The Canterbury Fails
David Coley and Matt Hussey
Reading marginal, minor, and absolutely unread Old and Middle English poetry, paired with a thematically appropriate cocktail.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Oct 17, 2025 • 1h 2min
Gower's Virginius and Chaucer's Physician's Tale: The Commons and the Creeps
The rank and brutal foulness of the brown fizzy berry cruelty overwhelmed the judicial malfeasance and filicidal love of these Middle English moral exempla. Everything sucked.
Sep 27, 2025 • 54min
Beowulf: Imperial Epic / Insurgent Poetry
Matt and David freak the hell out about Beowulf after an exploding flaming cinnamon disaster / triumph, and one of us still has glitter in our teeth. Hwæt?
Sep 12, 2025 • 30min
5ails 5ive: the Antifascist Middle Ages
In the first episode of season 5, Matt and David ask--and do not quite answer--whether we can read medieval English literature in terms of fascism or antifascism. The new direction for the podcast. Plus a literally on fire cherry themed shot. BAM. Join us!
May 27, 2025 • 1h 4min
Kalamazoo Fails 3
Matt and David bring the Canterbury Fails roadshow to Kalamazoo with six amazing guests: Valerie Allen, Ruth Evans, Martin Foys, Jordan Zweck, and Jeff Stoyanoff and Kara McShane. They cover some kooky and intriguing Fails. Happy Summer!
May 2, 2025 • 56min
Thre Prestis of Peblis: Threefold Bait and Switch with a Mid Whisky Sour
The set up is so juicy: dissolution, gluttony, corruption--but no, it's a moral Scottish march through politics, ethics, and penance, with a 3x3 drink that does what it should but not what it could.
Apr 17, 2025 • 52min
Proverb from Winfrid's Time: A Macronic Prosimetric Shorty with a Burly and Surly Complexity of a Drink
Buried in an eighth-century Latin letter from a monk who keeps his name a secret is a two-line maybe heroic nugget of juicy maybe heroic wisdom. We read it.
Apr 5, 2025 • 40min
Money, Money, Money: A Dour maybe-anti-Money poem and a gross drink you might have had stealing liquor from your parents
Matt and David try to grapple with a late Middle English anti-money tract, but there isn't much to work with, and the cocktail is a citrusy paean to sadness.
Mar 15, 2025 • 51min
Ælfric's Mid-Lent Sunday: Stirring Metaphors and a Stirred Drink
A reflective reading of Jesus and his loaves and fishes, chock full of allegorical goodness, and a world class Old Fashiouned (TM): thank you Canada!
Mar 2, 2025 • 39min
Insta-Fails: Four Middle English Lyrics and Four Breweries
A very special stunt episode where Matt and David read unseen (by them, but no doubt Furnivall has read them all) and give their gut reactions / hot takes, as they peregrinate through breweries in Port Moody. Chaos, 80s music, and revelry ensue.
Feb 15, 2025 • 51min
The Rime of King William: Chonky Anglais Fizz and Angry Rhyming Couplets
A poem in Old English that is wildly ambivalent but brutally clever coupled with a vegetation-rich perversion of an English classic.
