Month: January 2026

Reading Chaucer outside the Anglophone World: Receptions, Translations, and Traditions

by Candace Barrington

Plans for the next installment of “In Sondry Ages and Sondry Londes” are now in place. Organized by Sophia Yashih Liu (National Taiwan University), Yu-Ching (Louis) Wu (National Central University), and Jonathan Fruoco (University Paris Nanterre [CREA]), the conference will be held at National Taiwan University in Tapei and will honor Dr. Francis K. H. So, whose Mandarin Chinese translation of The Canterbury Tales was published in 2025.

I’ll be there, and I hope to see many of you there, too.

In Sondry Ages and Sondry Londes]
Reading Chaucer outside the Anglophone World:
Receptions, Translations, and Traditions
Date: March 12–13, 2027
Venue: National Taiwan University, Taiwan
**

The recent Mandarin Chinese translation of The Canterbury Tales (Linking Publishing, 2025) by Dr. Francis K. H. So offers a timely opportunity to reflect on the growing presence, vitality, and diversity of Chaucerian studies outside the Anglophone world. This significant contribution not only opens new avenues for engaging with Geoffrey Chaucer’s language and narrative art, but also foregrounds the crucial role of translation, pedagogy, and local scholarly traditions in shaping how Chaucer is read, interpreted, and taught across different linguistic and cultural contexts.

Aligned with the New Chaucer Society’s (NCS) ongoing initiative “In Sondry Ages and Sondry Londes” (curated by Dr. Jonathan Fruoco), this international conference seeks to advance a more globally grounded Chaucerian studies, one that situates the significance of Chaucer beyond the Anglophone world by foregrounding translation, adaptations, multilingual readerships, pedagogical practices, and cross-cultural intellectual exchange. By bringing together scholars working across diverse linguistic regions and by creating a venue for established scholars, early-career researchers, and graduate students, the conference aims to foster sustained conversations about Chaucer’s afterlives and to strengthen transnational scholarly networks shaped by translation, adaptation, and comparative inquiry.

The keynote speakers are Dr. Candace Barrington, Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University and President of the New Chaucer Society, whose work focuses on Chaucer and medieval English literature, especially global reception, translation, and adaptation, and Dr. Francis K. H. So, Professor Emeritus at National Sun Yat-sen University, whose scholarship centers on Chaucer, medieval and Renaissance English literature, East–West comparative studies, and the translation and global circulation of premodern texts.

We invite proposals that explore any aspect of Chaucer’s works, their translations and adaptations, as well as their critical or creative receptions outside the Anglophone world, or in comparative and transregional contexts. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Translation, Adaptation, and Literary Mediation
    • New approaches to, or challenges in, translating Chaucer into non-Anglophone languages
    • Histories of major translations and translators, and the role of translation in shaping local understandings of Chaucer
    • Considerations of the role publishers (both university and commercial presses) supporting and promoting editions of Chaucer outside the Anglophone sphere
    • Theoretical reflections on translation, vernacularity, and Middle English in multilingual or cross-cultural contexts
    • Chaucer-inspired works in contemporary literature, media, or visual culture
  • Reception, Pedagogy, and Intellectual Histories
    • Histories of Chaucerian scholarship in non-Anglophone academic traditions
    • Pedagogical practices and challenges in teaching Chaucer in multilingual or non-Anglophone classrooms
    • Chaucer in textbook cultures, anthologies, curricula, and the formation of literary canons, particularly the “World Literature” category Chaucer in Global and Comparative Perspectives
  • Cross-cultural approaches to medieval narrative, performance, humor, or religiosity
    • Comparative medievalisms across linguistic, national, or cultural traditions
    • Reading Chaucer alongside non-Western or premodern texts (for example, The Tale of Genji, The Cloud Dream of the Nine, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms), with attention to narrative framing, irony, or social satire
    • Intersections between Chaucer and local philosophical or aesthetic traditions
  • Texts, Traditions, and Critical Methods
    • Critical innovations on Chaucer’s oeuvre (The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, the dream visions, Chaucer’s translations of Latin and French texts, and shorter poems), through lenses such as gender, race, affect, ecology, embodiment, or disability
    • Manuscript studies, material culture, digital humanities, or archival research, particularly Middle English manuscripts housed in Asia and the global South.
    • Chaucer, colonialism, and postcolonial reception histories in non-Anglophone contexts

The conference will be held in person on March 12–13, 2027, at National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. Please submit a proposal (250 words in English) along with a brief bio of 100 words to readingchaucer@gmail.com by June 30, 2026. In addition to individual paper proposals, the conference welcomes panel proposals consisting of three to four papers organized around a shared theme. Panel submissions should include a panel abstract (300 words) outlining the panel’s coherence and relevance to the conference theme, along with individual paper abstracts (250 words each) and a brief 100-word bio for each participant.

We particularly welcome submissions from graduate students and early-career scholars, and we hope this gathering will reinforce and expand long-term networks of Chaucerian research beyond the Anglophone world. There is no registration fee for the conference. For updated information, please visit the conference website: https://readingchaucer.com/.

This event is co-sponsored by the New Chaucer Society (NCS), the Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies (TACMRS), University Paris Nanterre (CREA), and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), Taiwan.

Conference Organizers:
Sophia Yashih Liu, National Taiwan University
Yu-Ching (Louis) Wu, National Central University
Jonathan Fruoco, University Paris Nanterre (CREA)

Džefri Čoser’s Serbian translator: Professor Boris Hlebec

by Candace Barrington

Much of the history of the Global Chaucers project could be written be detailing a series of chance encounters and missed opportunities. One of the more recent examples of a chance encounter was my meeting Danko Kamčevski (Metropolitan University of Belgrade) this past November at the Chaucer in the Age of Medievalism conference at the University of Lorraine (Nancy, France). He not only knew about Boris Hlebec’s 1983 Serbian translation–Džefri Čoser’s Kanterberijske priče–but offered to send me a copy. Indeed, just a few days after the conference, he wrote that he’d found a copy and gone to the post office to mail it, only to be informed that, in response to the ongoing tariffs, the Serbian Post Office does not allow packages to be sent to the United States.

Meanwhile, Danko has shared a careful explication of Hlebec’s translation of a passage from The Knight’s Tale as well as forwarded Sergej Macura’s 2025 article examining the metrical and lexical equivalences between Chaucer’s Middle English General Prologue and Hlebec’s translation. He has also notified me that Professor Hlebec has recently died. Never getting to correspond with Chaucer’s Serbian translator is my missed opportunity.

Eventually, I’ll find a way to get Kanterberijske priče, and both Danko Kamčevski’s explication and Sergej Macura’s article will contribute significantly to my current writing project. I do wish, though, that I could have thanked Professor Hlebec for his contributions.