#chaucer — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #chaucer, aggregated by home.social.
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Where do you get ideas for characters? Why you must look at life, not just books
I was talking to some very interesting English literature professors this weekend and discovered an area where academics and authors are on completely different pages. It’s this: where authors get their characters. Many moons ago I studied English literature at university. I remember it as a vast journey that started with Icelandic sagas and Beowulf… Continue reading Where do you get ideas for characters? Why you must look at life, not just books…
https://nailyournovel.wordpress.com/2026/08/10/where-do-you-get-ideas-for-characters-why-you-must-look-at-life-not-just-books/#Howtowriteabook #bookreview #books #charactersinfiction #Chaucer
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Where do you get ideas for characters? Why you must look at life, not just books
I was talking to some very interesting English literature professors this weekend and discovered an area where academics and authors are on completely different pages. It’s this: where authors get their characters. Many moons ago I studied English literature at university. I remember it as a vast journey that started with Icelandic sagas and Beowulf… Continue reading Where do you get ideas for characters? Why you must look at life, not just books…
https://nailyournovel.wordpress.com/2026/08/10/where-do-you-get-ideas-for-characters-why-you-must-look-at-life-not-just-books/#Howtowriteabook #bookreview #books #charactersinfiction #Chaucer
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Every so often, reading about (some) politicians (and others) reminds me of Chaucer's
“but only with the rich and victual-sellers”.Mutatis mutandis for today: replace “victual”, insert more occupations before “friar”, keep “rich” and “profit".
Nothing new under the Sun, but We the People must not shrug this off.
Of course.#Chaucer
#ChaucerOnPolitics
#ChaucerQuote
#ClassicQuote
#Politics -
Every so often, reading about (some) politicians (and others) reminds me of Chaucer's
“but only with the rich and victual-sellers”.Mutatis mutandis for today: replace “victual”, insert more occupations before “friar”, keep “rich” and “profit".
Nothing new under the Sun, but We the People must not shrug this off.
Of course.#Chaucer
#ChaucerOnPolitics
#ChaucerQuote
#ClassicQuote
#Politics -
Summer's soft yellow
Summoning pollinators
"Veyne in swich licóur"#Haiku #OneHaikuADay #WritersCollective #writingcommunity #BackToHaiku #Summer #July #Flower #Nature #Nature #Flowers #Yellow #Summoning #Chaucer #CanterburyTales #Flora #Akron #Ohio #USA #Photography #2026
July 9, 2026 -
Summer's soft yellow
Summoning pollinators
"Veyne in swich licóur"#Haiku #OneHaikuADay #WritersCollective #writingcommunity #BackToHaiku #Summer #July #Flower #Nature #Nature #Flowers #Yellow #Summoning #Chaucer #CanterburyTales #Flora #Akron #Ohio #USA #Photography #2026
July 9, 2026 -
Monument of Geoffrey Chaucer as pilgrim, High Street, Canterbury (Kent) | April 2023
#Chaucer #CanterburyTales #literaryheritage #culturalmemory #monument #photography #blackandwhitephotography #monochrome #Nikon
More of me: https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/wvmierlo
Prints for sale: https://www.saal-digital.net/profiles/wim_van_mierlo/
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Monument of Geoffrey Chaucer as pilgrim, High Street, Canterbury (Kent) | April 2023
#Chaucer #CanterburyTales #literaryheritage #culturalmemory #monument #photography #blackandwhitephotography #monochrome #Nikon
More of me: https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/wvmierlo
Prints for sale: https://www.saal-digital.net/profiles/wim_van_mierlo/
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Statue of Geoffrey Chaucer as a Canterbury Tale Pilgrim, High Street, Canterbury, April 2023
#photography #documentaryphotography #documentingplace #Canterbury #Kent #Chaucer #CanterburyTales #literature #literaryheritage #statue #lieudememoire
More of me: https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/wvmierlo
Prints for sale: https://www.saal-digital.net/profiles/wim_van_mierlo/
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Statue of Geoffrey Chaucer as a Canterbury Tale Pilgrim, High Street, Canterbury, April 2023
#photography #documentaryphotography #documentingplace #Canterbury #Kent #Chaucer #CanterburyTales #literature #literaryheritage #statue #lieudememoire
More of me: https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/wvmierlo
Prints for sale: https://www.saal-digital.net/profiles/wim_van_mierlo/
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Tom Gauld on Chaucer’s first unboxing video in The Guardian.
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Tom Gauld on Chaucer’s first unboxing video in The Guardian.
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Whan that Aprill commes
And bathes every veyne
Soote swich licour#Haiku #OneHaikuADay #WritersCollective #writingcommunity #BackToHaiku #April #Rain #Chaucer #CanterburyTales #Prologue #Literature #Medieval #Poetry #Ohio #USA #Photography #2026
April 6, 2026
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Whan that Aprill commes
And bathes every veyne
Soote swich licour#Haiku #OneHaikuADay #WritersCollective #writingcommunity #BackToHaiku #April #Rain #Chaucer #CanterburyTales #Prologue #Literature #Medieval #Poetry #Ohio #USA #Photography #2026
April 6, 2026
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#1246 Peter Ackroyd - Chaucer: Brief Lives. Vintage Books, London, Random House, 2005, 1st Vintage edition.
#PeterAckroyd #VintageBooks #Chaucer #GeoffreyChaucer #BookOfTheDay
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#1246 Peter Ackroyd - Chaucer: Brief Lives. Vintage Books, London, Random House, 2005, 1st Vintage edition.
#PeterAckroyd #VintageBooks #Chaucer #GeoffreyChaucer #BookOfTheDay
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What does a singing bear have to do with Chaucer?
A lot, it turns out.
Together with Jennifer S. Carnell (HMML), we trace how the Marian chant Alma redemptoris mater shaped medieval ideas about learning — from schoolrooms to miracles to manuscript images.
Open access:
https://academic.oup.com/nq/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/notesj/gjag011/8496039#MedievalStudies #Chaucer #Musicology #MedievalMusic #Chant #AlmaRedemptoris #AcWri #Research #AcademicChatter
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What does a singing bear have to do with Chaucer?
A lot, it turns out.
Together with Jennifer S. Carnell (HMML), we trace how the Marian chant Alma redemptoris mater shaped medieval ideas about learning — from schoolrooms to miracles to manuscript images.
Open access:
https://academic.oup.com/nq/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/notesj/gjag011/8496039#MedievalStudies #Chaucer #Musicology #MedievalMusic #Chant #AlmaRedemptoris #AcWri #Research #AcademicChatter
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Explore the rich history of Valentine’s Day, shaped by saints, poets, and scholars who turned love into a lasting culture. #ValentinesDay #SaintValentine #Chaucer #Shakespeare #RomanHistory #MedievalCulture #CourtlyLove #HistoryOfLove #CulturalHistory #PhilosophyOfLove #SeekReflectEvolve
https://sm.stayingalive.in/did-you-know/when-love-became-a-public.html -
“Valentine’s Day is a gentle reminder that Christmas decorations must come down”*…
A Norwegian Valentine’s Day card from 1912 depicting Cupid (source)Today is, of course, Valentine’s Day– a celebration overseen by Cupid. Jacqueline Mansky explains how that rascally cherub has been part of Valentine’s Day lore since Chaucer’s time…
Despite a long list of Valentines and Valentinas that included emperors, martyrs-turned-saints, and a pope, there is no evidence that Saint Valentine’s Day as a holiday about love existed before Chaucer’s time. But as soon as it was, Cupid was part of it.
As the late University of Kansas English professor Jack B. Oruch wrote in “St. Valentine, Chaucer, and Spring in February,” it was the English literary giant and a circle of contemporaries, including John Gower, Oton de Grandson, and John Lydgate, who, building on the courtly love tradition, were the original “mythmaker[s]”of Valentine’s Day as a holiday focused on love and fertility. Cupid’s association with the day was present from the start, says Oruch. “At the time of Chaucer’s death in 1400, the transformation of Valentine into an auxiliary or parallel to Cupid as sponsor of lovers was well under way.”
But Cupid’s image did not stay the same in Valentine’s lore. By the mid-1800s, Cupid was looking less literary and more marketable.
As Leigh Eric Schmidt, a professor of religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis, writes in “The Fashioning of a Modern Holiday: St. Valentine’s Day, 1840-1870,” Americans in the mid 1800s repurposed the holiday, and Cupid’s image shifted. Valentine’s Day had such a hold over the public, Schmidt writes, that it amounted to a “mania, craze, rage, or epidemic—a ‘social disease’ that seemed to recrudesce annually with ever heightening interest and anticipation.”
Naturally, Schmidt writes, merchants were eager to capitalize on this phenomenon even more by bringing children into the fold, so they created “lines of ‘juvenile valentines’.” Cupid came to have a new visual. Middle-class Americans of the nineteenth century had a “sentimental devotion to the child,” Schmidt writes, so the “piety of the angelic youngster” was reflected in a wide range of Valentine’s Day cards. The repackaging, Schmidt contends, was “very much a new image for the holiday”:
A refashioned image of Cupid as an innocent cherub indicated a redirection toward children and familial devotion. Merchants helped create a darling infant Cupid who bore only a faint resemblance to the often capricious Roman Cupid, who was said, among other things, to have sharpened his arrows on a grindstone whetted with blood.
Cupid’s image continues to be repurposed to this day in the pursuit of profit. Take the 2001 slasher flick Valentine. As film theorist and historian Richard Nowell writes in his essay “‘There’s More Than One Way to Lose Your Heart’: The American Film Industry, Early Teen Slasher Films, and Female Youth Author(s),” Cupid was reimagined as a “cherub-masked killer” to target teenage girls and young women, America’s “second-largest theatergoing demographic.” Clearly no longer playing for the children in the room, the trailer asks: “Why is it that the one day of the year that everyone’s afraid to be alone is Valentine’s Day?” The answer, Nowell writes, is the film’s tagline: “Love Hurts.”
It’s certainly a stretch from where Chaucer started with springtime and lovers, but considering that planned Valentine’s Day sales in the U.S. are expected to rake in approximately $27.4 billion this year—an increase of $6.7 billion since 2019—unless we collectively agree to quit celebrating Valentine’s Day, it’s a sure bet there’s more of this waiting in the, well, wings…
“Why Cupid Rules Valentine’s Day,” from @jstordaily.bsky.social.
* anonymous
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As we celebrate, we might recall that it was on this date in 1977 that The B-52s performed their first live show at a Valentine’s Day party in their hometown of Athens, Georgia.
https://youtu.be/KCRU0WgexuI?si=yk1lTiIErpIsTTXA
#B52s #Chaucer #culture #cupid #history #LoveShack #music #rock #StValentine #ValentinesDay -
Uniting for the first time the concepts of #Medievalism & #ReceptionStudies this collection edited by Ellie Crookes & Ika Willis includes topics as diverse as #StarWars #RobinHoos & #Chaucer & #Victorian perspectives on #AnneBoleyn & the crusades & more
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Uniting for the first time the concepts of #Medievalism & #ReceptionStudies this collection edited by Ellie Crookes & Ika Willis includes topics as diverse as #StarWars #RobinHoos & #Chaucer & #Victorian perspectives on #AnneBoleyn & the crusades & more
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It's a circuitous route via Greek, Latin, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare (and others) to get from Pandaros in the Iliad to "pander" in English.
#TheIliad #Greek #Latin #Boccaccio #Chaucer #Shakespeare #Pandaros #pander #etymology
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It's a circuitous route via Greek, Latin, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare (and others) to get from Pandaros in the Iliad to "pander" in English.
#TheIliad #Greek #Latin #Boccaccio #Chaucer #Shakespeare #Pandaros #pander #etymology
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"We walk in the garden of his turbulence... yeaAHHH!" (God, I loved Chaucer.)
▶️ A Knight's Tale Introduction by Chaucer
https://youtube.com/watch?v=GY8YvSq3wZU&si=CiXO28MjhVBRMpku
#aknightstale #chaucer -
"We walk in the garden of his turbulence... yeaAHHH!" (God, I loved Chaucer.)
▶️ A Knight's Tale Introduction by Chaucer
https://youtube.com/watch?v=GY8YvSq3wZU&si=CiXO28MjhVBRMpku
#aknightstale #chaucer -
Picked up a little light reading at Powell’s while waiting to see Pericles.
#Reading #Literature #Chaucer #Shakespeare #PDX #Theater #PDXArt #PDXTheater #Theatre #Pericles
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Picked up a little light reading at Powell’s while waiting to see Pericles.
#Reading #Literature #Chaucer #Shakespeare #PDX #Theater #PDXArt #PDXTheater #Theatre #Pericles
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Reminder that the 14th century author, #Chaucer wrote the seminal manuscripts of #TheCanterburyTales and taken as a novel, or a connected series of short stories, is a story about a #RoadTrip. Trip out!
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started a #wikipedia article on Vassar professor and librarian, Amy Louise Reed (1872-1949): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Louise_Reed @wikiwomeninred @vassar #NYU #Chaucer #Hawthorne
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started a #wikipedia article on Vassar professor and librarian, Amy Louise Reed (1872-1949): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Louise_Reed @wikiwomeninred @vassar #NYU #Chaucer #Hawthorne
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🤔 Oh joy, another thrilling adventure into the world of Middle English texts – because who doesn't want to read #Chaucer without footnotes? 📜 Apparently, the bold and daring mission to bring ye olde texts to the masses can only be sustained if everyone empties their wallets now that #NEH has bounced, because nothing says "medieval" quite like #crowdfunding. 🤑
https://metseditions.org #MiddleEnglish #LiteraryAdventure #MedievalTexts #HackerNews #ngated -
🤔 Oh joy, another thrilling adventure into the world of Middle English texts – because who doesn't want to read #Chaucer without footnotes? 📜 Apparently, the bold and daring mission to bring ye olde texts to the masses can only be sustained if everyone empties their wallets now that #NEH has bounced, because nothing says "medieval" quite like #crowdfunding. 🤑
https://metseditions.org #MiddleEnglish #LiteraryAdventure #MedievalTexts #HackerNews #ngated -
"Aprill with his shoures soote" kann man ja heute so sagen, aber von "perced to the roote" dürfte wohl keine Rede sein.
#Chaucer #CanterburyTales #Englisch #Dürre #Regen #April #BloomScrolling #Garten
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Whan that Aprille with
His shoures soote, the droghte
Of March hath perced#Haiku #OneHaikuADay #WritersCollective #writingcommunity #BackToHaiku #Chaucer #GeoffreyChaucer #CanterburyTales #Canterbury #Prologue #Spring #Rain #Renewal #NewLife #Pilgrimage
April 5, 2025
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Whan that Aprille with
His shoures soote, the droghte
Of March hath perced#Haiku #OneHaikuADay #WritersCollective #writingcommunity #BackToHaiku #Chaucer #GeoffreyChaucer #CanterburyTales #Canterbury #Prologue #Spring #Rain #Renewal #NewLife #Pilgrimage
April 5, 2025
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The Description Of Sir Geoffrey Chaucer
by Robert Greene (1558–1592)HIS stature was not very tall,
Lean he was, his legs were small,
Hosed within a sock of red,
A buttoned bonnet on his head,
From under which did hang, I ween,
Silver hairs both bright and sheen.
His beard was white, trimmèd round,
His countenance blithe and merry found.
His sleeveless jacket large and wide,
With many plights and skirts side,
Of water camlet did he wear;
A whittle by his belt he wear,
His shoes were cornered, broad before,
His inkhorn at his side he wore,
And in his hand he bore a book.
Thus did this ancient poet look. -
The Description Of Sir Geoffrey Chaucer
by Robert Greene (1558–1592)HIS stature was not very tall,
Lean he was, his legs were small,
Hosed within a sock of red,
A buttoned bonnet on his head,
From under which did hang, I ween,
Silver hairs both bright and sheen.
His beard was white, trimmèd round,
His countenance blithe and merry found.
His sleeveless jacket large and wide,
With many plights and skirts side,
Of water camlet did he wear;
A whittle by his belt he wear,
His shoes were cornered, broad before,
His inkhorn at his side he wore,
And in his hand he bore a book.
Thus did this ancient poet look. -
The Chaucerian: How a German school teacher became the world’s most prolific Chaucer scholar, and then was promptly forgotten https://www.medievalists.net/2025/03/the-chaucerian/ #Chaucer #MedievalStudies
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The Chaucerian: How a German school teacher became the world’s most prolific Chaucer scholar, and then was promptly forgotten https://www.medievalists.net/2025/03/the-chaucerian/ #Chaucer #MedievalStudies
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You reminded me, CatSalad, of the opening lines of Kermit's Canterbury Tales:
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
...So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen frogges to goon on pilgrimages..."
#CanterburyTales #Chaucer #KermitTheFrog #Froggys #Frogges -
You reminded me, CatSalad, of the opening lines of Kermit's Canterbury Tales:
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
...So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen frogges to goon on pilgrimages..."
#CanterburyTales #Chaucer #KermitTheFrog #Froggys #Frogges -
CW: King Henry II kills, literature 5/5
AIUI the Church quickly turns Tom into a martyr.
Pilgimages to Canterbury Cathedral boom.
Did having Tom as a martyr make the King , as instigator, an unholy abuser, at least until he's forgiven? Did this weigh against the #DivineRightOfKings.And you get one guess on whose shrine the pilgrims in #Chaucer's #CanterburyTales (1400) are headed to.
Currently considering how better to read/listen to those tales. Doesn't appear to be any obvious choice. -
CW: King Henry II kills, literature 5/5
AIUI the Church quickly turns Tom into a martyr.
Pilgimages to Canterbury Cathedral boom.
Did having Tom as a martyr make the King , as instigator, an unholy abuser, at least until he's forgiven? Did this weigh against the #DivineRightOfKings.And you get one guess on whose shrine the pilgrims in #Chaucer's #CanterburyTales (1400) are headed to.
Currently considering how better to read/listen to those tales. Doesn't appear to be any obvious choice. -
https://ianchadwick.com/blog/chaucers-house-of-fame/
Chaucer’s dream journey also allows him to comment on the differences between reality and illusion, or more widely on the nature of perception. What is a dream, he asks, and what is a nightmare. Why do we all have different visions? Why do we dream at all? #chaucer -
https://ianchadwick.com/blog/chaucers-house-of-fame/
Chaucer’s dream journey also allows him to comment on the differences between reality and illusion, or more widely on the nature of perception. What is a dream, he asks, and what is a nightmare. Why do we all have different visions? Why do we dream at all? #chaucer -
https://forthewynnblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/let-your-works-be-dead-the-haunting-house-of-fame/
Came across this 2016 blog last night about Chaucer's House of Fame poem. I've seen the poem in Riverside but never paid it much attention. Now I'm intrigued to read it and learn more.
#Chaucer #poetry #booksky #reading -
https://forthewynnblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/let-your-works-be-dead-the-haunting-house-of-fame/
Came across this 2016 blog last night about Chaucer's House of Fame poem. I've seen the poem in Riverside but never paid it much attention. Now I'm intrigued to read it and learn more.
#Chaucer #poetry #booksky #reading -
Happy #ValentinesDay ! It’s time for us to ruin the mood, as we do every year, by posting our video about the word “Cuckold”, and how it connects to Valentine’s Day (via Chaucer)
#Etymology #Video #WordNerd #Linguistics #Language #Words #Cuckold #Chaucer
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Happy #ValentinesDay ! It’s time for us to ruin the mood, as we do every year, by posting our video about the word “Cuckold”, and how it connects to Valentine’s Day (via Chaucer)
#Etymology #Video #WordNerd #Linguistics #Language #Words #Cuckold #Chaucer
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One of my favorite jokes from “A Knight’s Tale” (2001) is that Ulrich von Liechtenstein was an actual famous jouster, so using his name to sneak into a tournament would be like trying to sneak into the NFL under the name Tom Brady.
Additionally, he lived like 100 years before Chaucer, so perhaps it’s more like trying to get into the World Series today using the alias “Babe Ruth.”
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2025 book eleven: Peter Ackroyd: Chaucer ⭐️⭐️⭐️
#bookstodon #bookstagram #nonfiction #paperback #2025books #chaucer #peterackroyd
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2025 book eleven: Peter Ackroyd: Chaucer ⭐️⭐️⭐️
#bookstodon #bookstagram #nonfiction #paperback #2025books #chaucer #peterackroyd
