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 Jarek 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.
It’s that time again! We’re rounding up participants for the “Polyglot Miller’s Tale Reading” at the 2022 NCS Congress in Durham, UK.
After some shuffling to accommodate more participants, we’re happy to announce that the reading is now scheduled for Wednesday, 13 July, 7:30p to 8:30p.
Currently, we have volunteers to read in French, Italian, German, Polish, Arabic, Hebrew, Dutch, and (be still my heart!) Lithuanian. We’d still love to add more languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Malayalam, Frisian, Romanian, Norwegian, Serbian, Icelandic, Spanish, Turkish, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Finnish, Estonian, Greek, Russian, Ewe, Farsi, Czech, Taiwainese, and any other language into which the tale has been translated. (For help finding a translation, contact us or refer to our list of translations; if you know of others, please let us know.)
Depending on the total number of volunteers, participants will be asked to read around 50-60 lines apiece.
If you’d like to be part of the fun, please email us (GlobalChaucers at gmail dot com) with this info:
which language(s) you’d like to read in;
if you possess a copy of The Miller’s Tale in that language (if you don’t, we likely can send a copy to you); and
if you consent to being recorded (both audio/video).
In mid-May, we will send your line assignments (and a copy of your lines, if requested).
We appreciate your patience as we pull together what promises to be a lively event.
Reception at Art Gallery of Ontario; co-sponsored by Medievalists of Color.
I began the second day of the Congress by joining a group of Global Chaucerians for breakfast at a nearby coffee shop. Jonathan and I have found informal gatherings like this are helpful for colleagues attending the NCS Congress for the first time.
For Session 3, I attended my first lightening panel: “Chaucer and Transgender Studies” moderated by Ruth Evans. The six short papers were fascinating and provocative.
Leanne MacDonald (University of Notre Dame) “Challenging Normative Notions of Transidentity in Medieval Studies”
Wan-Chuan Kao (Washington & Lee University) “Trans*domesticity”
Michelle Sauer (University of North Dakota) “Reading the ‘Glitch’: Trans-, Technology, and Gender in Medieval Texts”
Miranda Hajduk (Seton Hall University) “’My Sturdy Hardynesse’: The Wife of Bath’s Antifeminist Satire as Trans Narrative”
Cai Henderson (Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto) “Christine de Pizan’s ‘droite condicion’: Authorial Construction and Resonant Reading in Transgender Text”
Because the presenters were limited to 5-7 minutes, the heart of the panel was the ensuing conversations among themselves and with the audience, as we explored transgender topics, including the ways Chaucer’s characters inhabited multiple, simultaneous identities; the transphobic elements of The Miller’s Tale; transmission glitches revealing resistance to hegemonic norms; and the nature of transgender ethics. The lightening format, a new format for NCS, proved an excellent structure for presenting ideas and generating conversation.
Plenary Roundtable: Race and Inclusion: Facing Chaucer Studies, Past and Future Evans, Barrington, Bale, Kao, Dinshaw, & Sévère
Next up, the program featured a plenary panel on Race and Inclusion: Facing Chaucer Studies, Past and Future. The five speakers were Anthony Bale (Birkbeck, University of London), Candace Barrington (Central Connecticut State University), Carolyn Dinshaw (New York University), Wan-Chuan Kao (Washington and Lee University), and Richard Sévère (Valparaiso University). The invitations to participate on the panel were issued nearly year ago, and the subsequent months proved the program committee’s wisdom in forming the plenary round-table addressing questions of race, whiteness, and inclusion in the field of Chaucer studies.
The program committee requested that our short presentations consider “more broadly the historical past of our field as well as our ethics of engagement in the present, and to look forward to what needs to happen next.” We were also asked to consider the international dimension of our society and “to offer a past-future presentation on whatever facet of Chaucer” we would like to address.
Scholarship in the field of race and Chaucer specifically, which can include Orientalism and antisemitism, etc.
Scholarship about Chaucer and medievalism as it relates to race
Strategies for pedagogy when it comes to racially inclusive classrooms, etc.
Race and mentorship in Chaucer studies
The role of NCS as public face for Chaucer studies in these contexts
Methods for decolonizing Chaucer Studies
While the five of us each approached the task differently, we all ended by focusing on our individual and institutional responsibilities to ensure that, despite our mistakes as scholars and teachers, we make the study of the literary past open to everyone. The panel generated useful conversations that should extend well beyond the limits of the Congress.
OACCT Contributor Picnic.
At lunchtime, many contributors to the Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Talesgathered for a picnic lunch on the lawn outside Victoria College. For the first time since Brantley Bryant broached the idea to a group of scholars in 2015, the large group assembled, with some of us meeting each other for the first time.
Because I am very interested in the sorts of texts we provide students and scholars throughout the world, I attended the two afternoon sessions organized by Elizabeth Scala: Is There a Text for This Class? Editing Chaucer Now I & II. There are many proposed solutions to our current predicament, and I’m eager to see if any address the needs of undergraduate students (like mine) who are eager to engage with early literatures but have no plans for graduate study.
After those two sessions, I met Ruen-Chuan Ma, an early-career medievalist at Utah Valley University. We were introduced through the NCS mentorship program organized by Tom Hahn (Rochester University), Shazia Jagot (University of Surrey), and Sierra Lomuto (Macalester College). As we talked, we walked leisurely to the Art Gallery of Ontario for a reception co-hosted by Medievalist of Color and featuring a display of art objects—Ethiopian religious paintings and European boxwood beads—accompanied by a beautiful, contextualizing pamphlet (written by Meseret Oldjira [Princeton University] and Seeta Chaganti [University of California, Davis]). Attendees were provided “thought questions,” and I’m going to close Day 2’s posting with them.
If you are a senior scholar, what can you do to help grad students and less-established scholars of color feel welcome in a field that has historically alienated people of color? (Note that NCS has a wonderful mentorship program that will serve this end really well.)
If you are a journal or book editor, what do you think about the diversity of the authors your publication or list represents? What can you do to improve that diversity?
For everyone: how can we create networks together that will be truly inclusive?
