Barrington, Candace.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Approaches SNPT as translations of source materials, assessing Chaucer's assignment of his early life of St. Cecilia to the Second Nun as narrator, the implications of rhyme royal, and the thematic and formal concerns of transformation, idleness, and…
Barrington, Candace.
Candace Barrington and Sebastian Sobecki, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 135-47.
Reviews Chaucer's experience with law and legal proceedings, and argues that in his poetry he "questions the fourteenth-century English legal system" and critiques its tendencies to favor the powerful. Focuses on "virtuous women undone or ignored by…
Barrington, Candace.
David Hadbawnik, ed. Postmodern Poetics and Queer Medievalisms: Time Mechanics (Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), pp. 61-80.
Assesses Jos Charles's "transpoetics" in "feeld" (2018), showing how the collection of poems capitalizes on the "historical ruptures" and other constitutive features of Middle English, mimicking its "malleability and fluidity." Also suggests that…
Barrington, Candace.
Ken Seigneurie, gen. ed. A Companion to World Literature, 6 vols. Vol. 2, 601 CE to 1450, ed. Christine Chism (Chichester: Wiley and Sons, 2020), pp. 751-62.
Surveys the "global reach" of the literatures and languages that underlie the sources and settings of CT (with particular attention to SqT), and describes the multilingual, international range of translations, modernizations, adaptations, and other…
Barrington, Candace.
Yearbook of English Studies 53 (2024, for 2023): 134-50.
Argues that "contemporary critical translation theories shed light on" Chaucer's "translational environment" and identifies "a cluster of five translational actions"--"communication, transformation, transportation, hermeneutics, and liminality"--that…
Barron, Caroline L.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 24-41.
Discusses the character of Chaucer the pilgrim in GP. Includes history of Chaucer's life at Aldgate, his work as controller of customs, and later years when he moved away from London.
Barron, Caroline.
In Linda Clark and Elizabeth Danbury, eds. "A Verray Parfit Praktisour": Essays Presented to Carole Rawcliffe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 141-51.
Questions why there was "no great belfry housing a public clock in medieval London," arguing that something similar was raised in the 1350s at the parish church of St. Pancras in Soper Lane. Includes one reference to Chaucer: the cock crow rather…
Treats the nature of romance; the evolution of European romance; English romance; the "matters" of England, France, Rome, and Britain; derivatives; the diffusion of the genre; and "The Tale of Gamelyn."
Barry, Gregory L.
English Language Notes 17 (1979-80): 90-93.
The short verse argument to the "Thebaid" prefixed to most manuscripts of TC had probably been memorized in Chaucer's youth and was used for the later books of TC. While the siege of Troy continues, Cassandra completes the story of the siege of…
Bart, Patricia R.
Donald Prudlo, ed. The Origin, Development, and Refinement of Medieval Religious Mendicancies (Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2011), pp. 307-34.
Comments on the presence and treatments of friars in three Middle English writers, including discussion of Chaucer's depictions of friars and the Friar in CT and his uses of anti-mendicant literature as source material.
Bartel, Neva A.
Ball State Teachers College Forum 6.3 (1965): 45-50.
Comments on amplification as a factor in the "powerful dramatic force" of TC and explores, book by book, the poem's themes of "sight and blindness, the words 'bind' and 'bridle'," references to "sea and ships as opposed to references to fishing," and…
Barthel, Carol.
David A. Richardson, ed. Spenser: Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern (Cleveland State University, 1977), pp. 72-83. [Microfiche available from the Department of English.]
In adapting the outdated motif of the medieval romance of dreaming of a fairy queen from Chaucer's Thop, Spenser blends naiveté and sophistication.
Studies the "dynamic relationship" between Fortuna and Natura in PhyT, ClT, and KnT, surveying in an Introduction (pp. 9-45) their presence elsewhere in Chaucer's works and his antecedents. In PhyT which "approaches allegory" the "destructive forces…
Bartlett, Kate, and others.
[U.K.]: British Broadcast Corporation, 2003.
Adaptations of selections from CT in modern settings and circumstances, originally broadcast by BBC1 in six episodes, September 11-October 16, 2003. Written by Peter Bowker (MilT), Tony Grounds (PardT), Olivia Hetreed (MLT), Avie Luthra (ShT), Tony…
The dreamer's apparently inept, clumsy responses to the knight's complaint result not from sympathetic tactfulness, but rather from his ignorance of courtly love conventions. His recognition of the transience of all earthly things in the knight's…
Bartlett, Robyn A.
Chaucer Review 57 (2022): 321-44.
Highlights that BD conveys the inevitability and incomprehensibility of death, offering a reading of the poem that moves beyond consolation of poetry and memory.
Barwell, Graham, and Christopher Moore.
Jenna Ng, ed. Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds (New York:Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 207-26.
Explores the goals and accomplishments of an interdisciplinary (English studies and communication) pedagogical experiment in adapting portions of CT to the online game "World of Warcraft," commenting on the processes of animation, mediation, and…
Bashuna, I. G. [И. Г. Башuна].
M. L. Remneva, ed. Aktual'nye Problemy Iazykoznaniia i Literaturovedeniia (Moscow: Moskovskii Ggosudarsvennyi Universitet imeni M.V. Lomonosova, 1994), pp. 138-46.
Basquin, Edmond A.
Technical Communication 28 (1981): 22-24.
Summary description of Astr that describes Chaucer's "admirable textbook method" and comments on his "rules of good technical writing," including simple diction and syntax, awareness of audience, repetition for emphasis, and copious illustrations.
Explores the symbolic value of the gems, their colors, and their settings (rings and brooch) in TC, discussing the moral implications referred to in medieval lapidaries.
Surveys "unreliable" information about Constantine Africanus in scholarly discussions of Chaucer's references to him in GP 1.433 (Doctour of Phisik) and MerT 4.1810-11. Then clarifies Constantinus's importance in the history of medicine, what is and…
Bassil, Veronica.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 26 (1984): 157-82.
ClT influenced "The Not-Browne Mayd" in narrative action, diction, and organization. The latter was the model for Matthew Prior's "Henry and Emma," which was in turn the model for Richardson's "Clarissa."
Baswell, Christopher (C.)
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 121-60.
Medieval habits of reading characteristically produce "a voicing and an inscription of that voicing" (123), allowing for a fluidity of margin and text, reader and author. Geffrey's position as author and glossed text in LGWP and the Wife's position…
