I have an essay in this interesting book, Caroline Bergvall’s Medievalist Poetics: Migratory Texts and Transhistorical Methods, whose focus is described as ‘Bergvall’s celebrated trilogy of interdisciplinary medievalist texts and projects—Meddle English (2011), Drift (2014), and Alisoun Sings (2019)—documents methods of reading and making that are poetically and politically alert, critically and culturally aware, linguistically attuned, and historically engaged.’ (I hadn’t quite caught up with the last book of her trilogy, though I have written in detail on the first, and I saw a Liverpool performance of the second, to which I make reference.)
‘Drawing
on the wide-ranging body of criticism dedicated to Bergvall’s work and material
from Bergvall’s archive,’ the editors say, ‘together with newly commissioned
texts by scholars, theorists, linguists, translators, and poets, this book
situates the trilogy in relation to key themes including mixed temporalities;
interdisciplinarity and performance; art and activism; and the geopolitical,
psychosexual, and social complexities of subjectivity. It follows routes laid
down by the trilogy to move between the medieval past and our contemporary
moment to uncover new forms of encounter and exchange.’
Of course, such summaries are only summaries, and the list of contents on the webpage, may be accessed HERE:
Caroline Bergvall’s Medievalist Poetics - Arc Humanities Press (arc-humanities.org)
My contribution is entitled ‘Inventive Reworkings: Transformation and Translation in Caroline Bergvall’s Meddle English’ and relates to work first began on this blog, which may be found here, Pages: Robert Sheppard: Caroline Bergvall and Chaucer, which developed, taking the work in one direction, into a half-chapter in my Meaning of Form¸ see here, Pages: Robert Sheppard: The Meaning of Form Bergvall and Moure, and pointing towards this new, related, piece that appears in this book.
It's always
good to see an essay appearing in a recondite source, but it fills me with
chagrin to realise the price of the book, and my bewilderment at finding, yet
again, that if I want a hard copy of the book, I’ll have to buy one. If you are
wondering why I write less literary criticism than I used to, here’s two major
reasons. But at least my early thinking is alive in a rude and ruddy state, and
freely available, on this blog.
I have just finished reading Marion Turner’s huge and recent Chaucer: a European Life, which is a magisterial,
if slightly repetitive, life of Chaucer as a European agent, thinker and
writer (and land agent and customs officer), and this put right some of my ignorance about Chaucer (too late
for this piece, or the poem I mention below, of course). It cost me £4 in the Roy Castle
Cancer Shop. A very fine account of Chaucer's writing, the European influences on it, and his position as a professional administrator and diplomat (in modern terms). A great sense of the demotic, popular, and rooted (geographically) nature of The Canterbury Tales. (Turner sees Chaucer in spatial terms.) Chaucer as an apostle of unfinish (in my terms).
Here, in
another article, I am demonstrating what I took from Petrarch in my ‘English
Strain’ project, a parallel jump into the middle ages. While I was working on
Bergvall, I read a lot of Chaucer: it rubbed off in the sonnet I wrote for the ‘Petrarch
3’ part of The English Strain, which is yet another version of his
sonnet 3, this time into Middle English. Pages:
Practice-Led piece on 'Petrarch 3' from The English Strain published in
Translating Petrarch's Poetry (Legenda) (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)
takes you to my account of that book, AND a video reading of the sonnet,
performed in my best Neville Coghill! If my new book Doubly Stolen Fire plays
around with literary history, so does this poem. I claim to have written
the first sonnet in English in 1401 (i.e. just after Chaucer’s death).
Up yours Wyatt.
(I handle
his versions of Petrarch too.) The English Strain,
is available from Shearsman Books here:
https://www.shearsman.com/store/Sheppard-Robert-c28271934?offset=6
*
Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com (don’t use the Edge Hill email); website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on Twitter (or X): Robert Sheppard (@microbius) / Twitter latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com. Or you could use a courier and donkey like Chaucer did.
