My wife and I laughed our heads off at this. Of course, my wife’s a medievalist, so maybe not everyone will get the jokes … .
Be sure to read his version the beginning of The Da Vinci Code (a.k.a. The Cipher of Leonardo) told entirely in Chaucerian rhymed couplets:
“Oon night ther forwarde dide ystagger fayntynge
A man hight Saunierye who knewe of payntynges
Thurgh archwaye vaulted of the Louvre he passid
And seised at nerest canvass as yf gassid.
A Carravage yt was, wyth gilded frame,
Ovt from the walle thys man dide tere the same.
In hepe beneth the canvas doun yfallen
From far aweye he herde thalarme to callen … .”
Geoffrey’s son, Lowys, hath posted one of his father’s owne rap songyes, entitled “Straight Ovtta Londoun,” on ye aforementioned blogge. Ye combinatione of olde-fashioned Englishe and leete haxore speeke is especially hilariovse.
Oh, my, that’s funny. I was at Kalamazoo but I don’t hang with the Chaucer peeps, unfortunately, so this is the first I’ve heard of it. But I did like the K-zoo picke-vpp-lynes.
So is Kalamazoo some hotbed of Chaucerian scholarship? I lived there from 76 to 86 and while I read bits of Chaucer in 11th grade Brit Lit (and got an F on an assignment to write a modern-day tale for writing “The Porn Star’s Tale” and screw you still Mr Smith, like Chaucer didn’t have naughty bits you hypocrite) but never heard of any big Chaucer-fests.
I’m hardly a medieval scholar, just a geek goddess. And this was the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks. I really, really wanna use some form of:
“Let vs breake oure mornyng faste togedir tomorrowe. Shal ich sende a page wyth a message for thee, or shal ich wake thee wyth an aubade composid ex tempore?”
Kalamazoo is Western Michigan University, site of the annual Medieval Studies Congress, which has the reputation of being the most actual fun one can have at an academic conference. I’ve been a few times, while I was in grad school- it really is, if you’re a scholar-type, a wonderfully good time.
Not just Chaucer, and not just literature, but history, archeology, religion, music, etcetera from the middle ages. Everybody who’s anybody in medieval scholarship goes.
