New Companion to Critical Thinking on Chaucer

Stephanie L. Batkie is a Teaching Associate Professor and the Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at the University of the South. She works on Middle English and medieval Latin literature. Matthew Irvin is Associate Professor of English, Chair of Medieval Studies, and Director of the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium at the University of the South. He and Stephanie Batkie are currently co-translating John Gower's Vox Clamantis for the TEAMS Medieval Text Series. Lynn Shutters is Special Assistant Professor of English at Colorado State University; she teaches medieval literature, medievalism, and emotion and literature.

[A] deeply ethical book whose immediate, constant, and sincere concern is the profound human significance of individual words employed by Chaucer in the creation of his fascinating stories and characters. Each word is chosen for its perennial urgency, immersing readers in a vital literary universe—and inviting them to get personally, civically, socially, philosophically, and bodily engaged with Chaucer’s strikingly modern and relevant poetry. Readers long to engage with issues of sexuality, consent, bodies, race, color, morality, work, creativity, equity, power, agency, and authority—all important discourses in twenty-first-century pedagogy and revealed here as major, trans-temporal themes of Chaucer’s work.[...]A powerful tool for our classrooms, this collection unrelentingly makes Chaucer’s concerns urgent, and it could not have come at a better time in our critical history.

• Introduction, by Stephanie L. Batkie, Matthew W. Irvin, and Lynn ShuttersForeword, by Christopher CannonCLUSTER 1Consente/Assente, by Fiona SomersetEntente, by Candace BarringtonPite, by Glenn BurgerSlider, by David RaybinResponse Essay, by Ardis ButterfieldCLUSTER 2Merveille, by Tara WilliamsVirginite, by Sarah SalihSwiven, by Helen BarrCrafte, by Bruce Holsinger Response Essay, by Simon HorobinCLUSTER 3Vertu, by Holly Crocker Wal, by Marion TurnerThing, by Steele NowlinBlacke, by Cord J. WhitakerResponse Essay, by Carolyn DinshawCLUSTER 4Auctorite/Auctor, by R. D. PerrySecular, by Catherine SanokFlesh, by Richard H. GoddenMemorie, by Ruth EvansResponse Essay, by Andrew ColeAppendix 1: Summaries of the Works of ChaucerAppendix 2: Additional TermsAppendix 3: Coverage by TermAppendix 4: Coverage by Work