Introduction

Summary

The seed of the present book was planted by virtue of a modern example of cultural exchange: the European Union's Erasmus scheme for student and staff mobility. A dozen years ago, there appeared in Peter Brown's undergraduate Chaucer seminar a student named Ondřej Tichý. In the course of a class visit to examine manuscripts in Canterbury Cathedral archives, he displayed a precocious knowledge of medieval language and literature. It emerged that he was in fact a graduate student from Charles University, Prague, working with Jan Čermák (at that time Chair of the Department of English Language), and meanwhile contributing to the revised, online version of the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Subsequently, Ondřej relayed to his Canterbury tutor an invitation to deliver a talk in Prague. That done, Kent issued a reciprocal invitation to Jan Čermák. By this means, staff and postgraduates on both sides began to share their research agendas, talk about areas of mutual interest, and discuss possible historical periods for collaboration.

The choice fell fairly naturally on the second half of the fourteenth century: a golden age in Bohemia, Geoffrey Chaucer's heyday in England, and a central event connecting the two countries – the marriage in 1382 of Anne, daughter of Charles IV of Bohemia, to Richard II. We dubbed the nascent project ‘Chaucer in Bohemia’ and set about organising collaborative workshops in Canterbury and Prague. Their aim was to explore in more detail tentative themes and topics that might give substance to the project. Once we were sure of its viability, we announced the project at the International Congress of the New Chaucer Society held in Siena in the summer of 2010, and invited expressions of interest from other scholars.

‘Chaucer in Bohemia’ culminated in a colloquium held in Paris in July of 2018. The venue was Kent's postgraduate and research facility, its Paris School of Arts and Culture, in Montparnasse, that area of the city to which artists and writers flocked from the late 1800s through to the mid-twentieth century to enjoy its hedonistic, creative atmosphere. In a secondary sense, therefore, Chaucer was ‘in Bohemia’. For the purposes of the colloquium, as well as inviting those who were part of the project from its inception, we extended invitations to other specialists of international standing known to be working in cognate areas. We were also fortunate in attracting some leading figures in medieval studies to chair individual sessions.