[A] deeply ethical book whose immediate, constant, and sincere concern is the profound human significance of individual words employed by Chaucer in the creation of his fascinating stories and characters. Each word is chosen for its perennial urgency, immersing readers in a vital literary universe—and inviting them to get personally, civically, socially, philosophically, and bodily engaged with Chaucer’s strikingly modern and relevant poetry. Readers long to engage with issues of sexuality, consent, bodies, race, color, morality, work, creativity, equity, power, agency, and authority—all important discourses in twenty-first-century pedagogy and revealed here as major, trans-temporal themes of Chaucer’s work.[...]A powerful tool for our classrooms, this collection unrelentingly makes Chaucer’s concerns urgent, and it could not have come at a better time in our critical history.