic poetry; the second, "Skaldskaparmal", with the language of poetry. "Hattatal consists of a poem in 102 stanzas in various verse-forms in praise of the rulers of Norway, the young King Hakon Hakonarson (1204-1263) and Earl Skuli (1188-1240), composed by Snorri in about 1222/1223, after he had just visited the Norwegian court, together with a commentary which points out the main features of the variety of verse-forms that the poem exemplifies.;As the earliest medieval treatise on the metres of poetry in a Germanic language, it is of great importance to the understanding of the metres not only of Norse poetry but also of those of Anglo-Saxon and Medieval German, and it also provides insight into the ways in which a medieval vernacular poet perceived his work. This edition, the first one with English apparatus, is in normalized spelling and comprises an introduction, notes and glossary and is intended to make the text accessible to students with some knowledge of Old Icelandic.