A free public lecture by UO English Professor Warren Ginsberg will offer an introductory look at Geoffrey Chaucer's “Canterbury Tales,” on Monday, Jan. 6, in Knight Library's Browsing Room on the UO campus. The talk, entitled "God’s Plenty: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales," begins at 7 p.m.

The lecture serves as an introduction to material that will be covered in more depth by Ginsberg in a UO Insight Seminar on “The Canterbury Tales.”

Registration is now open for the seminar, which will begin Saturday, Jan. 11, and will occur on four consecutive Saturdays (Jan. 11, Jan. 18, Jan. 25 and Feb. 1) from 9:30 a.m. to noon in the Knight Library’s Browsing Room. The cost for the seminar is $99. Learn more and register online.

Participants will encounter the drunken Miller, who revels in anything off-color; the rambunctious Wife of Bath, who demands that women rule their husbands; the consummate Pardoner, a con man so cunning he reveals his scams to the audience he intends to defraud. These pilgrims and others as vivid come to life in Chaucer’s verse.

UO Insight Seminars focus on the humanities, particularly on “meaning of life” topics of keen interest to adults. Led by UO faculty members, the seminars require careful reading of both primary and secondary materials. The seminars are noncredit and ungraded.

John Dryden, an 18th century English poet, put his finger on one quality that makes Chaucer seem modern no matter when he’s read. “The Canterbury Tales,” Dryden said, captures the whole English nation: “Tis sufficient to say … here’s God’s plenty.”

- by Chloe Huckins, UO Office of Strategic Communications intern