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Chaucer in Iran
CFP: Chaucer in the Age of Medievalism: In sondry ages and sundry londes
13-14 November 2025. University of Lorraine, Nancy
Following the Chaucer: Here and Now exhibition (2023-2024) at the Bodleian Library, this conference–sponsored by the Modernités Médiévales association and the New Chaucer Society–aims to continue the reflection on the medievalist dimension of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work and its persistent influence in contemporary culture.
Far from being confined to his era, Geoffrey Chaucer’s work continues to resonate through the ages, inspiring a multitude of post-medieval representations. The poet himself remains a regularly invoked figure, sometimes even without direct connection to his texts, suggesting an autonomous legacy of Chaucer both as a man and an artist. Whether through the prism of cinema, music, theater, television, poetry, or other artistic forms, the poet remains an endless source of inspiration and reinterpretation. This conference invites us to question how adaptations and reinterpretations of Chaucer and/or his work by artists from diverse cultural backgrounds enrich our understanding of his legacy. His various incarnations over the centuries raise fascinating issues regarding intercultural dialogue, the politics of memory, and the evolution of popular culture.
Proposals may particularly focus on one of the following axes, without necessarily being limited to them.
Axis 1: Medievalist Echoes of Chaucer’s Work
A first axis of study will examine how Chaucer’s work is reinterpreted and adapted in contemporary culture through various artistic forms. What specific Chaucerian motifs and themes resonate in the modern context, and what are the reasons for this resonance? This exploration will study how artists adapt his work while preserving medieval elements and question the stakes of selecting and modernizing these elements. The influence of William Morris on the reception and representation of Chaucer will receive special attention. By publishing The Canterbury Tales in his Kelmscott Chaucer and bringing to life a romantic vision of the Middle Ages through works such as The Earthly Paradise, Morris profoundly
shaped the perception of Chaucer from the 19th century onwards. It will be relevant to examine how Morris, like others, reshaped Chaucer’s image to serve his own aesthetic and ideological ideals, in order to deepen the repercussions of this reinterpretation on the contemporary reception of Chaucer’s work.
We also invite study of the theatrical and poetic performances of Chaucer’s work and their contribution to renewing our understanding of the original text. The performance by poet Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze of “The Wife of Bath at Brixton Market” (2009) offers an interesting example of interaction between Chaucer and an engaged audience. How do adaptations of Chaucer in public or alternative spaces broaden the accessibility and scope of his work? Similarly, it would be pertinent to reflect on how contemporary projects such as Patience Agbabi’s Refugee Tales (2016) use Chaucer’s heritage to address issues of memory, identity, and inclusion. These initiatives contribute to reevaluating and revitalizing the importance of Chaucer’s work in the contemporary cultural landscape.
Axis 2: Chaucer Himself, Incarnations, and Appropriation
Beyond the poems that have endured, the figure of Geoffrey Chaucer is sometimes summoned in various works and rewritings, bringing the medieval poet back to life. In Brian Helgeland’s film A Knight’s Tale (2001), which takes its title from one of Chaucer’s works, the poet is one of the main characters. Affected by a gambling problem, debts, and a tendency to put his pen at the service of the highest bidder, this protagonist seems far from the traditional representation of authors. However, his poetic talent and, above all, his oratorical skill increasingly find a place in the plot, contributing to making the character an adjunct to the hero, but also and above all a figure of a rebellious demagogue. What implications does this medievalist and trivial interpretation of Chaucer have on the poet’s posterity and his reception by the general public? While knowledge of the specifics of Chaucer’s life is not necessary to understand or appreciate Helgeland’s work, this biographical input nonetheless enriches readings of the film. What are the stakes, then, of articulating popular reception and scholarly knowledge in the representation of Chaucer’s figure? This same association of the popular and the scholarly is precisely what guides the integration of the poet into Thierry la Fronde in 1965 (season 3, episode 10), recalling the series’ pedagogical and entertaining ambition, mixing fictional characters with easily identifiable historical figures. Each time, Chaucer is clearly named, and often subtle references to his work or biography, apparently aimed at a knowledgeable audience, pepper his staging. It is from this perspective that he also appears as a ghost in 2009 in The Simpsons series (season 20, episode 18), in reference to his burial in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. What do these uses of the poet’s image in popular culture say about his contemporary reception? Who are these nods aimed at, and what do they bring to the works concerned?
Communication proposals, approximately 2000 characters in length, should be sent by February 3rd, 2025, jointly to Justine Breton (justine.breton@univ-lorraine.fr) and Jonathan Fruoco (jonathan.fruoco@gmail.com).
Scientific Committee
Candace Barrington (Central Connecticut State University)
Justine Breton (SAMA, Université de Lorraine)
Vincent Ferré (CERC, Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle)
Jonathan Fruoco (CREA, Université Paris-Nanterre)
Patrick Moran (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Karin Ueltschi-Courchinoux (CRIMEL, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne)
Fanfiction in Academia: The Wife of Bath
by Sydney Lauer and Georgine Revilloza
https://www.tumblr.com/isumicurtis/
702833355612372992/a-couple-of-
select-illustrations-depicting-the .
When two of my CCSU graduate students expressed enthusiasm for fanfiction, I asked if they would provide us an inventory and brief analysis of fanfiction based on Chaucer’s character, The Wife of Bath. They graciously complied and collaborated on this useful introduction. They also received permission to reproduce the fanart by Caitlyn Chellew, a former student of Susan Yager (Professor Emerita, Iowa State University).
Please see this introduction as a useful adjunct to Anna Wilson’s groundbreaking work on fanfiction and premodern literatures. There’s so much yet to be explored. –Candace Barrington
Using the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale to unveil the appeal of fanfiction in academic and social conversation.
Part of an intertextual network, fanfiction is a work of fiction written by fans for other fans. These works pull from a source text or celebrity as a point of departure and are most commonly—but not always—distributed within spaces populated with members who share similar interests in fandoms, celebrities, or other fannish interests. These fans then metamorphose the source material to what most appeals to them, either deviating from or staying true to the source through such aspects as form and time period. Fanfiction and its variety add to academia, enhancing how we interpret source material and contributing to how readers, writers, and text intersect.
Chaucer, a canonical author, often engaged with widely circulated narratives, pulling what interested him and transforming them into The Canterbury Tales. Considered normal and admirable, this practice was employed by other notable writers such as Shakespeare, Milton, and more recently NYT bestselling authors Stephanie Meyer and Ali Hazelwood. Today, this would be considered fanfiction.
In this pair of essays, Georgine explores The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale (WBPT) fanfiction currently in circulation, reporting on the ways WBPT can help us understand word count, length, and the variants of English used in fan-made works. Then, Sydney explores why fanfiction appeals to writers and readers alike.
The Wife of Bath’s fanfiction: a fourteen-year retrospective of Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.Net
I must first establish my research’s cut-off date: December 12, 2022. I selected this date because it is when habireboo posted “Four weddings and a funeral,” the last WBPT fanfiction when I began writing this article. Coincidentally, Girlfrommarz published “Tonight with Chaucer the Wife of Bath,” the first WBPT fanfiction, on December 12, 2008, marking exactly fourteen years between the two works’ publication dates.
My research draws on works published on Archive of Our Own (AO3) and FanFiction.Net (FFN), leaving out other fanfiction-hosting sites. Readers can access works on AO3 and FFN without an account and locate WBPT fanfiction by using The Canterbury Tales sections on both sites. In contrast to these platforms, Wattpad, another popular fanfiction-hosting site, limits search results and thus access to stories from non-users. Despite my searching the tags “thewifeofbath” and “the wife of bath,” works irrelevant to WBPT flood Wattpad’s search results. These search issues spurred me to exclude Wattpad from my research data and instead hone in on more accessible archives.
In the Tales sections found in AO3 and FFN, I identified seventeen works of WBPT fanfiction by sixteen authors. Only one user, a_t_rain, authored two stories. I account for crossovers, crossposted works, tagged works, and untagged works.[1] AO3 hosts twelve stories and FFN houses three. Because two stories are available on both sites, the total number of distinct stories is fifteen. For the purpose of demonstrating the fanfiction that currently lives online, I do not include deleted works even with access to tools such as the Wayback Machine.[2]
Certain fanfiction categories dominate others. The thirteen non-crossovers, for example, eclipse the mere four crossovers in number, the crossovers including but not limited to the epic Beowulf and the British sci-fi show Torchwood. This example indicates a trend of WBPT fanfiction authors refraining from intersecting fandoms.
The pattern partially stems from students. Per either fanfiction summaries or authors’ notes, six authors have explicitly stated their works to originate as school or university assignments, suggesting a degree of inflexibility in deviating from instructor guidelines and including other fandoms. I will refer to these as “academic fanfiction.” The other ten authors do not disclose their work as homework, and I will refer to them as “non-academic fanfiction.” Two of these writers have even written WBPT stories for Yuletide, an annual fanfiction exchange dedicated to niche fandoms.[3] Together, the silence regarding whether the fanfiction is homework and the participation in a fandom exchange suggest these ten authors have written out of their own volition. Therefore, most writers intend their work as fanfiction rather than doubling as assignments.
While none of these seventeen works surpass the Tales‘s length, WBPT fanfiction’s average word count, excluding outliers across this and other calculations, stands at 3,399 words — the length of a typical short story. Fanfiction fitted for assignments lower the average. Again likely restricted by homework instructions, six academic fanfictions average to 823 words, similar to flash fiction’s word count. The average of the eleven non-academic works significantly outnumbers academic’s average, coming to 4,863 words per fanfiction.
All WBPT fanfiction uses English, which is perhaps due to the Tales‘s original language, yet one work deviates from the norm by interspersing words from Romanized Sanskrit. In “Mrs. Badrinath on the Kailash Yatra,” Cherepashka sprinkles in Sanskrit terminology such as “yatra” (meaning “journey” or “pilgrimage”) and “shilabalika” (referring to big-breasted, female sculptures reoccurring in some Indian temple architecture).[4] Cherepashka’s use of Sanskrit enhances the fanfiction’s Himalayan setting as the Wife embarks on what the author tags as a “Hindu Pilgrimage.”[5] Despite Chaucer being predominantly read in English, WBPT fanfiction shows how his intelligence can thrive in other languages.
Every author writes in Present Day English (PDE), but Middle English (ME) appears on occasion. Parodying the American TV crime drama Murder, She Wrote, sistermagpie’s “Mordre, She Wroot” plays with ME primarily in the title. ME lacks a dominant presence in sistermagpie’s story, yet dialogue such as “God clepeth folk to him in sondry ways” signals ME’s usage.[6] “The Seconde Tale of the Wyf of Bathe” author Beth H (bethbethbeth) also lightly smatters in ME, penning the word “certes” in between paragraphs bursting with PDE.[7] ME’s presence, however small, links WBPT and its fanfiction together.
Form also varies. Nine authors, such as CalumcGee and sistermagpie, use prose, cementing this style as most common in WBPT fanfiction. In comparison, only three authors, such as Girlfrommarz, favor playscript, ranking this form the least popular.
Four writers gravitate towards poetry, though the type of poetry differs. In “One Horny Poet,” TheClergy writes in limericks, a form known for its bawdy humor, as shown in the following example:
Chaucer is one horny poet
Full of seed and eager to grow it
The Wife of Bath’s hips
The Parson’s sweet lips
Both excellent places to sow it[8]
In contrast to TheClergy, “The Wife of Bath’s Second Tale” author mizelisa attempts to emulate Chaucer when writing in non-metered rhyming couplets, though her lines steer away from iambic pentameter: “And so through the pilgrims who did laugh / Came the voice of the good Wife of Bath.”[9] Both works make a nod to Chaucer’s style by presenting in poetic form. Nonetheless, his use of verse does not restrict authors from exploring prose and play scripts when writing fanfiction.
Variety blooms from WBPT fanfiction archived in AO3 and FFN. Across fourteen years and seventeen works, the data demonstrates writers’ preferences: non-crossover, prose works written in PDE, averaging around 3,000 words. Still, the same data illuminates how authors differ in crossovers, word count, language, English variants, form, and, for example, whether the text is intended as homework or not. Fanfiction thus paves many paths for authors to explore in their creative pilgrimage. The data exposes the vacuum of fanfiction oriented to replicate Chaucer’s style, challenging anyone to fill in that gap or fight against the grain by transforming WBPT into a work almost completely their own.
So why fanfiction? The academic, social, and literary appeal of fanfiction in the realm of academia and beyond
While we’ve discovered what’s out there in terms of WBPT fanfiction, we have yet to explore why reading or writing fanfiction has become an increasingly popular way to engage with texts. Surrounded by negative stigma and deemed “not real literature,” fanfiction has not only grown in popularity but the bad reputation surrounding it has been slowly dissolving over the last several years. Even New York Times bestselling authors, such as Stephanie Meyer (Twilight), Cassandra Clare (Mortal Instruments), and Ali Hazelwood (The Love Hypothesis) have stated their most popular novels or franchises began as fanfiction. So why do people decide to read or write fanfiction? What does fanfiction bring to the table, and what is its role in academic study?
The process of consuming fanfiction, either by reading or writing, offers these possible satisfactions: It provides closure to fans wanting more after they reach the conclusion of a text or the frustrating cliffhanger of an unfinished series. Writers can complete cliffhangers based on their interpretations of the original text, using their knowledge of the canon world—what fans generally agree on what happens in the source text—to build on the plot and characters already set in place by the original creator.[10] Fanfiction can also comfort readers looking for an alternate ending to a favorite TV show, movie, or novel. For example, what if the Wife of Bath never left on the pilgrimage to Canterbury? What would happen if she remained married to her first, second, third, or even fourth husband rather than being married a fifth (and potentially sixth) time? Fanfiction also provides writers and readers with a means to explore the endless possibilities set in place in the text’s canon world and make it their own. While fanfiction has not always been popular in academic spaces due to its status as “low-culture,” it has allowed both readers and writers to further explore the complexities and nuances of their favorite characters or worlds. Alisoun’s story does not need to remain in the confines of WBPT but can be explored beyond her pilgrimage to Canterbury, as explored in fics such as “The Wife of Bath’s Second Tale ” written by mizelisa on Archive of Our Own.
The addition of AUs, or Alternate Universes, perpetuates the complexity of what is considered canon. AUs is a descriptor used to characterize fanworks that change or alter one or more elements of the original work’s canon.[11] Popular AUs often take popular characters and thrust them into different situations, spanning from mundane coffeeshop AUs or complex alternate-ending AUs that throw the canon out the window. Members of fandoms often use AUs to explore characters in different contexts, or perhaps even merge them with different fandoms (called a crossover). One previously mentioned, such as “Mordre, She Wroot,” places Alisoun in a world reminiscent of the TV series Murder, She Wrote, where she solves the murder of one of the pilgrims. AUs can take characters out of the contexts of their worlds, plots, or even their own sense of self and transplant them into entirely new situations. Alisoun’s character can therefore be further explored in additional contexts outside of her brief story in The Canterbury Tales. These AUs add another layer of understanding to the source material, as they take elements of canon out of context and provide both fanfiction readers and writers the opportunity to investigate the nuances of the original text not previously explored.
Fanfiction is also not just a “for-fun” hobby that fans take up in their free time but hosts a variety of academic-based benefits for both reading and writing. Jacqueline Risch in “Not Just Lustful Literature: Self-Liberation through Fanfiction” argues that writing fanfiction still facilitates the necessary planning, techniques, and skills within the writing process that can be used in academic writing. While fanfiction is mostly creative writing, writers can play with style, organization, and audiences. As Georgine Revilloza details in her section, fanfiction can be academic assignments in addition to non-school-related projects.
Reading fanfiction, while it is not taken as seriously as traditionally published original works, is still reading. The greatest way for students to develop their reading skills is to read regularly. Students can discover what works in well-written fanfiction, such as plots, tropes, and other literary techniques also found in traditionally published original works read in literature classes. By reading fanfiction, students can draw connections, make predictions, and even explore themes, symbols, and motifs. They can later apply these skills to academic reading. Because fanfiction can function as “training wheels” for readers and writers, it is a fluid network of creative work that offers immediate gratification through the sharing of writing with others.[12]
While the source texts or real-life intrigue can vary, most people flock to fanfiction for similar reasons, such as providing closure to cliffhangers or deep-diving into the complexities of characters not otherwise explored in the source material. Reading a novel, a whole book series, or even a movie or TV show franchise only shows us a fraction of the world the writers of these texts have created. Fanfiction writers aim to expand upon the ideas, characters, or world-building within the canon universe. Using the source text as a “base,” or “jumping-off point,” writers of fanfiction have the opportunity to question essentializing narratives and embrace the distortion of the canon universe–the original plot and worldbuilding set in place by the source text’s author–or even take them out of context. Some just want to see their favorite characters live a happy ending; others are perfectly content writing a 200,000-word slow burn in which every favorite character in a certain fandom never finds happiness ever again.[13]
Whether it is taken seriously or not, fanfiction has a lot to add to the table of academia and literature as a whole. Acting as a way for people to continuously engage with texts they love, the conversation never has to end.
[1] Also known as xover and cross-universe, a crossover is fanfiction that combines elements of two or more texts and fuses them into a singular work. “Crossover,” Fanlore, Organization of Transformative Works, last modified August 16, 2024, https://fanlore.org/wiki/Crossover.
[2] “Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer,” Archive of Our Own, Organization of Transformative Works, January 22, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20161129041949/http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Canterbury%20Tales%20-%20Geoffrey%20Chaucer/works. When researching deleted works, I discovered DaemonMeg’s “Scavenging for Dreams.” This fanfiction is shown in an AO3 Tales section snapshot from the Wayback Machine. This work has since been removed from AO3 at the time of writing this article. DaemonMeg did not tag “Scavenging for Dreams” with WBPT, but other untagged works have contained related content. Because “Scavenging for Dreams” itself is not archived, I cannot reject the possibility that this work would fall under WBPT fanfiction.
[3] Morbane et. al., “Yuletide,” Archive of Our Own, Organization of Transformative Works, December 17, 2009, https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide.
[4] Cherepashka, “Mrs. Badrinath on the Kailash Yatra,” Archive of Our Own, Organization of Transformative Works, September 25, 2018. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059587
[5] See note 4 above.
[6] sistermagpie, “Mordre, She Wroot,” Archive of Our Own, Organization of Transformative Works, December 18, 2017, https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058556.
[7] Beth H (bethbethbeth), “The Seconde Tale of the Wyf of Bathe,” Archive of Our Own, Organization of Transformative Works, December 25, 2008, https://archiveofourown.org/works/90161.
[8] TheClergy, “One Horny Poet,” Archive of Our Own, Organization of Transformative Works, November 20, 2019, https://archiveofourown.org/works/21501718.
[9] mizelisa, “The Wife of Bath’s Second Tale,” Archive of Our Own, Organization of Transformative Works, October 10, 2019, https://archiveofourown.org/works/21162041.
[10] Canon is a source, or sources, considered authoritative by the fannish community. In other words, canon is what fans agree “actually” happened in a film, television show, novel, comic book, or concert tour. Specific sources considered canon may vary even within a specific fandom. “Canon,” Fanlore, Organization of Transformative Works, March 7, 2024, https://fanlore.org/wiki/Canon.
[11] Samutina, Natalia, “Fan Fiction as World-Building: Transformative Reception in Crossover Writing,” Continuum 30, no, 4 (2016): 433.
[12] Risch, Jacqueline, “Not Just Lustful Literature: Self-Liberation through Fanfiction,” Rhetorikos (blog), Accessed March 29, 2024, https://rhetorikos.blog.fordham.edu/?p=1712.
[13]A fandom is a group of fans, participating in fan activities and interacting in some way, whether through discussions or creative works…Fans of a fandom may or may not group together into fan communities, and this largely depends on how the fan understands the term itself. “Fandom,” Fanlore, Organization of Transformative Works, June 24, 2024, https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom.
Bibliography
Beth H (bethbethbeth). “The Seconde Tale of the Wyf of Bathe.” Archive of Our Own.
Organization of Transformative Works. December 25, 2008.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/90161.
“Canon,” Fanlore. Organization of Transformative Works. March 7, 2024.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Canon.
“Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer.” Archive of Our Own. Organization of Transformative Works. January 22, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20161129041949/http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Canterbury%20Tales%20-%20Geoffrey%20Chaucer/works
Cherepashka. “Mrs. Badrinath on the Kailash Yatra.” Archive of Our Own. Organization of Transformative Works. September 25, 2018. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059587.
“Crossover.” Fanlore. Organization of Transformative Works. Last modified August 16, 2024. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Crossover.
“Fandom,” Fanlore. Organization of Transformative Works. June 24, 2024. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom.
mizelisa. “The Wife of Bath’s Second Tale.” Archive of Our Own. Organization of Transformative Works. October 10, 2019. https://archiveofourown.org/works/21162041.
Morbane et. al. “Yuletide.” Archive of Our Own. Organization of Transformative Works. December 17, 2009. https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide.
Ray, Megan. “Why We Should Be Fans of Fan Fiction.” The New York Times. June 26. 2023. sec. The Learning Network. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/learning/why-we-should-be-fans-of-fan-fiction.html.
Risch, Jacqueline. “Not Just Lustful Literature: Self-Liberation through Fanfiction.” Rhetorikos (blog). Accessed March 29, 2024. https://rhetorikos.blog.fordham.edu/?p=1712.
Samutina, Natalia. “Emotional Landscapes of Reading: Fan Fiction in the Context of Contemporary Reading Practices.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 20, no. 3 (May 1, 2017): 253–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877916628238.
———. “Fan Fiction as World-Building: Transformative Reception in Crossover Writing.” Continuum 30. no. 4 (2016): 433. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877916628238.
sistermagpie. “Mordre, She Wroot.” Archive of Our Own. Organization of Transformative
Works. December 18, 2017. https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058556.
TheClergy. “One Horny Poet.” Archive of Our Own. Organization of Transformative Works. November 20, 2019. https://archiveofourown.org/works/21501718
Middle Ages in the Modern World: 2025 Conference Call for Papers
by Candace Barrington
We’ve heard from conference organizers–Professor Sarah Salih (KCL), Dr Josh Davies (KCL), Dr Rebecca Menmuir (Oxford)–that the much-missed Middle Ages in the Modern World (MAMO) biennial conference is being revived after a covid hiatus. In its 2025 iteration, this multidisciplinary conference on medievalism in the post-Middle Ages will also incorporate the biennial ‘London Chaucer’ conference as a dedicated thematic strand.
MAMO 2025 will be held at King’s College London, Strand Campus, on 24-26 June.
Here are the details for submitting a proposal.
Proposals for the 5th MAMO conference are invited for papers, panels, linked panels, readings and events about the ways in which the Middle Ages have been received, imagined, invoked, relived, used, abused, and refashioned in the modern and contemporary worlds. Creative and scholarly work from any discipline on any aspect of medievalism is welcome, but we are particularly interested in addressing:
- Inclusivity and exclusivity; the struggle to claim the medieval; medievalist activis
- Relationships between the medievalisms of scholarship, creative work, heritage and cultural industries
- Performance and re-enactment of the medieval
- Continuities: living and working with medieval buildings and institutions
- Local, national and global medievalisms; medievalisms of London
- The history and current state of medievalism studies
- Chaucer reception in all forms from the manuscripts to the present day
Please send any proposals or queries to themamoconference@gmail.com by 13 January 2025. If you are submitting proposals for single or linked panels, please consider diversity when selecting participants.
Updates from Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
by Candace Barrington
Jonathan Hsy and I are always pleased when we receive an email from a colleague who shares information about new (at least, new to us) translations or adaptations. And we are always pleased when we receive a note from a colleague who has found our pedagogical resources useful. This week, we were doubly pleased to hear from Dr. Marta Kapera of the Institute of English Studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.
In addition to providing an updated/corrected list of Polish translations of Chaucer’s Tales and Troilus Criseyde that date back to 1907, Dr Kapera also reports that she has recently taught a course called “Polish Chaucers”!
We’ve updated our list to reflect the new information Dr Kapera has shared.
Coming to the Folger: The Love Birds
by Candace Barrington
Once again, David Wallace has alerted us to a musical adaptation of a Chaucerian text. This time it’s “The Love Birds” at the Folger Library in Washington DC. Based on Chaucer’s The Parliament of Foules, the performance intersperses Chaucer’s “vision of avian politics … with bracing and intricate music of his times from England and France, perfectly mirrored by the newly-composed music” by Juri Seo, a Korean-born America composer.
Juri Seo’s website features excerpts from the composer’s jazz-inflected, chanson-influenced music for small ensembles.
The performances are appropriately timed for Valentines Day, 14-16 February 2025.
If you are able to attend the Friday performance on 14 February, consider arriving early for the pre-concert discussion with Christopher Kendall and Robert Eisenstein, co-Artistic Directors of the Folger Consort, at 7:00pm. Free entry with concert ticket.
Want to learn more? Or regret that you cannot attend? Register for the online seminar on Wednesday, 12 February, at 6pm. Led by Folger Consort Artistic Director Robert Eisenstein, this virtual seminar provides a sneak peek at the music performed.
The NCS Graduate Workshop at The Huntington Library
by Gina Marie Hurley
This year’s graduate manuscripts workshop focused on how to approach teaching with manuscripts while centering access and equity. Participants were asked to consider how they can facilitate student engagement with medieval material culture no matter where they end up teaching. The facilitators, each of whom taught hour-long interactive sessions, demonstrated a wide range of pedagogical techniques and considerations designed to address a diverse audience in terms of background and experience. Vanessa Wilkie led an introductory session on the institutional history of the Huntington, giving participants the chance to explore the exhibition space. The topics of each session were as follows: letting a manuscript and its materiality guide your inquiry (Ma), working with indigenous communities to preserve and protect sacred knowledge and materials (D’Arcens), teaching with digital manuscripts and correcting the editorial record (Whearty), and using a single manuscript to open up the study of medieval books more generally (Brantley). Each session concluded with a synthesis of the pedagogical approach by the organizers, Andrews and Hurley, and the culminating event of the day was a reception and hour-long discussion of how to activate medieval material culture in a range of classrooms.
Facilitators were Jessica Brantley, Louise D’Arcens, Ruen-chuan Ma, Bridget Whearty, Vanessa Wilkie.
Organizers were Tarren Andrews and Gina M. Hurley.
Additional indispensable support was provided by Matthew Fisher, Alice Fulmer, Kate Ramsey and Vanessa Wilkie.
Sponsorship for this session was generously provided by the Huntington Library, University of California, Los Angeles (Alex Stern, Dean of the Humanities and the Department of English), University of California, Riverside (Archive, Museum, Manuscript, and Print Studies) and Yale University (the Center for Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, the Institute of Sacred Music, and the program in Medieval Studies).
Recap: 2024 New Chaucer Society Biennial Congress, Pasadena, California, 14-19 July
by Candace Barrington
The global community of Chaucerians was well represented at the 2024 Congress. The gathering was an enormous undertaking magnificently organized by the local organizing committee led by Jen Jahner (Caltech) and colleagues from southern California colleges and universities. Kara Gaston (University of Toronto) oversaw the digital/hybrid aspects of the congress. Andrea Denny-Brown (University of California, Riverside) and Aditi Nafde (Newcastle University) co-chaired the program committee.
Before the Congress officially opened, Tarren Andrews (Yale University) and Gina Hurley (Yale University) designed and organized the Graduate Workshop at The Huntington Library.
Sif Ríkharðsdóttir (University of Iceland), New Chaucer Society Executive Director, and Wallace Cleaves (University of California, Riverside), President of the Tonva Taraxat Paxaava Conservancy, welcomed over 300 Chaucerians to the Congress. The Presidential Address by Stephanie Trigg (University of Melbourne), “Going Home,” explored the nature of returning “homward.” Her talk wove together subtle explications of passages from Troilus and Criseyde, our responsibilities as global citizens, as well as the Aboriginal Australians’ complex relationship to the concept of “Country.”
The Westin Pasadena served as the primary site for sessions, lunches, and receptions.
Global Chaucer Panels and Papers
Many panels and individual papers were devoted to global topics. The panels included
- Race, Performance, and Pedagogy in the Global Middle Ages. Organized by Bernardo Hinojosa (Stanford University)
- George Shuffelton (Carleton College) “The Harp and the Banjo: Medieval/Blackface Minstrelsy”
- Anthony Bale (Birbeck, University of London), “Thinking with the Medieval Renegade”
- Robert W. Barrett, Jr. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) “English Taverns, Chinese Teahouses: Staging Moral Instruction in Mankind and Qin Jianfu’s Easter Hall Elder”
- Heather Blurton (University of California, Santa Barbara) “Performativity, Antisemitism, and the Apostrophic Style: Lydgate’s Praier to Seynt Robert“
- Pacific Medieval Studies. Organized by Jonathan Hsy (George Washington University)
- Lian Zhang (Zhejiang University) “Teaching Chaucer in China in the Republican Period (1912 – 1949)”
- Koichi Kano (Meiji University) “Translating Untranslatable Expressions: Oaths, Swearing, and Exclamations”
- Dan Kline (University of Alaska, Anchorage) “Toward a North-Pacific Medievalism”
- Access: A Hybrid Conversation. Organized by Lisa Lampert-Weissig (University of California, San Diego), Eva von Contzen (University of Freiburg), Candace Barrington (Central Connecticut State University), and Katie Little (University of Colorado at Boulder)
- Ashby Kinch (University of New Hampshire) “Access Means Inclusion: Practices of Belonging the Graduate Education Sphere”
- Züleyha Çetiner-Öktem (Ege University) “Access to Higher Ed in the Era of Lockdowns and Beoynd: A Türkiye Case Study”
- Rick Godden (Louisiana State University) “Accessible Futures: On Failure, Inclusion, and the Not-Yet”
- Allegra Swift (University of California, San Diego) “Open Access Publishing: Community over Commercialization”
- Jose Francisco Botelho (unaffiliated Brazilian translator) “The Wife of Bath on the Brazilian Stage: Modern Translation Takes Chaucer on a Whole New Pilgrimage”
- Lara Farina (West Virginia University) “RPKed: Preparing to Fight Program Loss”
- California Medievalisms. Plenary roundtable organized by Wallace Cleaves (UC Riverside)
- Alison Locke Perchuk (California State University, Channel Islands) “Temporal Fixing and Importing Pasts: The European Middle Ages and the Making of US California”
- Wallace Cleaves “California as Lacunae and Palimpsest: Medieval Mythography and Indigenous Interlocutions”
- Kimberly Morales Johnson (Secretary for the Gabrieleno Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians and Co-founder and Executive Director of the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy) and Desireé Reneé Martinez (Registered Profewsional Archaeologist and Native American consultant for Cogstone Resource Management) “Preserving the Past and Presenting the Future: Indigenous Epistemologies of Continuance and Preservation”
- Chaucer’s Black London. Organized by Dorothy Kim (Brandeis University)
- Jonathan Hsy “Hoccleve’s Ethopians”
- Cristi Whiskey (University of California, Los Angeles) “Before Lives of Enslavement: the Black Diaspora into the Trans-Saharan World”
The individual presentations included
- Jonathan Fruoco (Université Paris Nanterre – CREA), “Bridging Worlds: A Mythocrial Exploration of The Conference of the Birds and The Parliament of Fowls in Cross-Cultural Translation”
- Curtis Runstedler (University of Stuttgart) “Chaucer, ChatGPT, and the Quest of Middle English AI in the Classroom”
- Sophia Yashih Liu (National Taiwan University) “Literature, Media, and Medievalism in the Non-Anglophone Classroom”
- Yoshiyuki Nakao (Hiroshima University) “Chaucer’s Editing of Dido: Beyond the Gender Boundary to Human Complexity”
- Ruen-Chuan Ma (Utah Valley University) “Books in ‘Ferne Halwes’ and ‘Sondry Londes’: Critical Provenances and the Evolving Object Legacies of Medieval Literary Manuscripts
- Yun Ni (Peking University) “Translating Griselda: Literary Nominalism, (Anti-)Allegory, and (Anti-)Romance in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale
Michael Calabrese (California State University, Los Angeles) organized a fabulous workshop, “Chaucer and the Latine Voices of East LA: A Selection from The Canterbury Tales Recited in Middle English and Translated into Spanish by CSULA Students.” The students were Nina Seif, Nathan J. Corral, Christina Gomez, Katie R Luna, Nadieshda Martinez-Mendez, Joanna M Rodrigues, and Darlene Rueda-Garcia.
International participation at the Congress was facilitated by hybrid panels available in each session. Though limited, these dedicated panels sought to ensure that colleagues attending from a distance could be part of the conversations throughout.
The Huntington Library and Gardens
A visit to The Huntington Library and Gardens capped off the official congress. There, we viewed the Ellesmere Manuscripts–opened to The Parson’s Tale–and enjoyed the Biennial Lecture, “Collecting Chaucer,” by Marion Turner (Oxford University).
The lecture included a section on the Bodleian Library’s recent exhibit, “Chaucer: Here and Now,” which featured the opening lines from Alireza Mahdipour’s Farsi translation as well as multiple examples of Chaucer’s global reception.
The event closed with a reception under the Huntington Rotunda.
Post-Congress Activities
Following the Congress’s official close, there were two excursions: one to the Getty Center, another to the Tongva Sites in Altadena and Los Angeles.
Also, in conjunction with the Caltech Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach, NCS sponsored a Workshop for local High School teachers: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for Today’s 9-12 Classroom. Focusing on the opening lines of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, Elizabeth Allen presented strategies for presenting the text to students in both Middle English and Present-Day English translation; Candace Barrington described assignments for bilingual students using translations (Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Farsi, and Arabic); and Kim Zarins guided the teachers through ways to incorporate the process of reading and writing adaptations of the tales into the class. All participants were provided a copy of Zarins’ 2016 Young Adult novel, Sometimes We Tell the Truth. Thank you Kitty Cahalan for handling ALL the logistics!
My thanks to Koichi Kano for sharing his photos.
News about Chaucer’s Farsi Translation Spreads throughout Iran
by Candace Barrington
On 5 March 2024, an interview between two Alirezas—Alireza Mahdipour (Chaucer’s Farsi translator) and Alireza Anushiravani (founder of the Iran Comparative Literature Society)—was broadcast as a webinar. Titled “Translation and Comparative Literature,” the interview introduced its audience to Mahdipour’s literary translations of English literature into Farsi before concentrating on his translation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (published by Cheshmeh Press in 2023). As the audience learned, although a translated (and retranslated) Shakespeare has been available to Farsi readers for more than a century ago, Mahdipour’s translation of the complete Canterbury Tales into Farsi is a first.
During the interview’s opening introduction, Mahdipour was asked about his age. He reports answering that “Chaucer and I are almost coeval, since it so happens that I was born in 1341 (according to Persian calendar, of course, which is 621 years behind or ahead of the Christian calendar, and you may be marveled to know that we are now in 1403!). This joke that I carry on seriously is of some significance: Chaucer’s time and situation somehow overlaps with that of ours and this helps us understand him sometimes better than some of his own contemporary fellow countrymen. Hermeneutically speaking, to understand the historical author we have to recreate the context of his text, which is lost to us (according to Schleiermacher) and/or we attempt to associate ourselves with his mind (according to Dilthey) or still, a more modern (actually postmodern) view, we may grasp some of the author’s ideas, intentions, and meanings only when they coincide or overlap with those of our own, and this happens in occasions when (according to the phenomenological approach of Heidegger and Gadamer), there is a ‘fusion of horizon’ between the author and the translator, since they establish a broader context within which they come to a shared understanding.”
Mahdipour goes on to explain that “In my argument I simplified all the above philosophical considerations by claiming that all these considerations are happily met with our present condition in Iran, as we are now in 1403! For example, in addition to having the Puritan discourse of England’s Commonwealth period, we are provided with medieval Summoners, who survived, or rather were revived, after their hibernation during Iran’s short period of modernization half a century ago.”
When asked about his decision to translate Chaucer’s verse into verse (rather than prose), he adamantly responded that a prose translation would ruin the merits of the book, as happened when an earlier prose translation appeared and was quickly disregarded. Because Chaucer’s achievement includes his use of rhyme and couplets—which are common devices in classic Persian narrative poetry—Mahdipour sees Chaucer as the perfect opportunity for a Persian translator with a poetic gift. Indeed, translating Chaucer was a pleasurable challenge for Mahdipour, since Persian prosody requires a strict rhythm and meter throughout the whole text, a feature achieved due to the flexibility of Persian syntax and its abundance of rhyming words. Thus, in addition to living in “coeval” times, Chaucer and his Farsi translator share the happy coincidence of writing in languages and poetic traditions sharing important qualities.
When asked about his intentions or motivations in choosing Chaucer, he referenced his article “The Translator Writes Back” published in Literature Compass (Vol. 15, Issue 6, 2018) and edited by Jonathan Hsy and Candace Barrington.
An Elegant Portuguese edition of Chaucer translated by Daniel Jonas
By Candace Barrington
Ana Sofia Guimarães, a University of Freiburg graduate student who served as a journal manager for New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession in 2023, alerted us to this new translation of The Canterbury Tales. Published in 2021, it features illustrations and layouts based on Edward Burne-Jones’s nineteenth-century woodcuts.
Just turning through Contos de Cantuária is a pleasure, and I look forward to working with Portuguese readers–and maybe even Daniel Jonas, himself–as we think about this new addition to Chaucer’s non-Anglophone translations.
