Tag: Appropriation

Papal visit and other items of interest

by JONATHAN HSY

Left: Papal visit swag on sale at George Washington University. Right: Screenshot of Carolin Bergvall's recordings at PennSound
Left: Papal visit swag currently on sale at George Washington University. Right: Screenshot of Caroline Bergvall’s recordings at PennSound (September 24, 2015).

As I sit in my office this morning writing this blog post, the Pope is addressing a joint session of the US Congress on the other side of town (follow the live-streaming of the speech here). After concluding this visit, the Pope will continue on a busy itinerary through Philadelphia and New York.

To mark this occasion, check out Caroline Bergvall’s Chaucerian/BBC mashup about a previous (2006) papal visit: “The Summer Tale (Deus Hic, 1).” Both the text and a voice recording can be accessed at PennSound.

(For more information on the papal visit and DC-area sites relevant for papal history and Franciscan culture, see my blog post at In The Middle.)

Other topical items of interest:

A blog posting about medievalist responses to the global refugee crisis, with a nod to Chaucer pedagogy (with a passing reference to Bergvall’s work Drift, which evocatively refracts the current refugee crisis by way of the Old English poem The Seafarer).

In The Middle is promoting a special discount for two important books on medievalism (recently published by Boydell & Brewer)!

Chaucer, Historiador: Chaucer in Post-Peronist Argentina

by JOSEPH STADOLNIK, with introduction by CANDACE BARRINGTON

BsAsBooksToday’s guest blogger is Joe Stadolknik, a graduate student at Yale University. In his first Global Chaucers post, Joe continues his investigation of Chaucer’s presence in Argentine culture and education. We first learned about his  intriguing work in this area when Joe presented in the Global Chaucers Roundtable at the New Chaucer Society Congress in Reykjavik. There, he looked at the unexpected intersection of Jorge Luis Borges, Chaucer, and women’s magazines. Here, he continues by sharing with us how Chaucer was used to introduce students at the University of Buenos Aires to medieval social history.    

We think you will find Joe’s introduction to  José Luis Romero’s post-Peronist appropriation of Chaucer another fascinating example of what Global Chaucers have to offer. Please share your thoughts with us. –CB

CHAUCER, HISTORIADOR

Chaucer’s General Prologue was required reading for students at the University of Buenos Aires in the sixties, but not as prologue to reading the Canterbury Tales. Rather, students of social history read a Spanish prose translation as an entrée into the study of medieval life. The Prologue was printed as the first installment in a series of texts that wended its way circuitously from Chaucer (#1) through printings of Matthew of Paris (#30), the Play of St. Nicholas (39), Trotsky (51), and an account of the 1378 revolt of Florentine wool carders (54). The course in social history at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters appears to have nominated Geoffrey the pilgrim, speaking in Spanish, to introduce Argentine university students to the structure and substance of medieval society.

The booklet’s construction and design was thoroughly practical. The paper is thin, and the text rendered in a plain typewriter typeface. A title page credits the prodigious postwar Spanish translator Juan G. de Luaces for the rendering out of Middle English. Beyond that, this ad hoc printing provides little in the way of context for the Prologue. There is no description of the Canterbury Tales themselves, and no biographical information about their author. Its readers were left to make what sense they could of certain details Geoffrey provides about the pilgrims (the Prioress’s Stratford-atte-Bowe accent in French, or the pardoner’s affiliation with St. Mary Roncesvalles) without the aid of explanatory notes.

ChaucerHistoriador1 The pictured copy was printed in 1966, but it appears that printing began as early as 1961. This is the earliest date I could find for any booklets in the series “Textos Para La Enseñaza de la Historia: Historia Social” [Texts for Teaching History: Social History]. Presiding over the facultad throughout that period was the prolific and wide-ranging Argentine historian José Luis Romero. His appointment, first as rector of UBA from 1955-6 and then as dean of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras from 1963-65, coincided with the depoliticization of the university after the fall of Juan Perón in 1955. This process of desperonización replaced Peronist favorites with a more qualified professoriate (though not an apolitical one, as Romero was a committed Socialist). Romero had trained as a classical historian but wrote extensively on medieval economic history, borrowing methods from the Annales school. At UBA he would found the “cátedra de Historia Social General” in 1957 [the Seminar for General Social History]. By 1959, the department was requiring all of its students to take a course in social history.

ChaucerHistoriador2 Chaucer’s place in Romero’s telling of Western history, then, might explain what exactly the Prologue was doing on the history syllabus at UBA. In two surveys of the medieval period, La Edad Media (1949) and La cultura occidental (1953), Romero marks Chaucer out as a man of his historical moment, keeping company with Boccaccio and Juan Ruiz. Chaucer can’t help but adopt a “new attitude” toward nature, sensuality, and the pleasure of life, in spite of the Church’s best efforts (La cultura occidental, p. 35). He laughs at the imperfections of the clergy with his readers; he speaks for a protohumanistic ‘radical optimism’ that contended with the ‘anguished pathos’ of the danse macabre and Flemish mystics (La Edad Media, 183 and 189). Chaucer figures in Romero’s history as one more witness to, and proof of, the cultural transformations of the late Middle Ages, set in motion by a crisis of socioeconomic order as feudalism made way for commodity capitalism (Edad Media, 72-76; Romero would write two later books on the late-medieval crisis of feudalism). The course reached for the Spanish translation of Chaucer’s Prologue first as a social-historical document, but Dean Romero had also seen in Chaucer a modern bent of mind. Chaucer’s pilgrims seem to have made their way into the classroom at the University of Buenos Aires as diverse glimpses into life during the long autumn of the Middle Ages, realized by a man of that season.

Further Reading

Buchinder, Pablo. Historia de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1997.

Peter Burke. “Romero, Historiador de Mentalidades.” In José Luis Romero: Vida historica, ciudad y cultura. Eds. José Emilio Burucúa, Fernando Devoto, and Adrián Gorelik. San Martín: UNSAM Edita, 2013: 97-108.

Fernando Devoto and Nora Pagano. Historia de la historiografía argentina. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2009. See especially pp. 339-77.

José Luis Romero. La Edad Media. Mexico City: Fonde de Cultura Económica, 1949.

—. La cultura occidental. Buenos Aires: Editorial Columba, 1953.

Pilgrim out of town: Chaucer’s Modern Echoes

by Gail Ashton

St. Pancras, Gray’s Inn Road, to Holborn… Holborn viaduct with its knight flanked by two dragons guarding one of the old city gates…on to Cheapside, Poultry, Bankside…and there ahead London Bridge streaming with traffic and people: to the left, upriver, Tower Bridge, to the right St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the dirty old River Thames chopping and surging below and everywhere crowds walking as if they know where they’re going, contemporary buildings scraping the skyline. And, as if from nowhere, Southwark Cathedral tucked into a hollow, its perfect rising tower the centrepiece to long sweeps of stone fanning out on either side.

This is the oldest church building in London. It stands at the oldest crossing point of the tidal river Thames and was for many centuries the only entrance to the city this side of the river. Some believe there was a place of worship here as far back as Roman times but the ‘modern’ cathedral was re-founded in 1106 by 2 Norman knights. It has had a long and colourful history thereafter.

Yet, as befits this evening’s event with its title Chaucer’s Modern Echoes, this is not simply a medieval shrine but a building at the heart of contemporary life. It’s ringed by the Thames, by bridges and tenement-style wharfsides. In the closing years of the last century the Millennium Buildings were created where the priory of the religious community once stood. Soon there will be a new railway viaduct and the tallest building in Europe, the Shard, standing nearby. Around a corner and along an alleyway and here are the ruins of Winchester Palace, home to a host of medieval bishops. There’s a replica of the Golden Hinde ship, a sign to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and the Clink Museum, site of the former Clink Prison, the oldest gaol in England dating back to 1140.To the left of the cathedral, the small busy Borough market is crammed beneath the railway viaduct, and all the time trains grind along the track, postmodern structures in glass and steel mesh lean into the cathedral yard, straining for a share of its light.

This is a narrow cathedral, the eye drawn to the altar with its small high window. I almost overlook John Gower’s gaudy tomb tucked into the wall and just beyond it Chaucer’s window which depicts the Canterbury pilgrims about to set off on their journey. And before I can even get in to look around I have to wait for the close of a memorial service dedicated to one Michael Cox, master vinter and part of a family owned UK wine company; it’s as if Chaucer has just stepped from the shadows for a last glance at the evening to come.

Tom Eveson and Gabby Meadows intersperse the performances with extracts from Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales, Tom in his fabulous rendition of Middle English and Gabby with her mellifluous modern readings. I speak about Chaucer’s literary heritage and his contemporary afterlives with special nods to the fabulous LeVostreGC aka Brantley Bryant and to the medieval meme rendition of the Mamas and the Papas (I never thought I’d be singing in Southwark Cathedral). Lavinia Greenlaw took us on a narrative journey through her haunting A Double Sorrow. And Patience Agbabi blew the roof off with her dramatic performances from Telling Tales: Harry Bailly’s fictional biography; the Prologue’s Grime Mix; her Prioress’s Tale or the amazing Sharps an Flats; the sassy Things alias The Shipman’s Tale; Unfinished Business or the Melibee, her clever and disturbing mirror poem; before ending with Makar, the Franklin’s Tale.

Best of all, as we take turns to speak, in my left ear all night is the rumble and clatter of trains, a helicopter whirring, and Patience stepping into her Sharps an Flats with its call to Damilola stabbed in real life and left to bleed to death in a stairwell, a police siren wailing in time to Chaucer’s still ticking pulse.

My warmest thanks to Poet in the City, especially to Isobel Colchester, Suzy Cooper and Gabby Meadows for hosting and organising this amazing event. And too to the Dean of Southwark Cathedral for bringing over 300 people into such an iconic space.

Watch out for audio interviews when they’re released.

Patience Agbabi’s remixed Chaucer

by Candace Barrington

BusTelling Tales, Patience Agbabi’s re-conception of the Canterbury pilgrimage aboard a bus, receives a saucy notice this week on the Times Literary Supplement‘s back page (28 March 2014). Calling her remix “an energetic compendium of familiar stories translated into the contemporary idiom of street slang and slam poetry,” the note closes with this with this interesting desiderata: “Now that Mr. Chaucer has his own blog (just try Googling it), we impatiently await his verdict.”  LeVostreGC, it sounds as though the TLS wants to hear from you!

Chaucer: Modern Echoes – Patience Agbabi and Lavinia Greenlaw, 10 April 2014

by Jonathan Hsy

Patience-Agbabi-Southwark-CathedralHere’s an exciting event for members of the Global Chaucers community who are in the London area!

Gail Ashton is the editor (with Daniel Kline) of Medieval Afterives in Popular Culture (Palgrave, 2012), with further work on medievalism to appear in the near future (more on this soon!). She has just informed us of this very exciting event called Chaucer: Modern Echoes to be held on 10 April 2014, 7PM at Southwark Cathedral. Tickets cost £10 and can be purchased online; visit the event website to purchase tickets and for more details.

This event features readings of Chaucer’s work alongside presentations by two neo-Chaucerian superstars:

Patience Agbabi, poet and author of Telling Tales (Cannongate, April 2014), a mixed-form, multi-voiced verse retelling of The Canterbury Tales. [See this earlier blog posting about her work!]

Lavinia Greenlaw, poet and author of A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde (Faber & Faber, 2014), a retelling of Chaucer’s classic.

We hope to have some more about this event on this blog after it happens! Stay tuned.

Review of Chaucer in Denmark at Medievally Speaking

by Candace Barrington

DenmarkAn early contributor to the Global Chaucers blog, Ebbe Klitgård, published his one-of-a-kind study, Chaucer in Denmark,  in 2013.  I had the opportunity to review it for Medievally Speaking.  Without reprinting the entire review, I draw your attention to my final admonition:

With the commendable precedent for the study of Chaucer’s non-Anglophone reception now in place, Chaucerians and medievalists should encourage similar studies by our colleagues in predominately non-Anglophone universities and cultures.  Such work enriches the study of Chaucer in important ways, yet its survival is not necessarily ensured.  Because we know first-hand the difficulties of maintaining medievalist lines in English departments where we serve an English-speaking student population, we should be sympathetic to the even more precarious situations of Chaucerians housed in foreign-language departments. By attending to what they can tell us, ordering their books for our campus libraries, and by incorporating their research and translations into our own studies, we can support their important work and their careers.  We have just begun to listen to them; it would be shameful to lose their voices now.

Ebbe will be at the NCS Congress in Reykjavik this summer and one of the panelists on the Global Chaucers Roundtable, where his topic will be “Chaucer in Denmark since 1945: A Discussion of Some Adaptations and Translations, with a Focus on Illustrations”

The Medieval Globe: a new journal of interest

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by Candace Barrington

The Medieval Globe, a new journal edited by Carol Symes, is now accepting submissions. It explores the modes of communication, materials of exchange, and myriad interconnections among regions, communities, and individuals in an era central to human history. It promotes scholarship in three related areas of study:

1. the direct and indirect means by which peoples, goods, and ideas came into contact

2. the deep roots of allegedly modern global developments

3. the ways in which perceptions of “the medieval” have been (and are) constructed and deployed around the world.

This third area will be of particular interest to those involved in Global Chaucers, it seems, and we look for suggestions for possible collaborative projects. If you have any ideas or proposals, please contact either Candace (barringtonC@ccsu.edu) or Jonathan (jhsy@ccsu.edu).

Coming soon: Patience Agbabi’s Telling Tales!

by Candace Barrington

The latest update on Patience Agbabi’s Telling Tales from The Guardian.  Part performance poetry, part written verse, Agbabi’s retelling of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales provides an exciting update to the medieval text.  Jonathan and I have had the chance to read parts of it, and we’re excited to get our hands on the complete text available in (of course!) April 2015.

We’ve also learned from Lawrence Warner that Agbabi performed parts of Telling Tales at University College-London last week. Once we learn more about the performance, we’ll add a post.