Responses from the user focus groups and interviews
S2, on medieval and modern sensibilities
He is interested in Chaucer’s satirical works and believes modern-day editions should be creating the bridge between modern and medieval sensibilities, especially as he believes the idea of indulgences and relics is the key to engaging students in the medieval period. He also thinks that many students today are also interested in gender and sexuality and how these link to medieval society’s idea of sin, related to medieval gender, the queer gaze of Christ and the representation of anatomy; a complex relationship which is generally represented in medieval literature. He is also interested in the more ‘uncanny’ aspects of the text – the wonder, the other worlds, the other forces at play – which represents students’ imagination of today and their interest in liminal spaces.
S6, on pilgrimages
He speaks to the way in which the pilgrimage – a religious act – can be seen as very ‘human’ and rebellious against religion (e.g. they take part in all manners of sins):
“It’s going against the grain of the idea of pilgrimage. There are religious characters, there’s a prioress, there are nuns, and there’s a parson – so there are religious representations – […] but they’re going against the norm of pilgrimage. Doesn’t that immediately put them into a queer space? That they’re all against the norm?” He also states that Chaucer made his characters very real, despite the context being far from a modern reality: “He seems to have an understanding of [the idea that] it’s a construction, but his people aren’t artificial, they are fallible, they’re flawed people who have prejudices and perversions and desires, and so they’re everyone.”
T1: on the similarities and differences between the medieval past and present
Modern-day concepts are brought into the online learning resources (e.g. for the purposes of comparing medieval with modern storytelling):
“I’ve had experiences when teaching texts that students would just go ‘I can’t believe they had the same worries and concerns that we do, and of course, they fell in love too and were worried that the other person wouldn’t love them, or the same kinds of hopes and dreams and desires’, which is wonderful because I think some of that is the human experience that resonates across the centuries.”
Equally, the teacher understands that students view parts of the stories as ‘out of the ordinary’ and unlike the modern-day. Some of these aspects also relate to the religious and racial prejudice evident throughout the tales.
T6, on medieval culture
She finds that, if you spend an entire semester focusing on Chaucer, you can draw out issues such as social hierarchies, social divisions, history in its context, religious practices, people’s understanding of the Bible, the position of women, access to literacy, trilingual literary culture (e.g. “what did it mean to live in the 14th century when people were speaking French, English and Latin, but had unequal access to those languages?”). However, if a text only features over two weeks of a course (e.g. The Wife of Bath), you cannot go into these aspects of the cultural history which are vital to understanding the language and the culture of the time.
Representations of gender, and roles in medieval society
S9, on the role of women in Chaucer
She is interested in the human connections and the role of women in Chaucer’s works, despite their mistreatment in medieval literature more widely:
“…as you were saying about the connection between people and how we made them feel almost like real people, it was quite good, especially with the role of women within that as well. Because a lot of the time, the role of women in this older English literature was just to be there, the archetype of either the carer or the villain. Whereas Alisoun, I found she held her own, she told them to go away for a minute there. I thought that was really interesting, how he did actually make her a character, for lack of a better term.”
S10, on roles in medieval society
She remembers being fascinated at high school about the different roles that each of the pilgrims played in society, for example, ‘what’s a yeoman?’. She is interested in the Canterbury Tales because:
“It does introduce you to all of these people from different walks of life, that seem very foreign to the present, but then as you get to understand them better, actually they don’t seem that different from lots of people who you know today.”
T4, on the role of women
She finds that the position of women in medieval society is an interesting topic that students pick up on, especially Alisoun in The Miller’s Tale. Students also focus on the comedy and its relation to gender.
Medieval religion and culture
S5, on religion and biblical themes
The themes she looked at in high school were the biblical themes, especially the uniqueness of Chaucer compared to his contemporaries. She looked at Chaucer and medieval literature as a way into life in the medieval period, how Christian-dominated it was and that they were less ‘preachy’ than she expected coming from the Middle Ages:
“Especially coming here, I saw some similarities reading a text like this – from a different country – and then actually going into that country and seeing similarities was quite interesting. These things are so culturally imbibed that some of those traits I still observe over here.”
S1, on ancient sources and analogues
He wrote an essay on ‘The Wandering Jew’ and how the old man in the Pardoner’s Tale is related to this myth. He then found sources, such as ‘Roger of Wendover’, a chronicler of the 13th century, who had written a story of ‘Cartaphilius’ and its identification with the Wandering Jew, recognising the story is represented differently in different parts of the world. This essay was related to the way in which Cartaphilus had been “doomed to roam the Earth forever after sinning or slighting Christ on his way to the crucifixion—there’s a lot of parallels with the old man and his plight and that idea.” He also found the link to Buddhist religion even more interesting:
“There are the stories of the Eighteen Arhats, and one of them in particular, Pindola – in a similar way – he sinned through extravagances and he was basically doomed to wander the Earth forever.”
He finds it vital to discuss other types of culture alongside medieval writings in order to get a greater understanding of communities beyond our own, and those typically represented in medieval works.
T1, on orientalism
For one of her set readings, The Squire’s Tale, she focuses on the East as it is broadly conceived (e.g. its meaning then and now, ideas of orientalism, writing about the East from a Western perspective, what they would and would not have known, and how Arabic learning came to England). They especially talk about how Chaucer’s text is a Western perspective of Genghis Khan’s court and birthday party. The teacher tries to get the students to understand that medieval English literature is only one aspect of medieval culture: “even though we’re more familiar with that, it doesn’t represent the whole.” They also talk about the darker sides of Chaucer – the prejudice – and what that means then and now.
Multilingualism and the global context
S4, on rebellion and multilingualism
He is interested in the inspiration for queer figures (e.g. the Pardoner), such as the inspiration taken from French and Italian writers in the medieval period, which were also written in rebellious ways to go against the establishment of the church as it tried to suppress queerness. In a similar way, he says that the Canterbury Tales is also a way to tell stories and disobey the church establishment through this kind of subtle character building.
T2, on the global context
The teacher states that being able to situate Chaucer globally is important today, but historically too:
“I guess the old fashioned way of teaching was to present Chaucer as if it’s the centre of the world […] whereas now, we tend to flip that a bit and say there’s this huge European context.”
She states that Chaucer should be placed in the bigger traditions of European and global literature.
T4, on Chaucer as international
One of the pieces of feedback students provided as to why they didn’t choose pre-modern topics was that the curriculum was not seen as diverse. However, she believes this is a misconception of medieval courses, especially as Chaucer has been interpreted as international and multicultural:
“He’s not this little Englander, he’s super international, right? And he deals with a lot of topics, like anti-Semitism, portrayal of Islam, Islamic science, homophobia. He deals with a lot of issues that are unfortunately still relevant today, but I think it’s hard unless you actually get them in a room to do it, to get that message across.”
She also feels there are a number of issues related to race representation within Chaucer, such as those tales set in Islamic areas, as well as anti-Semitism present in certain tales (e.g. The Prioress’ Tale). Even though students provide feedback saying they would like to look at more light-hearted tales, she is thinking of looking at The Prioress’ Tale as it touches on both the history of anti-Semitism and the pushback against it.
Literary forms and author biographies
S12, on author biographies and hidden medieval identities
She is interested in the way in which the author’s own biography can inform the text (in light of the rape allegation levelled against Chaucer). For example, she encountered the question, ‘to what extent does the Wife of Bath acquire agency outside of the text?’, and she came to the conclusion that the Wife of Bath is “an improbable woman made probable by satire.” Despite the rape allegations against Chaucer transpiring as a labour dispute, she is interested in investigating those who are forgotten about in medieval history, especially following Carissa Harris’ call to action on investigating the lives of all medieval women who did not have much agency due to their social standing. She says:
“[It’s] not that the conversation shouldn’t centre the implications of rape culture […]. I also think that it’s part of a larger historical conversation about this movement from investigating people that are not typically investigated and making them a part of the narrative.”
S3, on frame narratives and replication
He is most interested in the form of Chaucer’s works, and the way in which the narratives are structured:
“I think there’s something, I hesitate to say, ahead of his time, but there’s something so current about the general frame narrative and formal experimentation, and how much that resurfaced with 20th Century postmodern stuff in terms of the actual writing and composition of it. Aside from the language barrier of Middle English […] it’s still just completely cutting-edge to me at least.”
He finds that the scale of Chaucer’s works give you an ‘all-encompassing’ view of the medieval period, and that 20th century and modernist writers such as Joyce, Beckett and Umberto Eco aimed to replicate Chaucer and other medieval writers.
Marginalised identities in Chaucer and beyond
T1, on queer Chaucer studies
The teacher discusses the General Prologue and the portrayal of different characters in the tales in her classes, in particular, aspects of queerness and gender fluidity. In particular, The Miller’s Tale and the character Absolon, who is portrayed as effeminate (e.g. beautiful hair and face, ‘ladylike’ features), and the class discuss whether current audiences perceive his features and gender stereotypes in the same way as medieval audiences. Students were intrigued by this and came up to the teacher in one of the sessions to ask about whether audiences would have understood certain types of prejudice and discrimination. In relation to the Pardoner, the teacher recognises that:
“It’s a tricky one to navigate […] because a lot of what Chaucer relies on to make that work for him as a character is maybe tricky to translate for a modern audience.”
T3, on representing the Pardoner
The teacher used to discuss the Pardoner’s character in lessons, but recently moved away from doing so, “partly for fear of presenting it insensitively.” He said, “that’s something that I don’t want to genuinely avoid, but I need to think about it before I bring it back into the course in later years.”
T6, on reimagining the tales from marginalised perspectives
T6 says it is vital for her to tell her students about:“ways in which, in the 19th Century American/British literature curriculum, Black students and Black educators were trying to find ways of engaging with Chaucer, and were trying to counter some of the narratives of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ whiteness…”. For instance, she gives her students chapters by Matthew Vernon on reading Chaucer through the lens of Black educators (called ‘The Black Middle Ages’), and how writings in the vernacular open up a lot of questions to keep Chaucer alive today. It also allows people to question the canon and why Chaucer still remains a part of curricula today.
Rather than completely removing white male scholars from the curriculum, she believes Chaucer’s literature remains important for questioning why these texts remain on the curriculum, and exploring his works from different angles. For instance, there are many ways in which contemporary poets and novelists are engaging with Chaucer, such as Caroline Bergvall (translation of Chaucer; The Not Tale), Patience Agbabi and Jackie Kay (Telling Tales and Refugee Tales), Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze (The Wife of Bath in Brixton Market), Lavinia Greenlaw (with a new take on Troilus and Criseyde called Double Sorrow); all of whom are engaging with Chaucer in new and fresh ways.
T5, on decolonial linguistics
The teacher is becoming increasingly aware of the issues related to decolonising the linguistics curriculum, in relation to bringing in the history of Creoles into courses on the history of English, and using these as opportunities to discuss historical linguistic paradigms further (e.g. concepts of ‘simplification’ and ‘complexification’ in historical morphology). These linguistic issues link to Chaucer who used more ‘traditional’ linguistic structures in his works, yet in modern and fresh ways. He also recognises that Chaucer’s works are an opportunity to talk about gender and queer identities, something especially relevant to the Pardoner.