Published on Thursday, October 17, 2024
Abstract
Far from being confined to his era, Geoffrey Chaucer's work continues to resonate through the ages, inspiring a multitude of post-medieval representations. The poet himself remains a regularly invoked figure, sometimes even without direct connection to his texts, suggesting an autonomous legacy of Chaucer both as a man and an artist. Whether through the prism of cinema, music, theater, television, poetry, or other artistic forms, the poet remains an endless source of inspiration and reinterpretation. This conference invites us to question how adaptations and reinterpretations of Chaucer and/or his work by artists from diverse cultural backgrounds enrich our understanding of his legacy. His various incarnations over the centuries raise fascinating issues regarding intercultural dialogue, the politics of memory, and the evolution of popular culture.
Announcement
November 13th-14th, 2025. University of Lorraine, Nancy.
Following the Chaucer: Here and Now exhibition (2023-2024) at the Bodleian Library, this conference aims to continue the reflection on the medievalist dimension of Geoffrey Chaucer's work and its persistent influence in contemporary culture.
Argument
Far from being confined to his era, Geoffrey Chaucer's work continues to resonate through the ages, inspiring a multitude of post-medieval representations. The poet himself remains a regularly invoked figure, sometimes even without direct connection to his texts, suggesting an autonomous legacy of Chaucer both as a man and an artist. Whether through the prism of cinema, music, theater, television, poetry, or other artistic forms, the poet remains an endless source of inspiration and reinterpretation. This conference invites us to question how adaptations and reinterpretations of Chaucer and/or his work by artists from diverse cultural backgrounds enrich our understanding of his legacy. His various incarnations over the centuries raise fascinating issues regarding intercultural dialogue, the politics of memory, and the evolution of popular culture.
Proposals may particularly focus on one of the following axes, without necessarily being limited to them:
Axis 1: Medievalist Echoes of Chaucer's Work
A first axis of study will examine how Chaucer's work is reinterpreted and adapted in contemporary culture through various artistic forms. What specific Chaucerian motifs and themes resonate in the modern context, and what are the reasons for this resonance? This exploration will study how artists adapt his work while preserving medieval elements and question the stakes of selecting and modernizing these elements. The influence of William Morris on the reception and representation of Chaucer will receive special attention. By publishing The Canterbury Tales in his Kelmscott Chaucer and bringing to life a romantic vision of the Middle Ages through works such as The Earthly Paradise, Morris profoundly shaped the perception of Chaucer from the 19th century onwards. It will be relevant to examine how Morris, like others, reshaped Chaucer's image to serve his own aesthetic and ideological ideals, in order to deepen the repercussions of this reinterpretation on the contemporary reception of Chaucer's work.
We also invite study of the theatrical and poetic performances of Chaucer's work and their contribution to renewing our understanding of the original text. The performance of The Wife of Bath by poetess Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze at Brixton Market (2009) offers an interesting example of interaction between Chaucer and an engaged audience. How do adaptations of Chaucer in public or alternative spaces broaden the accessibility and scope of his work? Similarly, it would be pertinent to reflect on how contemporary projects such as Patience Agbabi’s Refugee Tales (2016) use Chaucer's heritage to address issues of memory, identity, and inclusion. These initiatives contribute to reevaluating and revitalizing the importance of Chaucer's work in the contemporary cultural landscape.
Axis 2: Chaucer Himself, Incarnations, and Appropriation
Beyond the poems that have endured, the figure of Geoffrey Chaucer is sometimes summoned in various works and rewritings, bringing the medieval poet back to life. In Brian Helgeland's film A Knight's Tale (2001), which takes its title from one of Chaucer's works, the poet is one of the main characters. Affected by a gambling problem, debts, and a tendency to put his pen at the service of the highest bidder, this protagonist seems far from the traditional representation of authors. However, his poetic talent and, above all, his oratorical skill increasingly find a place in the plot, contributing to making the character an adjunct to the hero, but also and above all a figure of a rebellious demagogue. What implications does this medievalist and trivial interpretation of Chaucer have on the poet's posterity and his reception by the general public? While knowledge of the specifics of Chaucer's life is not necessary to understand or appreciate Helgeland’s work, this biographical input nonetheless enriches readings of the film. What are the stakes, then, of articulating popular reception and scholarly knowledge in the representation of Chaucer's figure? This same association of the popular and the scholarly is precisely what guides the integration of the poet into Thierry la Fronde in 1965 (season 3, episode 10), recalling the series' pedagogical and entertaining ambition, mixing fictional characters with easily identifiable historical figures. Each time, Chaucer is clearly named, and often subtle references to his work or biography, apparently aimed at a knowledgeable audience, pepper his staging. It is from this perspective that he also appears as a ghost in 2009 in The Simpsons series (season 20, episode 18), in reference to his burial in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. What do these uses of the poet's image in popular culture say about his contemporary reception? Who are these nods aimed at, and what do they bring to the works concerned?
Submission guidelines
Communication proposals, approximately 2000 characters in length, should be sent, jointly to Justine Breton (justine.breton [at] univ-lorraine.fr) and Jonathan Fruoco (jonathan.fruoco [at] gmail.com)
by February 3rd, 2025.
Scientific Committee
- Candace Barrington (Central Connecticut State University)
- Justine Breton (SAMA, Université de Lorraine)
- Vincent Ferré (CERC, Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle)
- Jonathan Fruoco (CREA, Université Paris-Nanterre)
- Patrick Moran (University of British Columbia, Canada)
- Karin Ueltschi-Courchinoux (CRIMEL, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne)
Bibliography
- Barrington, Candace, American Chaucers, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
- Besson, Anne, Blanc, William, and Ferré, Vincent (eds), Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge imaginaire, Paris, Vendémiaire, 2022.
- Best Debra E., Rambo Elizabeth L., and Ward Patricia H. (eds), Authentically Medieval. Authors and Scholars on Depicting the Middle Ages in Fiction, Jefferson, McFarland, 2024.
- Breton, Justine, Un Moyen Âge en clair-obscur. Le médiévalisme dans les séries télévisées, Tours, Presses universitaires François-Rabelais, 2023.
- Broome Saunders, Clare, Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
- Cook, Megan L., The Poet and the Antiquaries: Chaucerian Scholarship and the Rise of Literary History, 1532-1635, Philadelphia PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
- Coyne Kelly, Kathleen and Pugh, Tison (eds.), Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the Canterbury Tales, Columbus OH, Ohio State University Press, 2013.
- D’Arcens, Louis, Comic Medievalism. Laughing at the Middle Ages, Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 2014.
- Ellis, Steve, Chaucer at Large: The Poet in the Modern Imagination, Minneapolis MN, University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
- Forni, Kathleen, Chaucerian Afterlife: Adaptations in Recent Popular Culture, Jefferson NC, McFarland, 2013.
- Hsy, Jonathan, Antiracist Medievalisms: From ‘Yellow Peril’ to Black Lives Matter, Leeds, Arc Humanities Press, 2021.
- Lerer, Seth, Chaucer and His Readers: Imagining the Author in Late Medieval England, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993.
- Mason, Tom and Hopkins, David, Chaucer in the Eighteenth Century: The Father of English Poetry, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022.
- Prendergast, Thomas A. and Kline, Barbara, Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602, Columbus, OH, Ohio State University, 1999.
- Trigg, Stephanie, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
- Turner, Marion (ed.), Chaucer: Here and Now, Oxford, Bodleian Library Publishing, 2023.
- Turner, Marion, The Wife of Bath: A Biography, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2019.
Subjects
Places
- MSH, Salle 322 (3e étage) - 91 avenue de la Libération
Nancy, France (54)
Event attendance modalities
Hybrid event (on site and online)
Date(s)
- Monday, February 03, 2025
Keywords
- chaucer, medievalism, representation, medieval, literature
Contact(s)
- Jonathan Fruoco
courriel : jonathan [dot] fruoco [at] gmail [dot] com - Justine Breton
courriel : justine [dot] breton [at] univ-lorraine [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- Justine Breton
courriel : justine [dot] breton [at] univ-lorraine [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Chaucer in the Age of Medievalism », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Thursday, October 17, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/12iki
