The Canterbury Fails

A Middle English ballad about a sketchy juggler with bad intent and a potent bittersweet and floral ringer.

An inventive and violent life of a kid doctor with the citrusy and herbal Milk of a Lion.

Lydgate's anti-Plague miracle poem with pestiferous angels paired with a medieval medicine-infused citrus bomb.

A live and in-person episode recorded in Kalamazoo Michigan at the International Congress on Medieval Studies featuring Usha Vishnuvajjala, Marty Schichtman, Laurie Finke, S.C. Kaplan, Sarah Baechle, Erin Sweany, and Dana Oswald. Decapitated wolves! Penis pilgrimage! Terrible romance! Fun was had by all.

A mediocre and short (thankfully) Old English encomium for Edmund that confuses Danes and Vikings paired with a rich and potent New York transplant cocktail. And David got one of those cherries he likes.

A barrage of nonsense luxury food items coupled with a surrealist filmic stiff drink.

A very special episode we like to call Canterbury Fails Ales Trails: a pilgrimage to several imbiberies punctuated with discussion of a bilingual apocalypto-prophetic wake-up call to the the English who are clearly eyebrow-deep in dissolution (much like the hosts).

A Middle English bird cries out for mercy, while we suck down the WORST potpourri vanilla chemical peach asscrap

Ælfric lays out the first six days of creation--ecotheory, gender, epistemology (according to Coley)--and we have a stunning cocktail and IPA chaser.

A comic almost-fabliau about a boy, three wishes, and apocalyptic flatulence, with a layered cocktail that hides the darkness in the light.

Margaret was both a medical and military rockstar. Do not mess with her.

An Old English barrage of healing recipes--dung! venison! breast milk!--with a cozy medicinal hearth warmer.

Who'd have thought that the super classy and amazingly sophisticated Marie de France wrote poems on exploding ass and pregnant men?

An anonymous Boethius-lite (TM) prison poem coupled with an opaquely frothy egg creme abomination.

The short Old English death lyric embedded in an emotional Latin letter about an expiring superstar scholar, coupled with an explosive lemon and anise dropshot.

A poem so unruly and excessive that it cannot be summarized: unhinged bananas bull goose loony. With a trifecta of Penny cocktails.

Ælfric's life (and death) of the saint Maurice and his 6665 friends, plus a potent bitter smoky and sweet masterpiece.

A beast fable dream vision mirror of princes with a potent and delicious Scottish cocktail.

An Old English prose riddle that many or may not be about incest, and a page of secret codes, coupled with a curdled hellscape of coconut, citrus and sulphuric eggy blobs.

Recorded live in front of a real audience in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Canterbury Fails had six brilliant guest stars: Brian O'Camb and Mary Kate Hurley on some marginal and doubly obscure Latin-Old English proverbs; Carissa Harris and Noëlle Phillips on a testy fifteenth-century beer ballad; Irina Dumitrescu and Denis Ferhatovic on a very twisted French fabliau. I know. Right? Unbelievable. Al...

A bunch of yahoos battle it out over a reeve's daughter, while we drink an oily peach-potpourri disaster.

A degenerate and grotesque Old English psalm paired with a smoky golden delight.

A wild and all too detailed description of male members; actually, no, it's a political allegory in verse, and a sevenfold rich whisky marvel. 

A stultifying set of rules for churchmen with a flaming rum-blast of venom, scorpion-style.

In this stunt episode, David and Matt adventure downtown to a super fancy cocktail lab and--switching it up--attempt to match a medieval text to the drink. Amazing cocktail and mainstream (non-Fail) text. An ambient noise odyssey in self-consciousness, grotesque wealth, and canonical literature. Special thanks to our very cool bartender and bonus thanks to our audio engineer splice-master.