Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne: rethinking the record

Content warning: Please be aware that this event discussed sensitive and potentially triggering topics including sexual assault.
On 11 October 2022, we held a webinar to share new archival findings from Dr Euan Roger, Principal Records Specialist in the Medieval team at The National Archives and Professor Sebastian Sobecki Professor of Later Medieval English Literature at the University of Toronto.
Event description:
Few medieval records have received as much attention from literary scholars as a group of documents dating from May to July 1380 that involve Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne, the daughter of a London baker. At the heart of this group of records is a quitclaim of May 4, enrolled in the Close Rolls of the English Chancery, releasing Chaucer from “all manner of actions related to my raptus”. The word raptus, which in legal contexts can denote “rape,” “abduction,” and much of the spectrum lying between these terms, has challenged Chaucer scholars ever since Frederick J. Furnivall announced this find in 1873. The matter was given significant new impetus in 1993, when Christopher Cannon discovered a second quitclaim by Chaumpaigne - with the word raptus removed - enrolled in the plea rolls of the Court of King’s Bench a few days after the first. Cannon’s discovery has energised foundational strands of Chaucer studies, in particular feminist scholarship, over the last thirty years, but in this time no new documentary evidence has come to light.
You can read the related articles published in the Chaucer Review here: muse.jhu.edu/p...
Presenting the new findings:
Dr Euan Roger is Principal Records Specialist in the Medieval team at The National Archives
Professor Sebastian Sobecki is Professor of Later Medieval English Literature at the University of Toronto
Respondents:
Dr Sarah Baechle is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mississippi
Dr Carissa Harris is Associate Professor of English at Temple University
Dr Samantha Katz Seal is Associate Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire
Professor Andrew Prescott is Professor of Digital Humanities (English Language & Linguistics) at the University of Glasgow
Professor Christopher Cannon (chair) is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and Classics at Johns Hopkins University

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