Animadversions on the Text of Chaucer, 1988

The address of the President to his colleagues at the Medieval Academy is an invitation to speak about a subject close to the heart. I was told by the aunt who met me at the boat when I returned from Persia (as it was then called) at the age of fourteen — a typical Kipling child, leaving my family on the other side of the world and returning home to school — that when she asked me what I was going to do when I grew up, I said firmly, “I am going to teach Chaucer.” Well, it has been my privilege to study and teach and edit and write about Chaucer for nearly half a century. So there is no subject that I could speak about closer to my heart.