Swyve Left, or: A Modern Love Triangle in the Style of Chaucer

For my critical response I've chosen to retell Chaucer's The Miller's Tale in a modern setting and style. The story is retold as a series of Tweets from a Twitter user who lives with the main characters. I chose this narrative style because it parallels the way Chaucer wrote his Tales in the vernacular English of the day, and Twitter can be seen as a vernacular of modern English. The restricted character count makes the text punchy and can lead to using Emojis and images to enrich the narrative. Just like some of the references and allusions in Chaucer are indecipherable to us now, so, too, will Internet shorthand be in a few hundred years.

I also think Tweets are a good choice because they're pedestrian and accessible to everyone. The Miller's Tale is set in opposition to the preceding Knight's Tale and one key difference is that the first story is about nobility and chivalry while the second is a bawdy tale about lower-class people behaving badly. I think Twitter is the perfect modern setting for a rude and unfettered airing of someone else's personal drama. There's a real-world precedent for people live tweeting as they watch bad dates or break ups happen, and this seemed like an appropriate medium for a modern retelling.

In the original, Nicholas' deception of John depends on the Biblical story of Noah. I chose to have Jon believe in the 5G conspiracy as an analog, and Nick preys on Jon's gullibility and susceptibility to superstition. Jon sees Nick as an authority because he's a young tech-savvy person, just as John sees Nicholas as an authority in the original because he's a scholar of astronomy.

The tweets sketch out the story from the perspective of Millie, lives with her landlord Jon and two other roommates, Ali and Nick. Millie is growing tired of the bizarre behavior of her housemates and she documents one night in the house when things start to fall apart. The names should be recognizable, because the only one that's a stretch is that Absalon is now Lonnie.

I chose to put the dialogue between characters in iambic pentameter to reflect the literary technique of the original.

EDIT: um, I guess I made Most Viral last night after I went to bed?! I'm pretty overwhelmed. Thank you all for being so supportive of my very weird first post. I'm pleased to say that my prof really liked it, too. Thanks again for such a cool welcome into this crazy community -- if I knew you'd be so kind, I would have come out from my lurking a long time ago.