The Chaucer Studio is a nonprofit organization assisted by the English disciplines of the University of Adelaide and Brigham Young University. It was founded in 1986 by members of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, with the aim of producing recordings of medieval English texts at very low prices. The recordings serve several purposes:

• As teaching aids they provide performed readings of text originally composed for oral delivery and models demonstrating the pronunciation of English at various stages of its development from Anglo-Saxon times onwards as well as other medieval languages.
• As a research resource they provide texts for research into literature in performance and into the relative merits for pedagogic purposes of dramatization and narrative monologue.

ANZAMRS Readings are made in association with conferences of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, NCS Readings with conferences of the New Chaucer Society. Occasional Readings are made independently of conferences.

Reviews

"All thirteen Chaucerians attain nearly flawless prounciation as they enact their seperate roles and also recite in unison the birds' joint protests and closing song...Its near perfect pronunciation makes it suitable for many student uses."

--Listeners' Guide to Medieval English: A Discography

Read more reviews in the following publications:

• The Parlement of Foules in Betsy Bowden, Listeners' Guide to Medieval English: A Discography (New York: Garland, 1988), 3-4
• The Book of the Duchess, Dame Sirith, Sir Thopas, and The Merchant's Tale in Alan T. Gaylord, 'Imagining Voices: Chaucer on Cassette', Studies in the Age of Chaucer 12 (1990): 224-31.

Readers

Readers for the Studio are volunteer teachers or students of medieval literature. Prospective readers are invited to send an audition recording (on CD) containing several readings of different types (verse, prose, narrative, dialogue, etc.), of not more than fifty lines each, to the Studio's General Director, Tom Burton.

Tom Burton
Discipline of English
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005
tburton@arts.adelaide.edu.au

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