The Rap Canterbury Tales

By Baba Brinkman

Book Overview

The ambition that inspired rapper and MC Baba Brinkman to transpose his performance piece "The Rap Canterbury Tales" to the printed page was his desire to resurrect Chaucer's brilliant stories from their vellum mausoleum into visible and audible contemporary forms that would once again delight and edify both live listening audiences and readers--a rebirth of what poetry should be in its essence, and once was. Since Chaucer has become an unassailable icon of print culture, and hip-hop is an unassailable icon of contemporary digital cool, he saw this radical new fusion of content and style as the perfect medium to deliver Chaucer's astonishingly timeless message to a younger generation growing indifferent to the delights of "archaic" literary forms. This fusion has produced, with both texts reproduced here on facing pages, one of the most exciting and extraordinarily fertile literary documents of our age. The raps are presented here--along with Chaucer's original Middle English, Brinkman's explanatory introductions, and his brother and stage manager Erik's illustrations--as the best possible way of telling the story of how these stories came about, and what they were meant to do. A hugely successful hit at the Edinburgh Festival, Brinkman has worked with the London and Cambridge school systems, rekindling an interest among both performance-poetry fans and students in the work of "the father of the English language."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0889225486
• ISBN13: 9780889225480
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

I didn't appreciate rap before this

This is a great way, combined with Brinkmann's CD, to introduce kids to the Canterbury tales. Brinkman has a unique perspective and is well worth reading (there is material here that helps explain his philosophy). get the CD, too, you gotta hear it as well. I heard about Brinkman via the NYT when Olivia Judson mentioned his Evolution Rap for the Darwin celebration... Unless you're a religious prude this stuff is good!

Bringing the Canterbury Tales Alive for Today's Teens.

I teach Senior English and was thrilled to find a fun way to make Canterbury Tales relevant to today's youth. I made a wonderful Power Point presentation using Brinkman's "Wife of Bath" then downloaded the presentation into Microsoft's Photo Story 3, then downloaded Brinkman's actual rap of the "Wife of Bath." The kids loved it. They were able to see and hear his rap and were able to connect to Chaucer and see how little the battle between the sexes has changed over the past 400 years. It's a wonderful way of bringing Chaucer to kids and I recommend it highly.

A hit in alternative ed!

Stop the presses!! Alternative high school students like CHAUCER!! What would have otherwise been a miserable learning (and teaching) experience was a complete blast thanks to this version of The Canterbury Tales. Funny, educational, and relevant---it will change how your students approach the text, especially when combined with the musical version of it. Thanks, Baba Brinkman!