Awakening The Canterbury Tales

"The Wife of Bath meets Brian's Mum" is the theme of a performance event featuring Chaucer and Terry Jones on April 9.

U of S English grad student Colin Gibbings doesn’t just want to study The Canterbury Tales; he wants to bring them to life.

As part of his master’s project, Gibbings will deliver a colourful performance of the Tales on campus with a bit of help from a member of Monty Python.

“What I had been wanting to do for a while was explore these classic texts that were originally orally based and see if we couldn’t recreate how they might have been spoken,” says Gibbings.

At a public event on Apr. 9, Gibbings, dressed as Geoffrey Chaucer, will recite a portion of The Canterbury Tales in its original Middle English. Behind him, a multimedia presentation prepared by English and CMRS undergraduate students will display a live translation of the words and a running commentary on the events of the story for the modern audience’s benefit.

The multimedia presentation is based on a translation of the Tales by Terry Jones—best known as a member of Monty Python, but also a noted medieval scholar—who has agreed to open the event from London with a live Skype interview about his work on Chaucer.

Students and scholars of Chaucer often read The Canterbury Tales aloud, notes Gibbings’ supervisor Peter Robinson, but the work has rarely been recreated as Chaucer originally presented it: as a live performance for an audience.

The Apr. 9 event imagines what Chaucer’s debut performance of the Tales around 1389 might have been like. Medieval enthusiasts from around the city and the university will be present in costume to portray members of King Richard II’s court.

“In an age when forms of entertainment were rather thin, Chaucer reciting his new poetic work would have been quite an event,” says Robinson. “We want to give people a sense of what an occasion it was.”

For Gibbings, who has a background in both English and drama, it’s all part of his master’s studies. Bringing Chaucer’s words off the page and diving into his characters has given him many insights into the Tales, which he will later discuss in an academic paper.

“To do this, you really have to get into the mindset of Chaucer’s narrator,” says Gibbings.

Live stream of the event: