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 cassette recordings of medieval English texts at
very low prices. The recordings serve several purposes:
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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.
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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.
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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 of the first five cassettes published may be found in the following
places:
- 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 for the Studio (who are unpaid) are teachers or students of
medieval literature. Prospective readers are invited to send an audition
cassette/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
contact us
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