Chaucer’s Afterlife: Adaptations in Recent Popular Culture by Kathleen Forni (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chaucer’s Afterlife: Adaptations in Recent Popular Culture by Kathleen Forni Helen Young Forni, Kathleen, Chaucer’s Afterlife: Adaptations in Recent Popular Culture, Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 2013; paperback; pp. 176; R.R.P. US$40.00; ISBN 9780786473441. Kathleen Forni’s book examines the Anglophone popular culture reception of Geoffrey Chaucer in the past two decades or so, consciously building on earlier work by Candace Barrington and Steve Ellis. Chaucer has been a mainstay of Middle English studies since the very early days of the academy – [End Page 207] and of English poetry for much longer – and his reputation, and the reception of his works in later centuries has been the topic of considerable interest in recent decades. At less than 170 pages, it is a slim volume, but nonetheless makes a solid contribution to the field. In her Introduction, Forni contests the categories of professional (academic) and popular, ‘positing a continuation rather than a chasm’ between them (p. 11). She takes a cultural studies approach to assert the significance of Chaucer’s popular reception in an argument that largely parallels those made to justify the study of popular medievalisms much more broadly. That it does not reference the ongoing discussions around medievalism is one of the more striking gaps in this Introduction, one which leads it substantially to re-cover already trodden ground. Making connections to that scholarship would also have contextualised the argument and discussion of Chaucer within the much broader context of contemporary popular receptions of the Middle Ages. The first chapter is the most substantial in terms of both length and analytical depth. It offers an overview of much of the material the book covers, structured by four different modes of intertextuality: adaptation, appropriation, invocation, and citation. This framework provides a vocabulary for talking about how meaning is made by different kinds of reference to Chaucer and his work. The approach allows Forni to demonstrate a veritable ‘proliferation of meaning’ (p. 59). Genre and medium variously shape what Chaucerian intertexuality signifies; neither the icon nor his works have a fixed meaning across the diversity of popular culture. The comparative framework, however, also allows Forni to identify pilgrimage and satire as two common motifs. She also finds more coherence between the framing story of pilgrimage and embedded tales in modern works than in The Canterbury Tales, with the framing story acting as ‘an inclusive discursive platform, allowing a diversity of voices’ (p. 59). The remaining four chapters consist of case studies of texts and genres, engaging in greater depth with some of the works initially discussed in the first. Chapter 2, ‘Chaucer the Detective’, focuses on historical murder mysteries which either take place during the pilgrimage to Canterbury, presenting it as an historical event and the pilgrims as suspects – and at times victims – and a second set which delve into the gaps in Chaucer’s known biography to see him play detective. Chaucer, in such works, becomes an agent of social order, and although he at times acts on behalf of the powerless he is also often unable to act against the corrupt. The third chapter, ‘Chaucer on the TV Screen’, explores two of the most well-known recent adaptations of The Canterbury Tales: the BBC’s modernised Canterbury Tales (2003), and Jonathon Myerson’s animated Canterbury Tales (1998–2000). Forni argues that both have a certain fidelity or respect for their source material, while also exploring the many changes wrought by the new media and the new cultural context. [End Page 208] Chapter 4, ‘The Canterbury Pilgrimage and African Diaspora’, presents material that, though likely to be unfamiliar to Australian and New Zealand readers, attests more than any other to the diversity of Chaucer’s popular afterlives. The works it considers, moreover, are closer to the literary or high-culture end of the spectrum than either the mystery novels of the first chapter, or the television series of the second. ‘Cultural, social – and especially female – exclusion and oppression’ are recurrent themes (p. 121). ‘Chaucer the Brand’ is the short final chapter (the book has no Conclusion). It considers Chaucer and his name as cultural commodities. Forni shows that Chaucer-as-brand has consistent meanings...