Paul Strohm: Chaucer's Tale (2015)
Paul Strohm: Chaucer's Tale, one of the Talks and Screenings at the Folger, was held at the Washington National Cathedral Saturday, January 10, 2015 at 6:30pm.
Paul Strohm has been J.R.R. Tolkien Professor at the University of Oxford and, more recently, Garbedian Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He has written numerous scholarly books, from Social Chaucer (Harvard, 1989) through Conscience: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2008). November of 2014, Viking Press published his microbiography, Chaucer’s Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury.
His Folger lecture, “Chaucer and the Road to Canterbury,” began with the surprising observation that Chaucer himself probably never visited Canterbury and that the Canterbury Tales ends with his pilgrims still short of their destination. He went on to suggest that for late medieval England, Canterbury was not only a geographical place but an idealized locus of spiritual aspiration and desire.
Books were available for purchase and signing.