Valuing Middle English Literature across the Divide A book-length study of the issue of literary value in Chaucer, Langland, Audelay, and Lydgate

3. Work plan, timeline, and future external funding The New Frontiers Grant would enable me to begin this project full time in the summer before the one-semester (at least) sabbatical that I plan to take in the fall of 2014. During most of the summer, I will pursue library research, drawing primarily on the world-class resources at the University of Notre Dame, to which I am fortunate to live in close proximity. In July, I will attend the biannual conference of the New Chaucer Society. I will be delivering a paper at this conference directly related to this project, attend relevant paper sessions, and get formal and informal feedback on the project from colleagues and potential publishers. In the fall during my sabbatical, I will continue my research. I have applied for a number of external fellowships (ACLS, Guggenheim, National Humanities Center, etc.), with the aim of securing funding to take a full sabbatical year. If I am successful, I will begin drafting the typescript during the spring, while continuing to pursue research, and I will then take the course release portion of the New Frontiers Grant in the fall of 2015, with the hope of completing a typescript of the monograph by the end of the calendar year. If I am not successful in securing external funding, I will use the course release in the spring of 2015 and aim to complete my research then in order to begin working on the typescript in the summer, with the hope of completing a typescript by the following summer.