‘Chaucer’s World’ Study Days in Oxford for Post-16 Students: Enhancing Learning and Encouraging Wonder

Abstract

This collaborative essay, structured as a collection of tales akin to Chaucer's, provides a multiperspectival reflection on enhancement study days, entitled 'Chaucer's World', co-organised by the University of Oxford, the Ashmolean Museum, the Bodleian Library, and secondary schools from the area. The event is aimed at UK secondary school students in their final two years of study, and is intended not only to help students with their preparation for the A-Level English Literature exam but also to instil in them appreciation for Chaucer's works, as well as for medieval literature and culture in general.

Surviving and Thriving in Secondary Schools: A Response to the Cluster on “Medieval Studies and Secondary Education”

“…so as to surface rather than deny the exigencies of history" and to supply "a space of freedom for the discussion of the difficult and the undiscussable" (2021,. If we are able to embed within school curricula a teaching of the Middle Ages that, for example, centers African sovereignty instead of European imperialism (Terry 2022), uses troubadour music to help students confront the literary histories of misogyny (Stokol 2022), or brings back the wonder of "Chaucer's World" through its surviving objects and places (Turner, Baker, Caseby, Cory, Harris, Perkins, and Richer 2022), I believe the medieval can achieve the "gleaming character" that will enable it to thrive.…”