Chaucer's Thameside Life and Poetry

Chaucer’s Thameside Life and Poetry 

Applications are invited for an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award at the University of Oxford, in partnership with The National Archives.  

This fully-funded studentship is available from October 2025. Further details about the value of an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP award are available on the DTP’s studentships page. The studentship can be studied either full or part-time. 

Closing date: 7th January 2025 (midday, UK time)

Project overview 

This project sets out to answer some or all of these questions: 1) How does Chaucer’s own understanding of landscape, both rural / semi-rural, and urban, relate to his poetry? 2) How did Chaucer and his contemporaries think about human impact on the environment? 3) How does the material landscape of Chaucer’s world relate to the imagined worlds of his fictions? 

Chaucer lived in London, Westminster, and Kent. His work often involved him closely with environmental matters: he worked on the Wool Quay at the Customs’ House supervising the shipping of wool down the Thames to the world; as Clerk of Works, he supervised the building of a new wharf on the river. Chaucer was a member of a Kent commission set up to investigate walls and ditches on the Thames between Greenwich and Woolwich. Such commissions involved assessing and building flood defences, making sure trees were planted and that pigs were contained to protect the banks. The commissioners’ role involved environmental protection – but they were also seen as imposing royal interference into local matters. There were also human-created threats on the banks of the Thames and in the woods:  Chaucer was robbed near Deptford at the ‘Fowle Oak’. This borderland area was a place notorious for crime and brigands, where jurisdictions overlapped and merged. 

The river and environment is evident in Chaucer’s poetry in myriad ways: for example, he writes specifically about the Thames in Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan; a water-mill is central to the Reeve’s Tale, and he uses images of fish-weirs in Troilus and Criseyde and the House of Fame. Chaucer’s contemporaries also wrote about the Thames: in the Confessio amantis Gower imagines it as a place of courtly play; in the Male Regle Hoccleve writes about it as an artery connecting London and Westminster, but also as a place where class is recognised and enforced. 

Within the general area of the relationship between Chaucer’s environment and his imagination, you are encouraged to develop your own project that engages both with Chaucer’s texts and with the rich archives available at The National Archives. We anticipate that you will explore a currently understudied set of records relating to commissioners of walls and ditches, alongside a wide variety of inquisitions, petitions, legal records, and indentures. This archival work will take place alongside literary analysis of Chaucer’s texts. Ecocriticism is a growing and urgent area in literary studies, and we anticipate that this project will engage closely with recent work on the environment.  

Supervision 

This project would be supervised by Professor Marion Turner at the University of Oxford and Dr Euan Roger at The National Archives. The student will be expected to spend time at both the University of Oxford and The National Archives. 

The successful candidate would receive access to the usual training available at the English Faculty, University of Oxford, including in teaching, and would be encouraged to attend a wide range of seminars in English, in medieval studies, and in environmental humanities. Supplementary training in palaeography and languages would be available if required. At The National Archives, they would receive training in handling archival materials by attending The National Archives’ Postgraduate Archival Skills Training (PAST) workshops (“Introduction to Archives”, “Skills and Methodology”, “Legal Records”). 

The successful candidate would also have the opportunity to contribute to significant public engagement outputs at The National Archives, developing their research into innovative and creative outputs and contributing to corporate strategies and projects. 

How to apply 

We invite applications from candidates from all backgrounds and ethnicities. Applicants should usually have a first-class or high upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours (or equivalent international qualification). Applicants will ideally have, or be studying for, a Masters in Literature, Medieval Studies, or another discipline related to the project, and/or prior experience of public engagement projects or archival research that could be considered equivalent to Master’s study. Applicants should meet the eligibility criteria for Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC studentships. 

For an informal discussion about the opportunity and how you might frame your approach to the CDA project, please contact Marion Turner marion.turner@ell.ox.ac.uk in the first instance. 

Should you require any reasonable adjustments or support throughout the application process, please contact Marion Turner. 

You should apply to the DPhil in English by 7th January 2025 (midday, UK time), indicate your interest in being considered for an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP studentship and submit a completed copy of the OOC DTP Application Form at the same time.