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 · last 12 months

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

But also part of this is a depiction of war.

So it's Temple of Mars.

But it's the war that Chaucer would have known.

So the idea of the scorched earth, the shepherd's huts being burnt, the kind of war which he took part in, which was often not pitched battle, but was attacking the countryside.

But the dark imagining of felony is great, isn't it?

But Mike did brilliantly.

I suppose in terms of language, Chaucer borrows and coins a lot of new words.

Now, of course, sometimes that's simply been recorded because his work is so well known.

But he certainly was expanding the English language a lot in The Canterbury Tales and in his other works as well.

You know, my favourite example is that he was so newfangled that he invented the word newfangled.

Ah, lovely.

He also changed what poetic forms were available in English.

So he was the first person to use the ten syllable line and to use an early form of the iambic pentameter.

So the five stress line that became the fundamental building block of English poetry.

So that's hugely important.

In terms of content...

The Canterbury Tales really affirms the idea that we shouldn't just listen to one hegemonic, important voice.

We should listen to the voices of people of all different classes, of both sexes, of all different kinds of people.

And he's really the master of juxtaposition of those different kinds of voices and of different kinds of stories.

So we have, you know, serious saints lives and philosophy, but also these extremely rude stories in which, you know, people have sex in a tree or stick their bums out of the window or divide up a fart into 12.

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