My chicken comic is currently on display at the Bodleian Library in Oxford just across the room from the Hengwrt Chaucer. My chicken comic is currently on display at the Bodleian Library in Oxford just across the room from the Hengwrt Chaucer.
If you would have told this to the me from seven years ago, she would have had some questions…
Like “What’s the Hengwrt Chaucer”?
Like “Where’s the Bodleian Library?”
Like “Who is Chaucer?”
Well maybe not the last on. (Maybe.)
So much has changed since then! So how did my chickens and I get here?
When it comes to rewriting, retelling, modernizing, and adapting Chaucer, my comics fall within a significantly longer tradition: people have been responding to the Canterbury Tales practically since the moment they were written! It is this tradition that is being explored so vividly in the new “Chaucer Here and Now” exhibition, curated by Prof Marion Turner, at the Bodleian Library. The description of the exhibition includes a tantalizing invitation to visitors: “Come and reinvent Geoffrey Chaucer for yourself.”
An important note before we continue: the only Chaucer-thing I enjoy (almost) more than reading Chaucer is sharing Chaucer with other people and encouraging them to think about the texts an open invitation to react and interact. And for as long as I’ve been studying Chaucer, I’ve been thinking about Chaucer and comics and the ways in which these two things might be brought together.
Like Chaucer’s stories, comics are inviting, engaging, and entertaining. Comics, however, have a reputation for being a bit more approachable than your average Middle English text. For me, medieval texts and the medium of comics form a surprisingly natural partnership. The medieval English world was also a space in which text and image so often sat side by side.
Earlier this year, I was thrilled to be invited by Prof Turner to create some artwork for the interactive portion of the exhibition designed to help visitors answer that call to reinvent Chaucer for themselves. I was commissioned to design, film, and narrate two “tutorial” videos for viewers to draw their own Chaucerian characters - one of the Wife of Bath and the other Chanticleer the rooster. Alongside this audio-visual work, I was also commissioned to create some illustrations for an interactive wall where visitors could add pilgrims (and pilgrim puppets) of their own creation.
These commissions posed a number of intriguing challenges for me to take my base skill (“drawing Chaucer stuff” ) in a number of new directions and I was very thankful for the guidance and editing prowess of the members of the Bodleian team with whom I was working. For each tutorial video I filmed between seven and nine iterations before we settled on the final versions. After the video was edited on the Bodleian side, I recorded the voiceover narration with lots of expert recording help from Rahel. I learned I am terrified of microphones!
As for the illustration, this brought its own unique set of challenges. The wall measures around 2.5m by 2.5m (or 8ft by 8ft) so this was, literally, no small task. Also if you know my comics, you might have noticed that I rarely draw much in the way of buildings and locations. I was very nervous about how I was going to pull this off and worried that, at that size, any small mistakes in perspective would become very very obvious. Initially, I tried digitally illustrating the buildings but it wasn’t quite clicking - it didn’t look like my work. Stumped, I returned to my “analog work desk” and started playing around with some scrap paper and collage. In my normal practice, I paint using a waterbrush, which I clean by circling it on scraps of paper. I find the piled-up colors and patterns fascinating, so I keep the paper scraps once I’ve completely covered them and I store them in a large envelope. Grabbing the contents of this envelope and my scissors, I began cutting out basic shapes approximating the different parts of buildings and arranging and rearranging them until I was happy with the shape. I added some ink details and patterns and soon I had a brightly colored Tabard Inn and an equally colorful Canterbury Cathedral that I thought would fit perfectly in the space.
In keeping with the visual look I had developed, I used a fat brush to create a winding road between the two and also cut out some decorative plants and then sent all the elements off to the graphic designer who pulled the whole thing together beautifully.
In early December, after several weeks of creative and collaborative work, I was able to visit Oxford for the opening of the exhibition and it was an incredibly emotional experience for me. My lovely friend Dr Laura Varnam hosted Bee and I and acted as the most incredible hype-person one could imagine! The first thing we could see upon entering was the big colorful “buildings” illustration. Brushing right by the champagne, we zipped into the interactive exhibition space and emitted some very-professional-screams. It was an absolute dream and the rest of the evening continued to be as magical as that first moment. But I’ll stop here for now - I still want to make some diary comics about this particular adventure.
I hope you’re feeling inspired to reinvent Chaucer for yourself! If you would like to play along, the videos are available on Youtube - be sure to tag me in your work and use the hashtag #ChaucerHereAndNow. And if you’re anywhere near Oxford? Definitely give the exhibition a visit!