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.
Lian Zhang, our foremost authority on Chaucer’s reception in China, has published an article in the most recent issue of postmedieval. This time, her research deals with the Republican period, a span roughly corresponding to the years just before WW1 and just after WW2 when several young Chinese scholars studied in the U.K. and the United States with some formidable medievalists. In addition to bringing Chaucer back to Chinese university classrooms, the Chinese scholars often brought these mentors to China, thereby working to create fruitful ties between China and the west.
I reproduce here the article’s abstract:
This essay studies the teaching of the medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer in China during the Republican period (1912-1949), through evidence of students, faculty, institutions, and textbooks. Drawing on university curricula, diaries and recollections of professors and students, and publications of textbooks and modern adaptations of Chaucer’s works, this essay provides a detailed narration of an early part of the reception history of Chaucer in China. Chinese scholars studied Chaucer in Europe and America since the 1910s, gave courses on Chaucer after returning to China, and published Chaucer’s text in Middle English and modern adaptations. The teaching of Chaucer had a great impact on Chinese students and the academic world at the time, and it reflected China’s literary and cultural initiation into what the social reformers saw as modernization in a socially transitional period. This essay argues that Chaucer played a significant role in Chinese discourses of modernization over the twentieth century, and that the Chinese Chaucer was created by two types of reception, as he was claimed both by social reformers for his role in promoting the vernacular language and by traditionalists for the moral themes of his tales. Literary education at the time was influenced not only by China’s pursuit of modernity signified by a rise of vernacular Chinese language and literature, but also by the traditional cultural values grounded in Confucianism.
I’ve been sitting on this announcement for a few weeks so that I could make it on Nowruz, the Persian new year. I simply could not resist the proximity in 2024 of Nowruz, Ramadan, and “Whan-that-Aprill” Day.
Alireza Mahdipour’s 2023 translation of The Canterbury Tales
After many years of diligent translation following by years of patience, Alireza Mahdipour’s complete translation of The Canterbury Tales has been published by Cheshmeh, an Iranian publishing house known for its editions of both contemporary Iranian authors and translated global authors.
Without a doubt, Mahdipour’s massive undertaking is a milestone in Chaucer’s international reception.
In the opening lines of the General Prologue, Mahdipour evokes the wonders of spring’s arrival: “In the spring, the breath of the rain came down / to the dry soil of England and washed it until the / root was clean…./ Eid has come….” (my back translation using Google translate).
Mahdipour’s essay, “The Translator Writes Back,” was featured in a 2018 special issue of Literature Compass, Chaucer’s Global Compaignye. As Jonathan Hsy and I describe in our editors’ introduction, His essay reflects on translation’s potential to reveal affinities between Chaucerian mentalities and facets of contemporary Iranian culture. Rather than associating Iran with a pejorative sense of the term “medieval,” Mahdipour’s work attends to rich continuities in social and religious frameworks in Iranian culture that mitigate the apparently radical alterity of the past. In bridging the gap between Chaucer’s environment and contemporary Iranian cultural frameworks, Mahdipour eschews the impulse to produce a prose translation and crafts a poetic idiom that is simultaneously Chaucerian and Persian. Without overtly making a claim for shared sources, Mahdipour argues that similarities between medieval English culture and aspects of modern Persian society contribute to the vitality of his translation. The most significant parallels are found in the circumstances shared by Mahdipour’s and Chaucer’s pilgrim-narrator: both found themselves traveling in a group, free “from social, official, occupational, and even familial bonds, [and] eager for the freedom of speech and expression” otherwise denied them. As Mahdipour explains, Chaucerian sensibilities so dovetailed with Iranian ones that his audiences learned he was reciting a translation “only when we came to foreign elements such as ‘Caunterbury,’ ‘Tabard,’ and ‘Southwerk.’ ”
If you’ve been fortunate to visit the Bodleian Library’s “Chaucer: Here and Now” exhibit, you’d would have seen a copy on display with other translations.
My copy of the Mahdipour’s translation took a circuitous route to Connecticut. Because Alireza was unable to ship it directly to me from Iran, he enlisted the help of a former student, Raziyeh J, who now lives in Ottawa but was visiting Iran at the end of the year. She brought it back to Canada and then mailed it to me. Whew! Another fine Chaucerian pilgrimage!
I look forward to working with Raziyeh in the near future as she helps me understand what Mahdipour’s translation can teach us.
After the initial flurry of publicity announcing the Bodleian Library’s Chaucer: Here and Now exhibit, it seems fitting to remind those in and around Oxford this spring that the exhibit will remain up until 28 April 2024. Just right for your April pilgrimage itinerary!
For those of us unable to absorb the exhibit in person, the accompanying collection of essays is a treat. From among the many great essays, I draw your attention to Jonathan Hsy’s fabulous “Chaucerian Multilingualism Past and Present.” Besides being a fascinating read, Jonathan’s essay features images and analysis of Global Chaucers that have appeared on this site over the past decade.
Though this production skips over The Clerk’s Tale, I already have my free ticket to watch this double reading of the Griselda story, first as told by Boccaccio (14th century) and then by Margaret Atwood (21st century). Tickets to the streamed, dramatic reading are free.
Theater of War Productions and Margaret Atwood return to the Toronto International Festival of Authors with an exciting new collaboration exploring power and control, domestic violence, and family dynamics by way of two versions of the same story, one written by Giovanni Boccaccio in 1348 during the bubonic plague and the other by Atwood in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. In Boccaccio’s version, a woman named Griselda remains in an abusive and controlling relationship, showing great patience and forbearance in the face of her husband’s sadism and cruelty. In Atwood’s version, Griselda takes matters in her own hands and, with the help of her sister, turns the tables on her husband.
This free, public event will feature a live, dramatic reading of the “Patient Griselda” story from Boccaccio’s Decameron by Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Fleishman is in Trouble), Maev Beaty (Beau is Afraid, Mouthpiece), and Araya Mengesha (Tiny Pretty Things, Nobody). Then, in response, Margaret Atwood will perform “Impatient Grisleda,” a story that is narrated to a group of humans in quarantine by an alien that looks like an octopus. The readings of both texts will be followed by immediate responses by community panelists and will culminate in a guided audience discussion, facilitated by Bryan Doerries (Artistic Director, Theater of War Productions).
Shakespeare Gardens at The Huntington, one of the featured venues for NCS 2024 Congress.
by Candace Barrington
We are excited to share news that the Program Committee for the 2024 Biennial Congress of the New Chaucer Society has posted its Call for Papers. In the Call for Papers you’ll find detailed descriptions of the the session formats being offered at the Congress.
Hybrid
Paper
Lightening Talk
Position Paper
Poster Expo
You’ll also find descriptions of the 65 sessions clustered around 10 Threads.
Ethics of Reading Chaucer, Then and Now
Logistical Chaucer
Surveillance
Viability: Access, Values, New Directions
Code(x)
Ecologies and Consumption
Materialities and Performance
The Quadrivium
Translation and Experimentation
Open Topics
Notice that submitting your proposal is a two-step process.
Complete the online Abstract Submission Form
Email your abstract to the session organizers
Complete submissions are due 22 September 2023.
The 2024 Congress will be held 15-18 July 2023 at The Westin, Pasadena, California. General information about costs can be found in the Call for Papers document. More detailed information will be forthcoming.
We believe the Call for Papers provides an exciting banquet of options. Among the many delights, several seem well suited for our global colleagues:
17. Tech Talks: Access and Accessibility in Medieval Classrooms
20. Rare Books for the Rest of Us
24. Re-evaluating the Manuscripts of Multilingual Medieval Wales
38. Teaching the Performative Middle Ages
48. Translation, Experimentation, and Pedagogy
52. Forms of Translatio studii et imperii
57. Pacific Medieval Studies
62. Teaching Chaucer at Hispanic-Serving Institutions
We were very pleased to hear from Laurence Warner that the Medieval Symposium at last week’s International Association of University Professors of English (IAUPE) conference in Rome included a presentation by Professor Ewa Kujawska-Lis on “Canterbury Tales in Polish.” Of course, we contacted Ewa right away. She kindly provided précis of her paper for us to share with the Global Chaucers community. We look forward to learning more from her as she expands our knowledge of Chaucer’s long and deep presence in Polish translations and scholarship.
In Poland, Chaucer’s artistry was first noticed by two outstanding literary figures (poets, writers, and journalists): Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801) and Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). Well acquainted with European literature, they offered appreciative comments on the English poet almost a century before any Polish translation was available. Readers needed to wait until 1907 to get the feel of Chaucer themselves. This is when Jan Kasprowicz (1860-1926), a poet, playwright, critic, and translator, included fragments of TheGeneral Prologue and a large section of The Friar’s Tale in his anthology Poeci angielscy (English Poets). The translation, consisting of about 20 pages, served as an introduction of Chaucer to the Polish literary system and was based on the edition of The Canterbury Tales by Thomas Tyrwhitt (1775-78) and a German translation by Wilhelm Hertzberg (1866).
Half a century later, in 1956 Przemyslaw Mroczkowski published his monumental study Opowieści kanterberyjskie na tle epoki (The Canterbury Tales against the backdrop of the epoch), originally written in 1951, which was a milestone in introducing Chaucer to Polish scholars in the vein of what would be in the future termed cultural poetics. Subsequently, in 1988, he also translated The Knight’s Tale.
This served as a complement to the first more extensive translation of The Canterbury Tales into Polish that was created by Helena Pręczkowska and published in 1963 (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy Im. Ossolińskich, 1963; reprinted in 1978 and 1987) (image at left). This volume included The General Prologue and eleven Tales selected by Witold Chwalewik, based on his rather arbitrary decision as to which stories should be translated.
Finally, the complete translation of The Canterbury Tales was published in 2022 as the second volume of a non-commercial series Bibliotheca Translata by the publishing house Biblioteka Śląska (image at top). The translation was done by Jacek Zawadzki, a translator of literature from English and Chinese, based on Walter W. Skeat’s edition of 1894, with illustrations by Maciej Sieńczyk, a graphic artist, illustrator, comic book creator.
[CAPTION: obligatory photograph of Hiroshima Castle as it looks today with blooming cherry blossoms in the foreground.]
We’re very happy to help spread the word about these two upcoming conferences in Hiroshima, Japan; thanks to Global Chaucers blog contributor Jonathan Fruoco for sending along this information!
The 2023 Hiroshima International Conference, 7 August 2023; co-organized by Yoshiyuki Nakao and Jonathan Fruoco: “In sondry ages and sondry londes: Global Chaucer in the XXIst Century,” with invited lectures by Stephanie Trigg and Anthony Bale. Click on images below to see enlarged versions of the program.
From Jonathan Fruoco:
We may have been living in the XXIst century for two decades but the challenges of keeping medieval literature relevant for another hundred years have yet to be addressed. In this conference, we thus offer to consider what academics can do to continue transmitting a universal linguistic and literary inheritance that has survived since the Middle Ages.
The fact that this conference will be held in Japan is proof enough of the universality of the cultural relevance of medieval literature in a culturally diverse environment. Yet, in large parts of the world, medieval studies have started to disappear from universities, showing in a way our failure to keep our inheritance alive. Such is, for instance, the case in France where the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, the most French of English poets, have almost disappeared from memories.
During this conference, we accordingly invite colleagues from Asia to reflect on how we may encourage a new generation of readers and scholars to support medieval studies in a non-Anglophone environment. The translation and re-translation of the works of medieval poets might, for instance, be a way to reintroduce poets to a new audience — see for instance the recent translation of the Canterbury Tales in Japanese by a team of scholars, or the work accomplished by non-Anglophone translators throughout the world. This would lead us to question the difficulties (linguistic, but not only) of translating/adapting Middle English in different languages, and of finding audiences.
The 63rd Summer Seminar of the English Research Association in Hiroshima, 8 August 2023; Jonathan Fruoco and Anthony Bale are among the invited speakers.
Vindolanda: destination for one of three NCS excursions and excellent reminder of the many peoples involved in the Roman colonial project.
The 2022 NCS Congress featured an inspiring number of sessions with a global or multi-cultural perspective. And a good number of presenters were from non-Anglophone backgrounds, though many were unable to attend in person because of visa, funding, and pandemic restrictions.
Because there’s still a chance for you to view the Congress sessions and uploaded presentations–here’s a quick list of the papers/sessions dealing with Chaucer’s reception, global and otherwise, that I attended.
Papers
Jacqueline Burek, “Translating Troilus: The Welsh Troelus a Chresyd“
Louise D’Arcens, “The Kangaroo Kelmscott: Chaucer’s Sydney Afterlife and Australian Deep Time”
Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė, “Reimagining the Dream Poet: Edward Burne-Jones’s Dantean Chaucer”
Usha Vishnuvajjala, “Feminist Medievalisms and Chaucer in Jane Austen Fanfiction”
Wajid Ayed, “Chaucer in Tunisia: 50 years”
Raúl Ariza-Barile “From Southwark to the Citee of Mexico: Producing the First Ever Mexican Translation of The Canterbury Tales”
Lian Zhang, “Translation as Remembering: Canterbury Tales in Chinese”
Yoshiyuki Nakao, “How to Translate Chaucer’s Multiple Subjectivities into Japanese: Ambiguities in His Speech Representation”
Amy Goodwin, “Chaucer in the New York Times”
Jonathan Hsy, “Racial Displacements: Chaucerian Poets of Color and Critical Refugee Studies”
Jamie Taylor, “Indigenous Studies and a Global Middle Ages”
Candace Barrington, “Comparative Translation: Possibilities and Limitations”
Jonathan Fruoco, “Is there an Embargo on Chaucer in France?”
Marion Turner, “The Wife of Bath’s European Lives”
Plenary Sessions
“Where Medieval Studies Joins Up,” a plenary conversation chaired by Jonathan Hsy featuring
Anthony Vahni Capildeo
Wallace Cleaves
Ananya Jahanara Kabir
The Refugee Tales, with Patience Agbabi
The Polyglot Miller’s Tale Reading
If you were a registered participant at the Congress, you can view the sessions and individual papers.
Go to ncs2020.net
Click on Attendee Hub and log in just as you did during the Congress
Select “All Sessions” on Schedule pull-down menu (upper)
Search for the speaker’s name, then follow the links to replay either the session or watch the uploaded presentation.
These links will remain available until mid-October.
In a happy reprise of the spontaneous (but very jolly) Polyglot Reading of The Miller’s Tale at the 2014 NCS Congress in Reykjavik, 14 Global Chaucerians gathered to read the tale in 9 languages (in addition to Middle English).
1.3109-3135, Middle English, Candace Barrington and Jonathan Hsy
1.3136-3166, Welsh, Jacqueline Burek
1.3167-3220, Spanish, Amanda Gerber
1.3221-3287, Lithuanian, Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė
1.3288-3338, 19c French, Juliette Vuille
1.3339-3398, German, Lucy Fleming
1.3399-3467, Arabic, Wajih Ayed
1.3468-3525, Italian, Sarah McNamer
1.3526-3588, Hebrew, Noa Nikolsky
1.3589-3656, German, Lucy Fleming
1.3657-3726, French, Jonathan Fruoco
1.3727-3785, Korean, Mariah Min
1.3786-3854, Italian, David Wallace
Some special highlights include
the premier of Jonathan Fruoco’s new French prose translation of the tale,
the first ever translation into Welsh thanks to the intrepid Jacqueline Burek,
the introduction of Korean slang and dialect into Mariah Min’s reading,
Lithuanian (need we say more?),
a sequenced chorus of Alisoun’s “Tehee” (3740), and
a recording, now streaming and available through mid-October to those who registered for the congress (either in person on online).
And, of course, lots of laughter.
In addition to thanking our fabulous readers (both new ones and repeat participants) for their full-hearted participation, we owe our deep gratitude to
Mary Flannery for initially inviting us to resume the reading at the soon-to-be postponed 2020 Congress,
Julie Orlemanski and Phil Smith for juggling schedules to ensured the reading happened in 2022,
Patience Agbabi and other members of our audience for supporting us with their presence and laughter,
Annette Kern-Stachler, Lian Zhang, Raúl Ariza-Barile kept away by the complications of pandemic-era travel, and
Durham University’s excellent tech staff who smoothly orchestrated the recording and transmission of the event.
If you were a registered participant at the Congress, you can view the streaming broadcast of the reading.
Go to ncs2020.net
Click on Attendee Hub and log in just as you did during the Congress
Select “All Sessions” on Schedule pull-down menu (upper)
Search “polyglot,” then click on “Polyglot Miller’s Tale Reading”
Click on “replay”
After lots of preliminaries, the actual reading begins at 17 minutes and ends at. 59.30
Plans are already brewing for 2024. Let us know if you’re interested in participating at globalchaucers at gmail dot com.
