Cunterbury is a scholarly arts & comedy podcast hosted by two Gen Z academics — Alice Fulmer-Zelinka and AJ Scott — exploring the major works of Geoffrey Chaucer and friends. In our first season, we are providing witty commentary and multiplicity of yassified voices to discuss The Canterbury Tales — and its pilgrims like you’ve never heard them before. If interested in supporting our work, please refer to the show notes, where among other things you’ll see you can follow us on Bluesky at “cunterburypod”, “cvnterburypod” on Instagram, and/or our Patreon. If you’re a scholar, comedian, or another type of clown interested being a guest on our program, please contact us at cunterburypod@protonmail.com.

In our third episode, our regular hosts AJ, Alice, and Shannen have a roundtable discussion with Dr. Tess Wingard, a MSCA Postdoc Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin. “The Miller’s Tale” — one of the most (in)famous Canterbury Tales — fails to disappoint us with its depictions of sex, farts, and the stars. What more could you want? A Middle English fabilau (an Old French genre — think raunchy comedic poetry) told by the drunken miller Robyn, this blockbuster tale has influenced art and pop culture for centuries since its inclusion in the Tales.

Content warning: discussions of sex and consent

Show notes and further reading:

https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list/seven-of-swords-meaning-tarot-card-meanings

https://globalchaucers.com/tag/soviet-union/

Baechle, Sarah. Father Chaucer and the Apologists : Cecily Chaumpaigne and 700 Years of Rape Culture. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271099798.

From Jonathan Myers’ The Canterbury Tales (1998): The Miller’s and Reeve’s Tales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Y62CIF3II

Pavlinich, Elan J. “The Cunning Linguist of Agbabi’s ‘The Kiss.’” Medieval Feminist Forum 57, no. 2 (2022): 110–40. https://doi.org/10.32773/CCUH4012.

Friedman, John Block. “Bottom-Kissing and the Fragility of Status in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale.” The Chaucer Review 54, no. 2 (2019): 119–40. https://doi.org/10.5325/chaucerrev.54.2.0119.

Cunterbury is a scholarly arts & comedy podcast hosted by two Gen Z academics — Alice Fulmer-Zelinka and AJ Scott — exploring the major works of Geoffrey Chaucer and friends. In our first season, we are providing witty commentary and multiplicity of yassified voices to discuss The Canterbury Tales — and its pilgrims like you’ve never heard them before. If interested in supporting our work, please refer to the show notes, where among other things you’ll see you can follow us on Bluesky at “cunterburypod”, “cvnterburypod” on Instagram, and/or our Patreon. If you’re a scholar, comedian, or another type of clown interested being a guest on our program, please contact us at cunterburypod@protonmail.com.We are joined by Shannen Escote, our guest host from the English PhD program at UC Davis! In this episode, we move onto the first tale in the Tales: “The Knight’s Tale”. It’s a chivalric romance told by an elder knight (relative to medieval life expectancy); a love triangle between two knights who are cousins. Its setting is ripped from the Theban cycle, French romances adapting stories from it, and Giovanni Boccacio’s Teseida. Philosophically, it bears resemblance to Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. We also discuss popular (and unpopular) adaptations of the tale, including William Shakespeare and John Fletcher’s Two Noble Kinsmen (1613) and the MGM film Challengers (2024) starring Zendaya.

Text of Francis Beaumont’s Knight of the Burning Pestle

“Crusoe, Classic works and Copyright”

From Alice’s Substack:

The Knight's Wail: Homosociality in King Richard II's Courts, Poetry, John of Gaunt, & Pan

Fumo, Jamie C. “The Pestilential Gaze: From Epidemiology to Erotomania in The Knight’s Tale.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, vol. 35, no. 1, 2013, pp. 85–136. Project Muse, https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/102/article/524017.

Ingham, Patricia Clare. “Homosociality and Creative Masculinity in the Knight’s Tale.” Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. Edited by Peter G. Beidler. D. S. Brewer, 1998, pp. 23–35.

Pugh, Tison. “Necrotic Erotics in Chaucerian Romance: Loving Women, Loving Death, and Destroying Civilization in the Knight’s Tale and Troilus and Criseyde.” Chaucer's (Anti-) Eroticisms and the Queer Middle Ages. Ohio State UP, 2014, pp. 98-126. Project Muse, muse.jhu.edu/book/35091.

Shimomura, Sachi. “The Walking Dead in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale.” The Chaucer Review, vol. 48, no. 1, 2013, pp. 1–37. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5325/chaucerrev.48.1.0001.

Cunterbury is a scholarly arts & comedy podcast hosted by three Gen Z academics — Alice Fulmer, Nina Gary, and AJ Scott — exploring the major works of Geoffrey Chaucer and friends. In our first season, we are providing witty commentary and multiplicity of yassified voices to discuss The Canterbury Tales — and its pilgrims like you’ve never heard them before. If interested in supporting our work, please refer to the show notes, where among other things you’ll see you can follow us on Bluesky at “Cunterburypod” and/or our Patreon. If you’re a scholar, comedian, or another type of clown interested being a guest on our program, please contact us at cunterburypod@protonmail.com.

In our pilot episode, we introduce ourselves, some segments you can expect, who Chaucer and the Tales are, and a longer episode than anticipated on the General Prologue. The General Prologue contains some of the most famous lines of Middle English poetry and a long list of pilgrims — and here we include our feelings on them. If you’re looking for refresher, a fun way to cram for your English class or just a way to pass a long train, bus, or car ride, we got you.

Show notes

https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list/the-devil-meaning-major-arcana-tarot-card-meanings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_FQU4KzN7A

https://patreon.com/Cunterbury?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

https://bsky.app/profile/cunterburypod.bsky.social

Further Reading/Resources

https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary

https://middleenglishromance.org.uk/

https://medievalistsofcolor.com/

https://smfsweb.org/

https://creativeworks.byu.edu/CreativeWorksStore/ProductCategory?siteID=20

https://newchaucersociety.org/