Much of the history of the Global Chaucers project could be written be detailing a series of chance encounters and missed opportunities. One of the more recent examples of a chance encounter was my meeting Danko Kamčevski (Metropolitan University of Belgrade) this past November at the Chaucer in the Age of Medievalism conference at the University of Lorraine (Nancy, France). He not only knew about Boris Hlebec’s 1983 Serbian translation–Džefri Čoser’s Kanterberijske priče–but offered to send me a copy. Indeed, just a few days after the conference, he wrote that he’d found a copy and gone to the post office to mail it, only to be informed that, in response to the ongoing tariffs, the Serbian Post Office does not allow packages to be sent to the United States.
Meanwhile, Danko has shared a careful explication of Hlebec’s translation of a passage from The Knight’s Tale as well as forwarded Sergej Macura’s 2025 article examining the metrical and lexical equivalences between Chaucer’s Middle English General Prologue and Hlebec’s translation. He has also notified me that Professor Hlebec has recently died. Never getting to correspond with Chaucer’s Serbian translator is my missed opportunity.
Eventually, I’ll find a way to get Kanterberijske priče, and both Danko Kamčevski’s explication and Sergej Macura’s article will contribute significantly to my current writing project. I do wish, though, that I could have thanked Professor Hlebec for his contributions.
Colloquium organizers–Justine Breton and Jonathan Fruoco–have announced the full program for the upcoming Chaucer in the Age of Medievalism to be held at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France, 13-14 November 2025.
Any attending the conference will not need to register or pay a fee. There will not be an online option.
Next month’s event is part of Jonathan Fruoco’s “In Sondry Ages and Sundry Londes” conference cycle sponsored by the New Chaucer Society. These events explore Chaucer’s presence and reception in non-Anglophone countries. Prior conferences took place in Grenoble, France (2018) and Hiroshima, Japan (2023). Jonathan is looking for someone to help organize the next conference outside of the Anglosphere in 2027. Contact him at jonathan dot fruoco at gmail dot com if you’re interested.
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)
