Beal, Rebecca S.
Chaucer Review 44 (2010): 440-60.
Rubrics in "Filostrato" manuscripts label Calkas's bid to trade a prisoner for his daughter as an "oratory." Chaucer's version of the speech fulfills the formal requirements of a speech arguing "for a particular course of action" and in so doing…
Beal, Rebecca Sue.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1988): 2621A.
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Canticle, all ascribed to Solomon by medieval commentators, shed light on both Dante and Chaucer. The latter drew both on Ecclesiastes and on commentary for TC.
Beall, Chandler B.
English Language Notes 13 (1975): 85-86.
The famous descriptive epithet of the Clerk, "And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche" (GP, 308), may have been suggested by a sentence from Seneca's epistle to Lucilius (VI,4): "Ego vero omnia in te cupio transfundere, et in hoc aliquid gaudeo…
Following the medieval rhetorical analysis that sees irony as a form of allegory, Beall finds that both CYT and PardT deal with the "supreme alchemy" (material alchemy in CYT, rhetorical alchemy in PardT) by which the profane is transformed into the…
Beard, Drew.
Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 8 (2010): n.p. [Electronic publication]
Describes medieval dream visions, characterizes Chaucer's examples as simultaneously concerned with destabilizing assumptions and containing dissent, and compares aspects of Chaucer's dream visions with the "postmodern" horror movie series, "A…
Beattie, Cordelia, and Kirsten A. Fenton, eds.
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Collection of case studies exploring ways in which medieval gender intersected with other categories of difference, including religion and ethnicity. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for Juliette Dor, "Chaucer's Viragos: A Postcolonial…
Creates a literary history of the "night side of literature" in London from the Middle Ages to the mid-nineteenth century. Considers Chaucer's "nightwalkers" in MilT, CkT, WBT, and LGW.
A novel set in modern Kenya, involving three friends who find a cache of money that "disrupts their happy relationship." The epigraph quotes PardP 6.324-28.
Bebb, Richard, Philip Madoc, and Michael Maloney, readers.
[Franklin, Tenn.]: Naxos Audiobooks, 2006.
Disc 1 comprises Richard Bebb's reading in Middle English of GP and PhyT; disc 2, Madoc and Maloney's reading of them in modern verse translation. The booklet includes notes by Derek Brewer and Perry Keenlyside.
Middle English reading of PardPT (6.327-966), FranPT (complete), and NPT (complete), with introductory notes by Derek Brewer in accompanying booklet. Read by Richard Bebb; edited by Sarah Butcher. Recorded at Motivation Sound Studios, London.
Bechtel, Robert B.
Susquehanna University Studies 7.2 (1963): 109-18.
Reviews studies of Criseyde's character by G. L. Kittredge, George Mizener, and C. S. Lewis, and argues that she is "the finger pointing in accusation against the code of courtly love." She shows us that "we mortals are fools to think that by our…
Analyzes history of emotions, phenomenology, and gender theory, and specifically discusses "feminine embodiment and the bodily expressions of love" in TC and LGW.
Beck, Richard J.
English Studies 44 (1963): 241-53.
Argues that in his "mature work" and in "the service of greater realism," Chaucer used rhetoric "dramatically rather than ornamentally." Then gauges the degree of appropriateness of tales to tellers in light of the percentage of rhetoric in a given…
Beck, Richard K., ed.
Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1964.
Edits the GP portrait of the Wife of Bath, WBP (with excisions and interspersed summaries), WBT, and a portion of FrP, with bottom-of-page textual notes, and end-of-text explanatory notes and glossary. The Introduction addresses the base-text…
Becker, Alexis Kellner.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Describes features of medieval economic practice that underlie the SqT and the Franklin's interruption of it, investigating fundamental interrelations among food, land, and social status and their resistance to occlusion. Designed for pedagogical…
Beckman, Sabina.
College Language Association Journal 20 (1976): 68-74.
In TC, though color words are sparsely used, green, red, blue, white, black are tellingly employed, frequently serving symbolically to connote psychological states of being, sexuality, and emotions, particularly in relation to "eros" and "agape."
Beckwith, Sarah.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp. 34-57.
Drawing on Lacan and feminist criticism, Beckwith examines female mysticism as the only public expression permitted women in the Middle Ages and discusses the Otherness of the female and of God.
Bedford, Ronald.
Philippa Kelly and L. E. Semler, eds. Word and Self Estranged in English Texts, 1550-1660 (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 167-81.
Bedford explores the development of the term "irony" and interpretive issues surrounding its use, focusing on Chaucer's use of irony as reflected in Milton's interpretations of SqT.
Sensitive to contemporary political events, Shakespeare parodies Spenser's Tears of the Muses in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In addition, the dream of the elf queen in Chaucer's Th is the source of Bottom's dream, as well as Arthur's dream in Faerie…
Studying SumT with John Gay's 1717 poem "An Answer to the Sompner's Prologue of Chaucer" reveals a continuum of greed in SumT, moving from goods of use value, to coins of exchange value, to excrement and insubstantial air, even as Chaucer satirizes…
Beeck, Frans Jozef van.
Neophilologus 69 (1985): 276-83.
An examination of thirteen passages in TC and CT indicates that "ther," sometimes an impersonal introductory form word in Middle English as in Modern English, has been given too much adverbial weight by editors.
Historical fiction that reinterprets CT from the points of view of the Wife of Bath and the Prioress, integrating the pilgrimage plot with those of individual tales.
