The Lost Lectures of C. Vann Woodward focuses on lectures Woodward delivered in the mid-twentieth century that reflect his life-long interest in exploring the contours and limits of liberalism during key moments of great change in the South. [J]ust as The Canterbury Tales, which is a somewhat fragmentary execution of what Chaucer actually intended, give great pleasure, and great provocation, so can these intriguing snippets of the musings of a truly great historian's mind.