Tag: Parlement of Foules

Coming to the Folger: The Love Birds

by Candace Barrington

Once again, David Wallace has alerted us to a musical adaptation of a Chaucerian text. This time it’s “The Love Birds” at the Folger Library in Washington DC. Based on Chaucer’s The Parliament of Foules, the performance intersperses Chaucer’s “vision of avian politics … with bracing and intricate music of his times from England and France, perfectly mirrored by the newly-composed music” by Juri Seo, a Korean-born America composer.

Juri Seo’s website features excerpts from the composer’s jazz-inflected, chanson-influenced music for small ensembles.

The performances are appropriately timed for Valentines Day, 14-16 February 2025.

If you are able to attend the Friday performance on 14 February, consider arriving early for the pre-concert discussion with Christopher Kendall and Robert Eisenstein, co-Artistic Directors of the Folger Consort, at 7:00pm. Free entry with concert ticket.

Want to learn more? Or regret that you cannot attend? Register for the online seminar on Wednesday, 12 February, at 6pm. Led by Folger Consort Artistic Director Robert Eisenstein, this virtual seminar provides a sneak peek at the music performed.

Pseudo-Glot Chaucer: Call for Translations

by Candace Barrington

2014-04-13 03.45.51We had so much fun with the Polyglot Reading of The Miller’s Tale at the New Chaucer Society Congress 2014 in Reykjavik that we thought we might try it again at NCS 2016 in London, but with a twist: the languages will be constructed languages such as Barsoomian, Dothraki, Elvish, Esperanto, Klingon, Na’vi, Tho Fan, Valyrian,and Vulcan.

Ideally, we will have the translation completed well before July 2016, and it will be shared on the website.

If you’d like to try your hand at translating a Chaucerian passage into one of these (or any other) constructed language, please contact either Candace Barrington (BarringtonC at ccsu dot edu) or Jonathan Hsy (JHsy at gwu dot edu) for more information.  Currently, we are considering this passage–the opening lines of The Parliament of Fowls–and we’d ask you to translate two or three lines of it:

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,

Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge,

The dredful joye alwey that slit so yerne:

Al this mene I by Love, that my felynge

Astonyeth with his wonderful werkynge

So sore, iwis, that whan I on hym thynke

Nat wot I wel wher that I fete or synke.

For al be that I knowe nat Love in dede,

Ne wot how that he quiteth folk here hyre,

Yit happeth me ful ofte in bokes reede

Of his myrakles and his crewel yre.

There rede I wel he wol be lord and syre;

I dar nat seyn, his strokes been so sore,

But ‘God save swich a lord!’–I can na moore.

By usage–what for lust and what for lore–

On bokes rede I ofte, as I yow tolde.

But wherfore that I speke al this? Nat yoore

Agaon it happede me for to beholde 

Upon a bok, was write with lettres olde,

And therupon, a certeyn thing to lerne,

The longday ful faste I redde and yerne.

For out of olde feldes, as men seyth,

Cometh al this newe corn from yer to yere,

And out of olde bokes, in good feyth,

Cometh al this newe science that men lere.

But now to purpose as of this mater:

To rede forth hit gan me so delite

That al that day me thoughte but a lyte.

(Parlement of Foules 1-28)

 Update: Languages and lines claimed for pseudo-glot translations

1-3          Quenya (Lindsay Bensenhaver)

4-7         Toki Pona (Michael A Johnson)

8-11        Python (Matt Schneider)

12-14     Esperanto (Chris Piuma)

15-17a   Elvish (Mary Kate Hurley)

22-25    Deseret Alphabet (Tim English)

 

A Chaucerian Valentine’s Day

index

by Candace Barrington

Marcin Ciura’s recently published Sejm ptasi, a Polish translation of Chaucer’s The Parlement of Foules, provides a happy opportunity for Global Chaucers to celebrate the holiday’s  origins among a group of late-fourteenth-century English poets. (For more about the debate surrounding the holiday’s origins, see Bruce Holsinger’s tongue-in-check speculation).

Bo działo się to właśnie w święto Walentego,

Gdy każdy ptak przybywa w to miejsce na gody,

By wybrać swoją lubą bądź spotkać lubego.

Olbrzymi zgiełk czyniły skrzydlate narody,

A ziemia i powietrze, i drzewa, i wody

Mieściły wszech gatunków takie zatrzęsienie,

Żem ledwie znalazł miejsce na nóg postawienie.

Sejm ptasi: A new translation of The Parlement of Foules in 16th-century Polish

Sejm-ptasi

by Candace Barrington

We learned this week about Marcin Ciura’s Sejm ptasi, a new translation into Polish of Chaucer’s The Parlement of Foules. Ciura, a computer programmer in Krakow, chose 16th-century Polish and a 13-syllable meter to give his translation a medieval feel.  He has agreed to an “email interview,” so we will be back with more about the translation.  For an early glimpse, see https://plus.google.com/+MarcinCiura/posts/93J9CQQtooC .