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theses

In an examination of modern adaptations of Chaucer, an understanding of Chaucer as an intertextual author and through a shared relationship with postmodern critical analyses of Chaucer‘s relevance today is integral in providing new diverse and inclusive perspectives into Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. By eschewing traditional adaptation studies methods of examining the fidelity of an adaptation towards its source material, the goal is to understand the adaptations as separate but equal works of art that help to make Chaucer more modern and more accessible for students who ascribe to a variety of marginalized identities. The Canterbury Tales directed by Jonathan Myerson and published by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) employs female animators to offer feminist outlooks on Chaucer’s presentation of women with proto-feminist values, while also managing to explore the nature of masculinity through the tales of the Reeve and Miller. In the Italian filmmaker and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini’s adaptation I racconti di Canterbury, the author employs his queer perspectives on Chaucer’s tales and examines the dueling natures of social normalcy and deviancy to question the nature of a regressive society. In Marilyn Nelson’s adaptation, The Cachoeira Tales, she explores the nature of the pilgrimage through the experiences of a member of the African-American diaspora and uses Chaucer to create an African American history in the face of centuries of erasure of black identity. Each adaptation engages with postmodern Chaucerian critics and provides for new methods of understanding and relating to Chaucer in relation to growing student diversity on campuses across America, while destabilizing the privileged readings of Chaucer as a symbol of English nationalism.

ETD_8193

M.A.

Includes bibliographical references

by Richard T. Milligan

doi:10.7282/T3QC068G

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.