Broadcasting every Friday afternoon at 3.30 from June 27th to July 25th
Devised and produced by Berni Dwan, and funded by Coimisiún na Meán, Charmers and Chancers: Chaucer’s Cheerleaders, is a five-part series that attempts to link five key medieval professions – military, religious, legal, medical, trading – as depicted in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, to women’s working lives today, and examine women’s participation in these professions down through the centuries.
In the Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400, we meet thirty characters – only two of whom are women – The Prioress and the Wife of Bath – who agree to take part in a story-telling competition before setting off on pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett, that troublesome priest who was murdered there by King Henry IIs knights in 1170.
In an innovative and entertaining way, the series will – at a time when the gender pay gap is still a reality and childcare remains a challenge for many women who work outside the home – juxtapose aspects of these five occupational areas between late medieval and post-modern by engaging 21st century female practitioners in discussion.
