Hello, I'm Thomas Jones, host of the LRB podcast. This year on our Close Readings podcast, there'll be two bonus series, one with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford looking at political poems, and one with Irina Demetresco and Mary Wellesley investigating medieval humour. You can listen to Mary and Arena's first episode on Chaucer's Miller's Tale, here now now or go straight over to the LRB Close

Readings podcast where you'll be able to listen to the full series as it's released through

the year as well as Seamus and Mark's new series starting later this month. You'll also

find extracts from our three subscriber series running this year. Just search for LRB Close

Readings in your podcast app or find links in the description.

Hello and welcome to medieval lulls, a new podcast series from the London Review of Books.

I'm Irina Dumitresco. And I'm Mary Wellesley.

And we are both writers, literary historians and contributors to the paper. In this series,

we are asking, what's the Middle Ages funny? We're taking a tour through texts both familiar

and unfamiliar in English, Latin, and other European vernacular languages,

and hunting for laughter and jest in the textual remains of the past.

It is an all joy, though, for many medieval writers used comedy for serious purposes,

to call out social, political, or spiritual wrongs.

And of course, humor is not timeless.

The racism and sexism of our medieval predecessors now hurts rather than amuses. But there's still plenty to delight in. Noddy students,

scheming monks, gossiping wives, bums in windows, phallic jokes, and more farts than you can

shake a stick at. Today we're talking about one of the best known comic tales of the Middle Ages,

a story that's an exploration of authority, of belief, of learning, and of why you shouldn't

put your butt out of window. I am speaking, of course, about Chaucer's Miller's tale.

Mary, tell us a little bit about this story. Where can we place it?

What are the basics? So Chaucer's Miller's tale, as most people will know, comes from the Canterbury Tales,

which is Chaucer's unfinished magnum opus, which he wrote towards the end of his life. We think he died in about 1400. So it's from

...