#OnThisDay, April 17, 1397, poet Geoffrey Chaucer read the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II, in English rather than Norman French. In the story, on April 17, 1387, the pilgrims set out on their journey (depicted in A Knight’s Tale, 2001)
Do you think #TooMuchScreenTime is a 21st century problem? Think again, read these lines from #Chaucer and replace the word 'book' with the word 'screen':
For when your labour’s all done
And you’ve made all the accounts
Instead of rest and other things
You go straight home
And as dumb as any stone
Sit at another book
Till your eyes are fully dazed
Geoffrey Chaucer, The House of Fame (written between 1374 and 1385).
Saints, love, chocolate, and goatskins: How we got from Lupercalia to Valentine’s Day ~ We review the Pagan and not-so-Pagan history of the Valentine’s Day holiday, right down to the goat-skin loin clothes.
Happy #ValentinesDay! It’s time for us to ruin the mood, as we do every year, by posting our video about the word “Cuckold”, and how it connects to Valentine’s Day (via Chaucer) https://youtu.be/uk6gsB0Iijc
'Chaucer Here and Now' continues at the Bodleian until 28 April - an exhibition examining how his "works have been reworked and reinterpreted over time and around the world. Each generation reinvents Chaucer, taking inspiration from his work, and finding new meanings."
Even that apostle with his shoes sore
The die off match hath peeved to the toe
And bathed every bender in switch liquor
Of which virtu engendered is the floor.
(It kind of makes sense???)
(I had to memorize the first 18 lines of the prologue in Middle English in high school. This is the first time it’s ever come in handy lol!)
“The British Library holds the world’s largest surviving collection of Chaucer manuscripts, and this year we have reached a major milestone. Thanks to generous funding provided by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Peck Stacpoole Foundation, and the American Trust for the British Library, we have completed the digitisation of all of our pre-1600 manuscripts containing Chaucer’s works, over 60 collection items in total.” #digitized#Chaucer#manuscripts https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2023/10/chaucers-works-go-online.html
The British Library has made available online its entire collection of manuscripts related to Geoffrey Chaucer. Users can now freely access over 60 items, which include many versions of The Canterbury Tales.
Here's #Chaucer depicted in the initial "W" of the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales: "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote..." from Lansdowne MS 851, c.1410.
This painting, a celebration of the English language, was created by a British painter Ford Madox Brown in 1847-1851. Chaucer, the ‘father of English literature’, is reading lines from The Canterbury Tales to King Edward III, who first championed the English language over the French.