Tag: gail ashton

Briefly Noted: Ashton on Chaucer and Medieval Afterlives

by JONATHAN HSY

Cover of Medieval Afterlives ed Ashton
Cover of Medieval Afterlives ed. Ashton

A few weeks ago, Gail Ashton (who we have featured on this blog here and here) wrote a posting about Chaucer for the Bloomsbury Literary Studies blog. Ashton’s posting entitled “What the Dickens shall we do about Chaucer?” considers the “residual” presence of Chaucer in present-day British culture, and it ends with a revealing interview about Chaucer in the schools with former Welsh poet laureate Gwyneth Lewis and former Canterbury poet laureate Patience Agbabi.

Ashton’s posting also nicely ends with a plug for her forthcoming edited collection entitled Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2015). Candace Barrington and I have a co-authored article entitled “Global Chaucers” in that collection–so stay tuned!

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.