DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Chaucer's Afterlife

Adaptations in Recent Popular Culture

Kathleen Forni author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:McFarland & Co Inc

Published:13th Mar '13

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Chaucer's Afterlife cover

This study explores Chaucer's present-day cultural reputation by way of popular culture. In just the past two decades his texts have been adapted to a wide variety of popular genres, including television, stage, comic book, hip-hop, science fiction, horror, romance, and crime fiction. This cultural recycling involves a variety of functions but Chaucer's primary association is with the idea of pilgrimage and the prevailing tenor is populist satire. The target is not only cultural elitism but also the dominant discourse of professional Chaucerians. Academics in turn may have doubts about the value of popular Chaucer; popular culture theory, however, would maintain that such skepticism has less to do with critical discrimination than the assertion of social distinction. Nonetheless, the fact that Chaucer has a popular afterlife, and remains an ideological product over which competing groups lay claim, attests to his current cultural vitality.

“Recommended”—Choice; “a solid contribution...valuable”—Parergon; “incisive”—Studies in Popular Culture; “the book is in many ways a testament to Chaucer’s enduring usefulness. Forni succeeds in presenting a range of material in a fluid and engaging manner”—Oxford University Press Journals.

ISBN: 9780786473441

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 9mm

Weight: 245g

176 pages