Book Title: The Rap Canterbury Tales

Author: Baba Brinkman

Publishing Company: Talonbooks

Year: 2006

# of Pages: 352

ISBN #: 10: 0-88922-548-6

ISBN #: 13: 978-0-88922-548-0

$24.95 Canada

$24.95 USA

Reviewer: Deborah Ground Buckner

5 Stars

I was introduced to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales thirty years ago in my high school senior English class. My teacher, Mrs. Eleanor Swinney, was the grande dame of my school. When she spoke, she held the attention of everyone, even the boys who thought they had no interest in literature. With a sly smile and a naughty gleam in her eye, she told us we were about to read exciting stories and learn where most of our four-letter words originated. That may have been what held the attention of the boys who thought they had no interest in literature.

We turned in our books to the opening lines of the Prologue:

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Suddenly, our eager anticipation turned to trepidation. What was this? Mrs. Swinney played a record of a narrator reading the Prologue in middle English, and we realized, when spoken, the words that looked so foreign had a familiar ring. The tales included in our textbook were translated into modern English rhyming couplet, which Mrs. Swinney insisted we all read aloud in class. As we listened to each other's presentations and laughed together, we learned through Chaucer that poetry could be enjoyed as entertainment, not just “studied” and “appreciated” as literature.

Modern day hip-hop and rap music are as foreign to me now as middle English was to me then. So, I found myself opening Baba Brinkman's The Rap Canterbury Tales with that same combination of anticipation and trepidation with which I greeted Chaucer in high school. Not to worry; just as Chaucer tells us in his Prologue the circumstances of the pilgrimage that brought these characters together and of their plans to compete in storytelling, Brinkman, in his General Prologue, explains the circumstances that brought him to his purpose of sharing Chaucer's stories in a format Chaucer would find had a familiar ring.

Brinkman analogizes Chaucer's characters in competition with their stories to a modern day rap freestyle battle. Each of Chaucer's characters, from the Cook and the Miller to the Knight and the Prioress, has a tale to tell, and each character's background and experience shapes the story told. Yet, each character demonstrates an ability to tell—on the spur of the moment-- a narrative poem for the purpose of providing entertainment to an audience.

Brinkman asks, “So what happened? How did poetry go from the model Chaucer put forward—competitive, descriptive, rhyming narrative verse—to the printed free verse that we call poetry today? Even more importantly, how did poetry evolve from its roots in popular entertainment and communal play into something elitist and inaccessible, virtually irrelevant to most people's lives?” Hip-hop brings a return of rhythm and rhyme combined to tell a story and entertain an audience, a poetry form that demands oral presentation, not just written words to be studied by scholars.

The Rap Canterbury Tales includes the text of Brinkman's adaptations of The Knight's Tale, The Miller's Tale, The Pardoner's Tale, and The Wife of Bath's Tale. Chaucer's original text is also included with brilliant illustrations by Erik Brinkman. These interpretations make fascinating reading, but as I read, I found myself wanting to hear the words, to see the storyteller in action. I would recommend this book as a companion to Brinkman's CD, “The Rap Canterbury Tales,” or, better yet, as a primer before seeing Brinkman in live performance.

I'm fairly confident that were Mrs. Swinney still here teaching today, she would be sharing these works with her class—with a sly smile and a naughty gleam in her eye!