The Rap Canterbury Tales

Brinkman, Baba. The Rap Canterbury Tales. Vancouver, B.C.: Talonbooks, 2006.

You can hear them here: http://babasword.com/index/audio.html

This has been -- sorry! -- interesting. On the one hand, it seems ludicrous. Rap? Canterbury Tales? Rap Canterbury Tales?

But Brinkman makes a lot of good points. One could (and he does) trace the roots of rap back to Chaucer's poetry. Chaucer was meant to be recited. Rap has usurped poetry in that regard. In that way, I think what he is doing works. Now, unfortunately, to my eyes, his versions tend to be a little heavy-handed. But still, I think it's better than many of the translations I have seen. Binkman doesn't try to hide anything.

More to the point, if my project is to look at Chaucer in pop culture, I applaud anyone or anything that brings people to Chaucer. (I think.)

Still, I am left at a pop culture nexus that leaves me somewhat uncomfortable. If it's due to tropes commonly used in rap, I can't say.

Brinkman describes my beloved alisoun in this way:

195: Alisoun’s cheeks are “painted up slutty pink” She has a “naughty stink”

The "naughty stink" -- okay, a little weird, but I can see the connections.

The "slutty pink" line, however, really bothers me. I'm trying to put my finger on why. I don't like the word "slut" itself. I hate the binary it presents -- men who sleep around are fine, women who do are not, etc etc.

It's very distasteful to me. To me, alisoun is not a slut. Perhaps this is a difference in interpretation? One could say she fits the standard definition of slut; one could find that in the text. Maybe if I believes that about her, that modern word would bother me less?

It just seems so biased. So final. This is who she is. The end. With the original text, there are options. With *any* original text, not just Chaucer. Perhaps that's the trouble of interpretation and translations. We translate her into who we want her to be -- for me, a woman who does the best with what she has. For Brinkman/rap, she is a slut (a ho?).

I'm also wondering if there's a double entendre. Is "slutty pink" meant to specifically evoke the vagina and thus a layered comment on her sexuality? Given Chaucer's use of the word "queynte," an image suggesting vagina would not be out of place. I can't decide how I feel about that, either. My poor feminist head, my poor feminist heart. They are at odds. It's an apt description. But it's so ugly. Should I hide from that, embrace it? am I seeing things that aren't there? (It's just a word, as my students would say.)

What modern equivalent is there for alisoun? Does she exist in the modern (Western) world? Yes, there are young women that marry old men, yes there are women that cheat on their husbands. But there is a much greater element of choice. Just as I think it's wrong to ascribe feminist or anti-feminist motives to non-twenty and twenty-first century authors, I think it is wrong to apply this modern word to alisoun. If she is a slut, she did not choose it. Can she even be a slut?

I shall be thinking about this for awhile yet.