Cunterbury is a scholarly arts & comedy podcast hosted by two Gen Z academics — Alice Fulmer-Zelinka and AJ Scott — exploring the major works of Geoffrey Chaucer and friends. In our first season, we are providing witty commentary and multiplicity of yassified voices to discuss The Canterbury Tales — and its pilgrims like you’ve never heard them before. If interested in supporting our work, please refer to the show notes, where among other things you’ll see you can follow us on Bluesky at “cunterburypod”, “cvnterburypod” on Instagram, and/or our Patreon. If you’re a scholar, comedian, or another type of clown interested being a guest on our program, please contact us at cunterburypod@protonmail.com.

In our third episode, our regular hosts AJ, Alice, and Shannen have a roundtable discussion with Dr. Tess Wingard, a MSCA Postdoc Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin. “The Miller’s Tale” — one of the most (in)famous Canterbury Tales — fails to disappoint us with its depictions of sex, farts, and the stars. What more could you want? A Middle English fabilau (an Old French genre — think raunchy comedic poetry) told by the drunken miller Robyn, this blockbuster tale has influenced art and pop culture for centuries since its inclusion in the Tales.

Content warning: discussions of sex and consent

Show notes and further reading:

https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list/seven-of-swords-meaning-tarot-card-meanings

https://globalchaucers.com/tag/soviet-union/

Baechle, Sarah. Father Chaucer and the Apologists : Cecily Chaumpaigne and 700 Years of Rape Culture. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271099798.

From Jonathan Myers’ The Canterbury Tales (1998): The Miller’s and Reeve’s Tales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Y62CIF3II

Pavlinich, Elan J. “The Cunning Linguist of Agbabi’s ‘The Kiss.’” Medieval Feminist Forum 57, no. 2 (2022): 110–40. https://doi.org/10.32773/CCUH4012.

Friedman, John Block. “Bottom-Kissing and the Fragility of Status in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale.” The Chaucer Review 54, no. 2 (2019): 119–40. https://doi.org/10.5325/chaucerrev.54.2.0119.