IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
Latest editorial
Good old-fashioned filth
GORDON PARSONS recommends an ideal introduction to the writer who was first to give the English a literary language
Chaucer
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
New releases from The Tenementals, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin, and Kuunatic
SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
ALEX HALL is intrigued by a detailed history of Gaza that demonstrates its historic resilience and changing economy
Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard
Mary Flannery, Reaktion Books, £16.99
GIVEN that even with the enormous modern research into Shakespeare’s life there is still a paucity of detailed knowledge, Mary Flannery is courageous in taking on a biography of the other icon of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, of whose personal life even less is known.
She does have the advantage, however, that medieval records provide revealing evidence of the latter whose active public life as civil servant, diplomat and MP was spent on the fringes of administrative and political power during the tumultuous later years of the 14th century.
When she comes to what kind of man Chaucer was, her descriptions are necessarily very largely based on suppositions. Her account is prefaced regularly with phrases such as ”it is unclear,” “it may have been,” and “it seems problematic.” Even a description of the construction of a new Custom House including a latrine which, it is “conjectured” Chaucer, customs comptroller (sic) for the Port of London, may have used.
More from this author
GORDON PARSONS welcomes a graphic biography of George Sand, the most popular French novelist in 19th-century Britain
GORDON PARSONS relishes a fast moving production of Sheridan’s comic masterpiece
GORDON PARSONS relishes a play that reveals how language carries much more than simple communication
GORDON PARSONS appreciates a very necessary exploration of the benefit of knowing more than one language
