‘Of o toun were they born, that highte Strother’: Dialect and Pasolini in I racconti di Canterbury

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s I racconti di Canterbury (The Canterbury Tales) (1972), a reinterpretation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, is undeniably the most controversial – and perplexing – film in his Trilogy of Life. Marked by a cacophonous filming process, one in which English and Italian actors attempted to retell a collection of stories written in a form of English that has been extinct for centuries, the triumphs of I racconti di Canterbury have seldom been recognized. Pasolini’s reinterpretation of Chaucerian dialect is especially understudied, despite how Chaucer was the first English writer to differentiate his characters through written language. My article first focuses on the dialect in Chaucer’s ‘The Reeve’s Tale’ (c.1400) and then, its reimagination in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film I racconti di Canterbury. My research highlights Pasolini’s commendable fidelity to his source material and his success in replicating Chaucer’s representations of class difference.