His website’s simplicity added to its longevity.Ī few years ago, the site migrated to a new platform and was given an updated appearance, but the core elements and the core mission remain the same, bringing Chaucer and his world to an audience far beyond what could be imagined in medieval London, Canterbury, or Bath. And because Benson worked alone he kept it simple: he did not embed third-party proprietary products, which would inevitably grow outdated. Whether his choice of Unix was prescient or lucky, he chose a portable language that is still an industry standard, unlike other choices in the late 1980s. Each new visitor has vindicated Benson’s egalitarian vision for the study of Chaucer.īenson did most of the work himself, by which I mean he pecked away at his personal computer’s keyboard writing code in the Unix operating system. It was sought out by everyone from high school students to seasoned scholars, because anyone with an internet connection could access it just by entering “Harvard Chaucer” in their browser. A site counter installed in 2004 recorded 83 million visits (and who knows how many millions before 2004?). Word spread quickly, and Harvard’s Chaucer webpage soon attracted a global audience. It was a self-contained library with everything a student of Chaucer might need to know. Other links led to summaries of courtly love, medieval astronomy, the Black Death of 1349, important scholarly articles, and much more. A click of the mouse brought up excerpts from The Romance of the Rose illustrating how Duenna, a seasoned expert on the tricks of love, inspired the Wife of Bath’s rhetoric. The site included notes explaining what the Wife of Bath’s scarlet stockings signified. At its core were the full texts and a complete glossary of the Tales taken from those magnetic tapes, but that was only the beginning. After Benson converted the tapes, his plan for them made him a pioneer of what we now recognize as the digital humanities.īenson soon launched Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website to help with his large lecture course on The Canterbury Tales, which enrolled as many as 300 students in the 1980s and 1990s. The Text Encoding Initiative, which standardized the format of digital texts, didn’t issue its guidelines until 1994. Reference works like dictionaries and encyclopedias were available only in printed form. When The Riverside Chaucer was published, email was still a novel curiosity. Shortly after the publication of The Riverside Chaucer in 1987, its editor, Larry Benson, retrieved a copy of the magnetic tapes that Houghton Mifflin used to print the book, because he recognized the potential for using machine-readable texts in scholarship and teaching. The spiritual and doctrinal aspects of the activities at the Chaucer Study Center are entrusted to Opus Dei, a personal Prelature of the Catholic Church founded by Saint Josemaria.“Geoffrey Chaucer” is an unlikely name to find in the vanguard of the digital humanities, but there’s an unheralded story that puts him there, thanks to a Harvard professor’s labor of love. Through this contact, they learn the value of true, enduring friendship and professional dedication.a lesson that lasts a lifetime. To provide room and board to laity and priests support religious and educational activity conducted by the Roman Catholic Prelature of Opus Dei via. Answering back to a world of fake news and divisive political narratives, this course revisits Geoffrey Chaucers classic story-collection, The Canterbury. An integral aspect of the spirit imparted by Chaucer Drive Study Center comes through contact with our experienced and dedicated staff and residents. We also foster the supernatural confidence of men who realize that God is their Father who cares personally for them. We strive to instill in everyone a sense that life is a human and supernatural adventure in which the pursuit of truth and meaning is a challenging but rewarding endeavor. Chaucer Drive Study Center's work with men provides them direction and encouragement to see their life's work and family responsibilities in a larger, more generous way: to view them as a means of serving God and others, a framework for character growth, and a way to contribute to the common good of society. It offers programs to students and professional men to develop the personal qualities that enable them to integrate faith, study, work and friendship. Chaucer Drive Study Center is a not-for-profit supplemental character education center for men located in Houston, Texas.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |