Professor Laura Ashe, Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, received the New Chaucer Society’s 2026 Publication Prize for her book, Chaucer’s Ethical Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2025). Awarded on 30 July 2026 at the Society’s biennial Congress in Freiburg, Germany, the prize recognizes Professor Ashe’s book as Best Monograph on Chaucer published in 2024 or 2025. Past NCS presidents and trustees served as judges.
During the congress’s closing event, outgoing society president, Professor Candace Barrington (Central Connecticut State University) recognized Professor Ashe’s winning book. The committee applauded Ashe for her enormous argumentative verve, which is clearly the product of long teaching of Chaucer. Her book’s unabashedly personal approach yields exhilarating and intense engagement with key philosophical questions that Chaucer’s poetry raises by way of two unusual interlocutors, Wittgenstein and Hegel. With its convincing arguments, delivered with force and supported by masterful close readings, the book attests to how such traditional methods of analysis, in concert with ideas that matter to us now, continue to yield groundbreaking contributions to Chaucer studies.
Professor Ashe commented: "I'm absolutely delighted with this honour, and tremendously grateful that my work has been recognized by such an impressive judging panel."
The New Chaucer Society, a global academic organization founded in 1977, provides a forum for teachers and scholars of Geoffrey Chaucer and his age, a period roughly defined as 1300-1500. Its biennial congresses attract hundreds of members from around the world who share the latest scholarship and pedagogical techniques with one another. In addition, the 2026 Congress included plenaries on recent editions of Chaucer’s works, Professor Barrington’s Presidential Address, “Welcome the Stranger,” and Professor Holly Crocker’s NCS Biennial Lecture, “Chaucer’s Enchanted Subjects.”
