By Geoffrey Chaucer, illustrated by Greg Irons (Bellerophon Books)
ISBN: 978-0-88388-023-4
Perhaps I’m just showing off now, but this lost treasure, published in conjunction with a colouring book (The Chaucer Coloring Book, which collected the original woodcut illustrations from Caxton’s 1484 edition of The Canterbury Tales) is a terrific and logical blending of High Art and Our Art and one so very worthy of being republished.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, as well as being a venerable and lauded landmark of English literature, was a ribald, earthy, popular and much-loved concatenation of short story character sketches, full of humanity’s every foible and peccadillo. It was rude, crude, action-packed, jammed with incredible situations and even had talking animals…
Thematically, how much closer can you get to the general opinion and popular conception of the comicbook?
Marry that with the art of the irreverent, subversive aesthetic and attitude of the San Francisco underground movement of the early 1970’s and you have a brilliant slice of pop-art history that actually possesses lasting social relevance and educational value.
The text of the Wife of Bath is typeset and in the original continental accentual-syllabic metre which Chaucer used to champion the London-dialect dominance of Middle English.
That means this will make a lot more sense if read aloud phonetically (the book, not my review, and perhaps in a northern English/Manchester accent). Or you could simply look at the stonkingly brilliant and funny, ribald pictures drawn by the astounding Greg Irons.
Although the original softcover is still available through some online retailers, surely some college or publishing house simply has the wherewithal to get this magical book back into print?
Artwork © 1973 Greg Irons. All rights reserved.