Ideas matter. In a complex world it is essential that citizens have the intellectual tools to understand and evaluate both their own culture and foreign cultures. As much as any writer can, Chaucer helps in enabling readers to think more clearly, because without being in any way pedantic he was an exceptional observer of both people and their environment. In narratives like the Knight’s Tale and the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Chaucer displays what it means to be forgiving toward human nature and its frailties. In poems like the Franklin’s Tale and the Clerk’s Tale, he offers in-depth and challenging exploration of human existence in reference to God and nature. In stories like the Man of Law’s Tale and the Prioress’s Tale, he requires us to interrogate our attitudes toward foreign beliefs. Across the Canterbury Tales he explores various social networks, displaying how they organize people for better and for worse. And throughout the book he demonstrates how language can be used either to illuminate or to deceive. As we read closely the Canterbury Tales, we will pay attention to Chaucer’s mastery of rhetoric and tone. Noting the verbal plays of ambiguity, irony, pun, slyness, bluntness, and problematic shadings in between, we will see how Chaucer puts English to use.

Honor and trust, sin and sanctity, wit and deceit, love and desire, marriage and fidelity, male and female, absolute and contingent truths, seriousness and play, destiny and free will, persistence in the face of adversity: these are Chaucer’s subjects. In various combinations these issues will enter our discussion each day of the seminar. The focus of our reading will generally be on Chaucer’s language as it relates to the details of a particular tale or to fourteenth-century English attitudes. But Chaucer’s thinking so often seems universal that most readers inevitably relate his ideas to current situations and problems, and we will certainly embrace this.

Method and Schedule

Over the course of the seminar, the group will read the General Prologue and the twenty verse tales in the order in which they appear in the fifteenth-century Ellesmere Manuscript and in standard editions of the Canterbury Tales, with sessions devoted to either one long tale or two short ones. We will generally hold four three-hour seminar sessions per week, supplementing these morning sessions with occasional field trips to medieval sites. The seminar’s work will be done in the way we have found to be most effective: through deliberative close reading of the tales in Chaucer’s Middle English, with a focus on significant passages and engaged discussion of the issues raised in them.

Our primary text is Larry D. Benson’s Riverside edition of the Canterbury Tales, which provides a good glossary, abundant explanatory notes, and helpful introductions on Chaucer’s life, works, and language. We will not require participants to consult secondary material, but we will make available a small library of recent scholarship on the Tales. Participants also will have access to libraries and computer facilities at the University of London and Canterbury Christ Church University.

Participants should be aware that we will read Chaucer’s texts in the original Middle English. For those with little or no background in Middle English, the daily reading will initially present a challenge, but one that is manageable. What typically happens when people first encounter Chaucer’s language is that they struggle with unfamiliar spellings and a few strange words, gradually start to recognize repeated key words, grow accustomed to the word forms and syntax, and soon become comfortable enough with Middle English to appreciate Chaucer’s precision while engaging with the stories and ideas. A growing mastery over the poet’s language is one of the many rewards of discovering Chaucer.

We will expect all members of the seminar to be active participants in discussion. The storytelling contest that provides the frame to the Canterbury Tales is premised on the idea that the winning tale will incorporate sentence and solaas, that is, serious meaning as well as pleasure. Our intent is to frame and direct a seminar in which participants learn what it means to embrace simultaneously the cheerful and the serious, the bawdy and the devout, the pub and the cathedral, the up, down, and sideways digressions of the experience even as they increase their appreciation and understanding of a poet and a book of poetry that have continued to enrich readers for upwards of six hundred years.

Assignments, Consultations, and Individual Projects

Participants will keep a journal/portfolio in which they respond to each day’s assignments and discussions. In addition, each participant will be required to produce a final project that may take the form of a critical essay, a teaching website, a creative response, a teaching unit, a syllabus, a recording, or a scholarly project. We hope to distribute copies of these projects to all participants shortly after the close of the seminar.

We will schedule two individual consultations with each participant, once during the first three days of the seminar, and again toward the end of the seminar. One or both of us will be available for regular office hours each afternoon.

London and Canterbury

The seminar is located in London and Canterbury so that we may study Chaucer in situ. London in the late fourteenth century has recently become a major topic in Chaucer studies. We will tour London-area Chaucer sites (including Southwark Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Cheapside, and the British Library, which houses Chaucer manuscripts), along with other medieval sites in and around the city. Very few structures remain from Chaucer’s day, but those that do—St. Bartholomew, Temple Church, the Guildhall, remnants of the ancient (originally Roman) London walls, and the Tower of London—will help us to uncover a Thames-centered culture and geography that readers of the Canterbury Tales often do not fully comprehend. A day trip to Oxford will allow us to see another of Chaucer’s worlds, the medieval university town.

Travel from London to Canterbury will be by chartered bus so that we may make stops at towns mentioned in the Canterbury Tales that retain their literary interest. In Canterbury itself, we will visit the Cathedral and St. Martin’s Church (the oldest parish church in England in continuous use), the ruins of the Castle and St. Augustine’s Abbey, and the City Walls near West Gate. One day will be devoted to exploring some remnants of the Pilgrims Way and, for those interested, taking a sturdy walk on it.

Participants in the seminar will have opportunities to explore London and Canterbury on their own. Occasional group activities will encourage collegiality without inhibiting this freedom. The Canterbury Tales displays an author who was well aware that the comforts of food, drink, and good lodging may loosen the tongue, enhance the spirit, and hold together a company of disparate, sometimes cantankerous folk. We stand firm in this philosophy.

The Seminar Directors

Susanna Fein is Professor of English at Kent State University. David Raybin is Professor of English at Eastern Illinois University. Our joint projects include editorship of The Chaucer Review: A Journal of Medieval Studies and Literary Criticism, two books on Chaucer—Rebels and Rivals (1991) and Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (forthcoming 2008)—and a 2007 Study Abroad summer course in England that included students from both our schools. Each of us has a longstanding commitment to working with school teachers, and as humanists who are drawn to the communal study of poetry, we look forward to this seminar experience.

Statement by David Raybin: My interest in working with teachers is deep and long-established. In the autumn of 1987, freshly returned from an NEH Institute on Chaucer, I applied to the Illinois Humanities Council for support to organize a springtime conference for school teachers on the Canterbury Tales at Eastern Illinois University. I thought of the conference as a one-time event, a way to share my experiences with a larger community. As it turned out, I have now organized an annual EIU Literature Conference for almost twenty years. The distinguishing characteristic of each conference is a focus on understanding, discussing, and appreciating a major author and text. I find that working with teachers is satisfying and natural, perhaps for the simple reason that I am passionate about teaching. I have been granted EIU’s two principal teaching honors: the Distinguished Honors Faculty Award in 1993 and Faculty Laureate in 2002. Though I sometimes return to the medieval French studies that I studied as a graduate student at Columbia, Chaucer is the main focus of my scholarship. I am now editor of The Chaucer Review, and I teach and write about the Canterbury Tales regularly.

Statement by Susanna Fein: Teaching Chaucer is integral to my life, and it has been for thirty years, ever since I studied at Harvard with Larry D. Benson while the monumental Riverside Chaucer was in production under his editorship. I am now Editor of The Chaucer Review and an elected Trustee of the New Chaucer Society. I teach Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to undergraduates every spring term, and to graduate students on a regular basis. Early in my teaching career, in 1989, I co-directed an NEH-sponsored Institute for High School Teachers on the Canterbury Tales held in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and I have been working with teachers ever since. Some of my recent graduate classes (one on Chaucer, one on Arthurian texts) have enrolled many high school teachers, in part because my department maintains an active M.A. for teachers. At Kent State I am also the Coordinator of an undergraduate interdisciplinary minor in Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies. In my scholarly life, I conduct research on medieval literary manuscripts and their contents. I am often in England for my research in archives and for medieval conferences, and I am familiar with London and Canterbury.

Professional Development for Participants

The seminar will not carry academic credit, but we will assist participants in gaining equivalency credit (such as CPDUs) in whatever ways are most helpful.

Accommodations, Facilities, Costs, and Stipends

The National Endowment for the Humanities provides a $3,000 stipend per person to help participants pay for living and travel expenses for this four-week seminar. The cost of accommodation in London and Canterbury, as described below, will be about $1,150 and will be deducted from your stipend with your approval. Travel to Oxford and between London and Canterbury will be paid from the NEH grant. Your personal travel, including transportation to England and local transportation in London, will be your responsibility. You will receive a check in June for the balance of your stipend, about $1,850, to help defray a substantial portion of your travel expenses. Applicants should be aware that London is a very expensive city, made even more so by a steep devaluation of the dollar. With summer airfares at $1,000 and up, you will have to spend some of your own money to meet daily costs for food, entertainment, and other living expenses. Additional information about projected costs is available at the seminar web site: http://www.eiu.edu/~neh2008/stipend_cost.

Housing and Facilities in London and Canterbury

The seminar will be held in London (three weeks) and Canterbury (one week). To provide for affordable housing in London, we will stay at the Mile End Campus of Queen Mary College, University of London, where single en-suite single rooms with communal kitchens are priced at £410/nineteen nights (~$860), an excellent rate for “modern, attractive, and comfortably furnished” London lodging. Queen Mary will also provide our meeting space. Library and computer facilities with internet access will be available, and participants can also readily find internet cafes off campus. Mile End Campus is located in east London about a mile east of St. Paul’s Cathedral, with convenient access to the central city by the Underground Tube.

During our week in Canterbury, we will stay at Canterbury Christ Church University, located near the Cathedral in the heart of the city. The accommodations will be in Lanfranc House, a self-catering house with en suite single rooms with communal kitchens, priced at £131.50/week (~$275). Canterbury Christ Church University will also provide our meeting space. Library and computer facilities with internet access will be available to participants.

New Chaucer Society Biennial Congress (Optional)

Following the conclusion of the seminar, interested participants are invited to join the seminar directors in attending the biennial Congress of the New Chaucer Society, to be held July 18-22, in Swansea, Wales. The officers of the Society have agreed to waive registration fees (normally ~$150) for teachers participating in the seminar. The Congress is the principal gathering in Chaucer studies, and it usually attracts two to three hundred scholars from around the world. Conference activities include a trip to the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth to see the famous Hengwrt manuscript, the earliest extant manuscript of the Canterbury Tales. The seminar directors will meet with attendant seminar participants to discuss conference events as they relate to our seminar experience, and we will also arrange interactions with distinguished Chaucer scholars.

Application Procedures and Deadlines

Application information and guidelines may be found at the NEH Guidelines link: http://www.eiu.edu/~neh2008/neh_guidelines.php. Your completed application, postmarked no later than March 3, 2008, should be addressed as follows:

David Raybin
NEH Summer Seminar
English Department
Eastern Illinois University
600 Lincoln Avenue
Charleston, IL 61920

Your application includes two letters of reference. Please ask each of your referees to sign his or her name across the seal on the back of the envelope containing their letter, and enclose the letters with your application. A local committee of scholars will review your application. We will inform you of the committee’s decision on April 1.

Perhaps the most important part of the seminar application is the essay that must be submitted as part of the complete application. This essay should include any personal and academic information that is relevant; your reasons for applying to the seminar; your interest, both intellectual and personal, in the seminar topic; your qualifications to do the work of the seminar and make a contribution to it; what you hope to accomplish by participating, including any individual research and writing projects; and the relation of the seminar to your teaching.

In selecting participants, we will follow NEH guidelines with no special criteria other than the desire to include highly motivated teachers from a variety of backgrounds. Prior knowledge of the Canterbury Tales or of Middle English is welcome but neither required nor expected.

If you have further questions, do not hesitate to get in touch with us. David Raybin may be most easily reached by e-mail at draybin@eiu.edu. His office phone number is 217-581-6980. Susanna Fein’s e-mail address is sfein@kent.edu. She may be reached by phone at 330-678-2628. We look forward to hearing from you.

With best wishes,

David Raybin and Susanna Fein