Professor Marion Turner

speaker

759 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 29 May

Professor Marion Turner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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You're Dead to Me · Geoffrey Chaucer: the medieval father of English literature · 27 Feb 2026 podcast

So there's a movement at the time to allow one person to speak for others, to allow ordinary people to speak more in Parliament, in petitions, in that kind of world.

And then...

You know, this is also the time when we see insurgent voices, which can be productive, but can also be really problematic.

So the Great Revolt, usually known as the Peasants' Revolt, though it wasn't really mainly peasants, it was lots of different people.

But that also happens during Chaucer's lifetime.

And the rebels indeed came into London through Aldgate and he lived in an apartment over Aldgate, over that gate.

Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting case.

It's also really interesting in terms of letting us know what's still out there to find in the records.

So this is a case in which Chaucer was essentially accused of something called raptus in Latin, which in different cases is sometimes abduction, is sometimes rape, sexual rape.

So a woman called Cecily Champagne released him from further actions relating to her raptus.

And for a long time, you know, there were a lot of historians and literary critics who were really, really keen to emphasize that this could not possibly have been rape.

We're very invested in the idea that this poet who we loved could not have been a rapist.

And of course, someone could be a great poet and a rapist.

Yeah.

But there was a lot of debate about what the word in the document meant, because in some documents it means abduction.

And abduction was not always forcible at this time.

You know, sometimes that was a legal fiction where someone leaves of their own will, but then because their family want to get them back, they call it abduction.

Lots of complicated things going on.

But a couple of years ago, and this is how exciting the world of Chaucer studies is.

So two scholars, Spassi and Specky and Ewan Roger, found some new documents.

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