Stories in Stanza'd English: A cross‐cultural Canterbury Tales

Abstract

AbstractWhen Canterbury's 2009 Laureate set about to recreate The Canterbury Tales for a 21st‐century audience, she remixed Chaucer's tales as the transcription of a poetry slam on a Routemaster bus travelling between London and Canterbury. She chose poetic forms that reflected the voices of her tale tellers, each with a distinctive cultural heritage. Thus, she transforms the Wife of Bath into a woman she could have encountered in her neighbourhood, a gregarious woman from Nigeria speaking of her experiences in Nigerian English. She retells the Man of Law's tale of Constance from the perspective of the mother‐in‐law, using the corona (rather than Chaucer's rime royale) to house the voice of the older woman from Newcastle, thereby lending formality to her confession of evil. Her rendition of The Franklin's Tale—set now in Edinburgh, written in rime royale, and using enjambment across stanzas—allows her to explore Scotland's important contributions England's culture, an exploration particularly significant after the Scottish Referendum and the Brexit vote. Together, her tales work to remind us of the essentially oral nature of Chaucer's verse as well as the long reach of his verse.