Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Studies and New Media (New Middle Ages) [Paperback]

Brantley L. Bryant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0230105076 | ISBN-13: 978-0230105072

Medieval Studies and New Media presents all of the most memorable posts of the medievalist internet phenomenon "Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog," newly revised and updated, along with essays on the genesis of the blog itself, the role of internet blogs in medieval scholarship, and the unique pleasures of studying a time period full of plagues, schisms, and assizes. “Le Vostre GC” and medievalists Bonnie Wheeler, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Robert W. Hanning draw new conclusions about the ways medieval studies are perceived, the connection between the past and the present, and the historical roots of popular culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This study, in its learned laughter, should be snapped up by anybody who wondered, back in class, where all the devout or dirty jokes in Chaucer were buried."—Popmatters.com

“There is a tendency to assume that anything that happened in history is not funny. Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog performs the vital service of showing that the Middle Ages can be fun, and, as a side effect, reminding us that people were as capable of laughing in the fourteenth century as we are today . . . maybe more so.”—Terry Jones, Director of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and author of Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary

“While disappointed to discover that I am not the Chaucer blogger, I nonetheless commend this edifying tome.”—David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor, University of Pennsylvania

About the Author

Geoffrey “LeVostreGC” Chaucer blogs at houseoffame.blogspot.com and is working on a forthcoming poem collecting the “tales” of a group of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury.

Bonnie Wheeler is Professor of English at Southern Methodist University where she directs the Medieval Studies Program. She has edited and co-edited fourteen books, among them The Letters of Heloise and Abelard and Heloise and the Paraclete (with Mary Martin McLaughlin).

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen is Associate Professor of English at George Washington University. He blogs at “In the Middle” (http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com) and is the author of The Postcolonial Middle Ages; Hybridity, Identity, Monstrosity and Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages.

Robert W. Hanning is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of The Vision of History in Early Britain and The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance.

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (May 25, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230105076
• ISBN-13: 978-0230105072
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #524,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Erudite, earthy, educational, entertaining, June 16, 2010

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Studies and New Media (New Middle Ages) (Hardcover)

If you wondered where the sniggers in Chaucer lurk, this may be the book for you. It started on Friendster as a fakester, a grad student's "pop culture parody written in cod-Middle English by a Chaucerian persona." It morphed into a blog followed by thousands of medievalists, "nice smart people," witty pranksters, and professorial jesters. Brantley L. Bryant unmasks himself as "LeVostreGC," or "your GC", and my having to explain that reference exemplifies the fun, and the erudition, of his creation.

The blog and book's title itself combines "hath" in the archaic usage with "blog" as our current use. This chronologically unbound "central conceit" revives Chaucer as participant in this variation on "fan fiction." Certainly the mash-up results-- clever, learned, and engagingly arcane-- merit their own surprising study in this installment of "The New Middle Ages" series from a scholarly press. This anthology recounts the impact of this and related websites by medievalists over the past fifteen years in popular culture, academic circles, and via social networking. Ironically, this book allows us all affordable and permanent consultation of this Chaucer blog, even if Bryant shuts it down.

After introductory chapters study the pros and cons of cultural contexts for this technology, the other eighty percent of these pages share actual contents. Robert W. Hanning (Bryant's professor) teases and torments us with fifteen pages crammed with outrageously recondite puns, limericks, parodies, songs, smut, and bumper sticker slogans. This "comic diary," he tells us, is fifty years in the making. Hanning's section's titled "Chaucerians Do It with Pronounced E's." If that sparks a smile, read on. It's that kind of book. If you lack intimacy with Middle English, Chaucer, and medieval Europe, perhaps these delights may seduce you into fluency.

This humor, overly clever if often challenging (I confess a Ph.D. in the period, yet there's one allusion that baffles me), immortalizes what Chaucer had in common with his followers today. A bawdy, intellectual, humbling, holy, and clerically-tinged relish for the absurd, the lofty, and the ensuing, frequent collisions between our aspirations and our asses. Bryant and his conspirators remind us of the joy of scholarship, too often crushed by publish-or-perish pressures. The success of this blog beyond ivory towers, or flourescent-lit classrooms and dim cubicles, conveys the passion devoted by fans to a time they love.

Imagine if GC discovered "the wondrous messages of the Internet," the spam that these subject lines promise... "A fayre ladye of a far londe offreth me hir loue!"(Sexy female from an exotic realm seeks release.) "An churlish proposicioun of anatomical alchemie," for whatever aphrodisiac augmentation a canon might concoct. "A mightie prince of power asketh myn succour yn matirs financiale!" (Armenia fills in via "hottemail.com" for Nigeria.) "An appeale to the lustes of the bodi!"(Via "Brokers of Onlyne Erotica.") "And last but nat least, fortune doth smile vpon me!" (A chain letter.) Satire proves how our foibles endure.

That sort of sly charm permeates this tribute to Chaucer's appeal and the spell his century casts on those who pursue it today, amidst the same distractions and discussions you and I engage in at our keyboards. It, as with many inspired colloquies in this medium, does cut off suddenly. Perhaps due to the need to rush this into print, or the weariness of the author, or the inherent nature of a blog that whirls as rapidly as its URL taking its title from Chaucer's own dream vision, "The House of Fame," its entries halt, as GC muses over the werewolf craze: "Thys is a bandwagon upon which Ich wolde lyke to leap."

Well, if this all raises a grin, or cocks an eyebrow, check out this one volume from a scholarly press on Chaucer and his era which will spark more risibility than the usual monograph. Combining the commentary on this electronic medium for medievalists to spread both learning and wit with generous excerpts (updated and revised by Bryant for print) from the blog, this volume reminded me how much I enjoyed reading about these lost centuries. This study, in its learned laughter, should be snapped up by anybody who wondered, back in class, where all the devout or dirty jokes in Chaucer were buried. After this excavation, you'll wind up not only reviving them, but inventing your own, perhaps in orthographically-challenged cod-Myddle Englyshe, parchaunce.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect antidote to a grueling semester, June 25, 2010

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CBarrington - See all my reviews

This review is from: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Studies and New Media (New Middle Ages) (Paperback)

It was a long semester, so when I managed to reach the end of the term with no student essays to grade or committee reports to write, I planned to devote a day to things non-academic, say a massage and pedicure. Then, quite happily, I picked up my copy of *Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog*, and I'm happy to report that the laughter it triggered provided the perfect antidote to the semester's travails. As a result, I just might skip that massage and pedicure.

The book is based on the hilarious blog, "Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog." I admit to being a long-time, avid reader of the blog, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Chaucerian who is not. In addition to presenting the best of the blog entries, the book includes essays which put the blog in context.

The blog entries themselves are funny. Very funny. They "explore connections between Chaucer's literary and historical background and the obsessions of contemporary popular culture." Thus, travel to the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, Michigan, prompts our blogger to provide a list of pick up lines for one of the notorious wine socials sponsored by OVP (Oxford Vniversity Press). Or a spate of email spam triggers parodies with a pitch-perfect congruence of 21st- and 14th-century vices. Or the MLA--with its attendant job interviews, academic paper presentations, anxious graduate students, and pompous professors--becomes Margery Kempe's penitential destination while on one of her hapless pilgrimages.

Some might claim that GCHB relies too heavily on insider knowledge of the profession. Or that the Chaucer Blogger's universe--whether in the 14th or 21st century--is narrowly defined by the academic interests of late-medieval scholars. I would not. In fact, that is one of the book's virtues. It deflates many of the values we hold hear--and skewers the knowledge, skills, and activities that most have made great sacrifices to acquire. Moreover, much of the book's delight comes from the bi-cultural decoding each entry requires. For instance, Christine de Pizan opens her post chastising Geoffrey with "WTS!" To understand this exclamation, the reader has to be aware of the contemporary texting abbreviation, "WTF," and the Middle English word for sexual copulation, "swyve." Such tidbits are scattered throughout the posting, and all prompt cheerful glee.

If you have any interest in things medieval, you just might find this book the perfect antidote to whatever ails you.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rare scholarship, June 17, 2010

By 

David Cope (Grandville, Mi. USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Studies and New Media (New Middle Ages) (Paperback)

As any Chaucerian scholar knows, Geoffrey Chaucer was the greatest master of irony and understated wit in all literature; he had a superb eye for detail and his stories master an enormous variety of genres. More so than with other literary masters, I suggest that Chaucerian scholarship appropriately should mix careful observation with humor, an awareness of our own absurdity, and a delight in the play of language. Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog does just that, exploring the current state of scholarship (with a proper nod to the famed International Congress of Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University) even as the authors compose new works in faux-Middle English, ranging from the mock envy of a modern John Gower's "Why Ye Should Nat Rede This Booke," to "A Pyrates Lyf for Chaucer" and "Serpentes on a Shippe," an hilarious send-up of Snakes on a Plane. Our pyrate tale here has Chaucer taken by the great pyrate Robertson (influential Chaucer critic)who was "terrible for to looke vpon, . . . wyth a skulle and bones y-crossede and a pegge leg and a copye of the De Doctrina Christiana by Seynt Augustine." When Robertson learns of Chaucer's tale-telling ability, he forces him to recite tales each night, with the warning that "yt most likely shal happe that yn the morning Ich shal slaye thee." Eventually, the Drede Pyrate Robertson's ship Cupiditas is taken by the Feerede Buccaneer Donaldson (another critic), and Chaucer is put ashore to tell the tale. There are many other jewels in this book of rare scholarship, both serious and divinely funny, and if you love Chaucer, it's a must-buy.