Chaucer at Oxford and at Cambridge

The author sets out, not to prove that Chaucer was an Oxonian or a Cantabrigian, or that the characters in the university tales may be traced to historical originals, but merely to explore the correspondences between the literary cities and their citizens and the historical ones, and to illuminate some of the details of Chaucer's poetry. He reconstructs the fictional milieu of these tales using fresh archaeological evidence and newly discovered old records in Oxford and Cambridge.