Many challenges we face today are expressed in Chaucer’s works but in a form different enough to shake us out of our heads so we can think honestly about what beleaguers human societies. On the one hand, his poetry is unfamiliar–high art from the fourteenth century cast in a language not ours, Middle English. On the other hand, his poetry is familiar, putting before our minds serious subjects we encounter today like military (and police) violence, sexual assault, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, class conflict, political protest, and social autonomy. This Chaucer class is about the politics of art and the art of politics.
