In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a collection of narrative poems from the Middle Ages, characters entertain one another with stories on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury. Can such tales still connect with modern readers? Patience Agbabi, a contemporary British poet and Chaucer scholar, has remixed Chaucer’s work in Telling Tales. Jordan Ho ‘27 is comparing Chaucer, the “canon,” with this modern anthology, a task that is no tall tale.

Ho, who is pursuing a double major in philosophy and English, is focusing her analysis on Agbabi's adaptation of The Franklin’s Tale. Makar Frankie Lynn, the speaker of this tale, lives primarily on Pusher Street in Freetown Christiania. A tourist attraction today, Freetown Christiania is a failed utopian commune in Copenhagen, Denmark created by anarchists and artists on top of a former military base.

“I look at her evocation of Freetown Christiania, and also her usage of rhyme royal, feminine and masculine rhyme, and subverted iambic pentameter,” Ho explains. She argues that dominating structures, like police violence and the proliferation of Chaucer’s form, are inconsistent with utopian possibilities. Another aspect of her analysis is thinking about how this utopian possibility is built on a physical structure of masculine violence.

One of the challenges of analyzing “Makar (The Franklin's Tale)” is its Scottish speaking narrator. “I've done research into how people from Edinburgh would pronounce certain things, which changes my analysis of syllable structure,” Ho says. For example, the pronunciation of the main character’s name, Arild, affects the feminine rhyme. There’s also not a lot of scholarship on Agbabi and there’s no recorded audio of her performing the Makar’s Tale. “A lot of my interpretations of pronunciation, which speak directly to my research conclusion, are based on my interpretations of how the poem would be spoken.”

Agbabi’s subversion of rhyme royal—a stanza of seven 10-syllable lines popularized by Chaucer—points to the author’s interest in Fin ‘Amor rather than Chaucer’s interest in romantic overtones. “I argue that one of these utopian possibilities is the speaker's own story in her own voice, but they're filtered through Chaucer’s own form.”

Ho presented her research at three academic conferences in March: the 56th Annual Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) in Philadelphia, the Lehigh Research in the Arts Symposium, and the Lycoming Undergraduate Humanities Research Conference. Next year, she’ll continue her studies as a visiting student scholar at Oxford University’s Mansfield College. This writing intensive program, with the first LGBTQ+ history teacher in the UK, aligns with Ho’s interests in queer feminist and post-colonial theories.

By illuminating the work of Agbabi, Ho is helping to “decolonize the canon.”  

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“I don't think the work is to deny that there is a literary canon,” Ho begins, “but the interesting work that Dr. [Suzanne] Edwards puts forth, and I think Patience Agbabi is as an example of that, is individuals who see literary canon as a place to adapt and subvert and change and create critical think pieces on how we see thought.”

“Lehigh specifically stood out to me because of the care and consideration that I was treated with throughout the admissions and application process,” Ho remarks. This warm welcome really encouraged her to pursue her passion, even if she didn’t think it would be an avenue for her. “I've received so much individual support and attention that has been, honestly, life-changing.”