Videos

Chaucer has inspired a myriad of retellings, remixes, mashups, and other literary responses, and one of the most recent -- and most sophisticated -- homages is Patience Agbabi's Telling Tales (2014). Agbabi's poetry collection reimagines Chaucer's pilgrims in twenty-first century England and retells all his tales, via the diverse idioms of contemporary Brits and in equally diverse poetic styles.

What would the streets of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London looked like? What would you have seen as you walked through town? Shopfronts, vistas, church squares? How did vendors display their wares? What were the street surfaces like? Buildings? Wharves down on the river?

How did medieval individuals tell time before the atomic clock, Greenwich Mean, or even dependable mechanical clocks? There were lots of ways, but one of the most scientifically sophisticated was the astrolabe, a hand-held adjustable device for determining time and meteorological details based on the positions of the stars. It was an important tool in the astrologer's kit (remember that astrology was a branch of science in medieval Europe), and Geoffrey Chaucer translated the first English treatise on how to use an astrolabe for his young son, Lewis.

A little medieval scribal humor (and pain), embedded in a classic Xerox commercial. And you thought the printing press was a major technological innovation...

(with thanks to my 2310W students, who dredged out this wonderful gem!)

In the spring of 2010, a group of my Chaucer students convinced me that they could make a film of Chaucer's "Legend of Dido" from his Legends of Good Women that would be an interpretively sophisticated engagement with Chaucer's poetry, his encounter with his classical sources, and his narrative techniques.

Imagine. Lines from classic movies, in Old English. That's what these students from the University of Sheffield have done -- you'll never look at Grease the same way again.

Many of you are curious about language change between Chaucer and Shakespeare (especially when we do early modern poetry in 2310/2350H). The theatre department at University of Kansas performed Shakespeare in the original pronunciation in 2010, and you can watch/listen to a scene from their Midsummer Night's Dream below. It won't answer all your questions about rhyme, slant rhyme, and eye rhyme, but it's a good starting point.

This is a legacy post from my old website

A comedy sketch performed by the British actor and comedian Bill Bailey. In Middle English, no less! Bonus points if you can identify the literary allusions (Chaucer and otherwise) in the sketch.

This is a legacy post from my old website.

In Jan. 2012 in NYC, the Canadian rap artist Baba Brinkman was performing his one-man show, The Canterbury Tales Remixed, off-Broadway at the Soho Playhouse. Was it any good, you ask? Judge for yourself: here's a portion of the Pardoner's Tale from the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. You can also listen to the General Prologue and more on Baba Brinkman's website.

They might produce mashups primarily for high school students, but History Teachers have made some pretty fine medieval-themed music videos. Like this Canterbury Tales one:

This is a legacy post from my old website