Department of Language and Literature
News: Literature professor Jean-Marie Kauth presents talk on Chaucer and the medieval manuscript tradition

11/16/07 | Jean-Marie Kauth, Director of the Writing Program and Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Literature, presented an hour-long talk on Canterbury Tales author Geoffrey Chaucer today.

In a well-attended talk, entitled “Chaucer, ‘The Wife of Bath,’ and the Medieval Manuscript Tradition,” Kauth offered background information on Chaucer and his times before moving on to a discussion of the manuscript and publication history of Chaucer’s works. In addition to a wide array of images of significant Chaucerian manuscripts, a rare 1687 printing of Chaucer’s Complete Works, on loan from the Linardakis Collection, was also on display.

Kauth also led audience members in a reading of “The General Prologue” from The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, before asking for volunteers to translate passages from “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” into modern English.