Playing the Canterbury Tales
Regular price
€198.40
A01=Andrew Higl
acts
apocryphal literature
Author_Andrew Higl
Canterbury Tales
Category=DS
Category=DSBB
Category=DSK
Category=NHDJ
Chaucer's General Prologue
Chaucer's Work
chaucers
Chess Book
Cook's Tale
De Cessolis
Edward III
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fiction
Fragmented Tale
game
general
General Prologue
Hoccleve's Poem
Hoccleve’s Poem
interactive
interactive fiction theory
Language Games
literary game studies
Manciple's Prologue
Manciple's Tale
Manciple’s Prologue
Manciple’s Tale
manuscript reordering analysis
medieval manuscript studies
Narrative Prosthesis
Northumberland Manuscript
OED Online
Ploughman's Tale
Ploughman’s Tale
prologue
reader participation in medieval texts
Return Trip Home
Roundtrip Journey
script
Script Acts
Sir Thopas
Spurious Links
Squire's Tale
storytelling
Storytelling Game
Summoner's Tale
Summoner’s Tale
textual transmission
work
Product details
- ISBN 9781409427285
- Weight: 498g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Dec 2011
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Playing the Canterbury Tales addresses the additions, continuations, and reordering of the Canterbury Tales found in the manuscripts and early printed editions of the Tales. Many modern editions present a specific set of tales in a specific order, and often leave out an entire corpus of continuations and additions. Andrew Higl makes a case for understanding the additions and changes to Chaucer's original open and fragmented work by thinking of them as distinct interactive moves in a game similar to the storytelling game the pilgrims play. Using examples and theories from new media studies, Higl demonstrates that the Tales are best viewed as an "interactive fiction," reshaped by active readers. Readers participated in the ongoing creation and production of the tales by adding new text and rearranging existing text, and through this textual transmission, they introduced new social and literary meaning to the work. This theoretical model and the boundaries between the canonical and apocryphal texts are explored in six case studies: the spurious prologues of the Wife of Bath's Tale, John Lydgate's influence on the Tales, the Northumberland manuscript, the ploughman character, and the Cook's Tale. The Canterbury Tales are a more dynamic and unstable literary work than usually encountered in a modern critical edition.
Andrew Higl is an assistant professor of English at Winona State University, USA.
