Academic Discussions

We invite discussions, questions and contribution of articles pertaining to Chaucer and his works, (especially the Canterbury tales) particularly with an eye toward their theatrical qualities, characters, story lines and historical background.  Please e-mail articles (in the body of the e-mail) to John Geist: info@chaucertheatre.org
Include your name and affiliations.

This question recently came in to our office from University of Nevada:

 'Do you work from a published translation, like Neville Coghill's, or have you developed your own version? Is there a named  translator or editor for that particular play/text?'

Artistic Director John Geist responded as follows:

"The primary translation we employ is the J.U.Nicolson which is that used in the Britanica Great Book series for Chaucer, book # 23 I believe. We  started there because of his general modern clarity and dramatic color. 
Over the last seven years, we have come to consult and adapt our script from  several sources; if we specifically use text we use materials from the public domain, or just  as an idea reference if it is still under copyright. Some of these include  the Tatlock-MacKaye prose translation, the Frank Ernest Hill Translation  with the masterful Arthur Syzk illustrations that we have used as costume models, and we sometimes will take a look at Neville Coghill's work from the  standpoint of comparison. Sometimes we translate passages ourselves for  greater auditory staged clarity. On occasion, for the song lyrics we will  employ the translations of Dryden, Pope or Wordsworth to add lyric power to  the music

 We take great pains to represent the content of the Canterbury Tales  faithfully but do not let ourselves become so attached to literal narrative  that it weakens the production. For example, if Chaucer says a certain  character thinks something, we might script that character speaking the  content of that thought aloud in an aside. 

Additionally, we have shifted Chaucer's severe one-man show model to a  pilgrim-character narrator who drafts other available pilgrims to play  various roles in his story.  For example, the Nun's Priest may draft his boss, the Prioress to play Pertalote (Chanticleer's favorite hen-wife), himself to play Chanticleer and perhaps cast the Monk (who was so obsessed with pride leading to down fall  in his own stories) as Russell, the fox! This creates several layers of  variety and presentational meaning for the audience not available if the  Nun's Priest plays all the story parts himself.

"How do your plays deal with the question of apparent anti-Semitism that  occur in some of The Canterbury Tales?" www.jewishsf.com

I think it is important it be clear where we stand on the issue: that anti-Semitism, in all its ugliness, must be faced and dealt with, for if it is comfortably swept under the rug, it almost certainly will rise again and we won't recognize it until it is too late again. It hasn't gone away. Anti-Semitism was common in Chaucer's day, but based on the whole of Chaucer's work - even looking only at the Canterbury Tales - we believe that Chaucer himself was not anti-Semitic. Look at the Monk's Tale in the story of Antiochus Epiphanes to see the other side of the issue.

Season Shows - Corporate Events - Schools - Community - Tours