WINNOWING CHAFF: Constructing Morals and Contesting Universals in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Considering The Canterbury Tales exclusively, this panel seeks to investigate Chaucer's engagement with the epistemological and ontological debate over universals. Because The Canterbury Tales is situated in the midst of long-evolving and newly emerging philosophical debates--such as the dispute between Realists and Nominalists--any morality extracted from the tales must be understood in accordance with the (textual) construction of meaning in relation to these schools of thought. This panel is specifically interested in the relationship between the pilgrims' morals and universals, as well as the construction of meaning as influenced by Realism and/or Nominalism.

This session will be featuring a respondent, thus completed papers will be due to the respondent well before the conference, which will be held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI on May 12-15, 2011.
For more information regarding the International Congress on Medieval Studies please refer to:

http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/index.html

Paper proposals of 250-300 words, for a 15 minute presentation, along with a participant information form,
which can be found at:

http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#PIF

are due September 10th. Please send submissions and enquiries to:

elan.j.pavlinich@wmich.edu