Brand chaucer: The poet and the nation

This chapter focuses on how the works and biography of Brand Chaucer have been interpreted towards criticism of inequality and oppression in our contemporary society. Chaucer’s employment as a viable vehicle for propaganda may be seen in the printed editions of his works that appear in the sixteenth century. This employment of the Caxtonian position places Chaucer among the pantheon of writers such as Ennius and Dante who were viewed to be pivotal in the construction of a national language and identity. Contemporary adaptations of Geoffrey Chaucer can be broadly categorised into two types of medievalism: the use of the characters of Geoffrey Chaucer, and the representation of Geoffrey Chaucer himself. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s I Racconti di Canterbury, unlike Tacit Theatre’s “The Canterbury Tales,” employs the figure of Chaucer as a quasi-narrator, and the character is seen to observe his surroundings, and crucially his fellow pilgrims, while constructing the text that forms the basis of the film.