Bennett, Jim, and Giorgio Strano.
Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science 29 (2014): 179-29; 9 color and b&w figs.
Describes the ownership history and details the physical features of a fourteenth-century English astrolabe in the Koelliker Collection, Milan, assessing its status as the "Chaucer Astrolabe" (here called the "Tomba-Koelliker astrolabe") by gauging…
Contrasts the historical status of late-medieval plowmen with their literary status, considering Chaucer's Plowman in GP, Langland's "Piers Plowman," and the "other more minor plowmen poems" of late-medieval England.
Bennett, Kristen Abbott.
This Rough Magic 2.2 (2011): 1-24.
Contends that the SqT explores "rhetorical imitation" as a means to confront the postlapsarian "fallen" nature of language, "multiplying the rhetorical conventions 'imitatio,' inexpressibility, and 'translatio'" in order to "probe the idea of poetic…
Bennett, Kristen Abbott.
Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies, August 10, 2015: n.p.
Includes discussion of the influence of Chaucer's Purse and Thomas Hoccleve's "La male regle" on Thomas Nashe's "Pierce Penilesse," examining the elements of comedy and "moral uncertainty" in Chaucer's poem and its "accretion of polygeneric…
Bennett, Matthew.
Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey, eds. The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood (Wolfeboro, N.H.: Boydell & Brewer, 1986), pp. 1-11.
Historical background: assesses the "social and military role of the squire" in England and northern France.
Bennett, Michael [J.]
J. S. Bothwell, ed. The Age of Edward III. (Rochester, N.Y.; and Woodbridge: York Medieval Press and Boydell Press, 2001), pp. 215-25.
Seeks to "reveal a little more fully the world" in which Chaucer was trained as a page, examining the household accounts of Isabelle (BL MS Cotton Galba E.14) in the context of better-known household accounts. Bennett comments on pageantry,…
Bennett, Michael J.
Barbara A. Hanawalt, ed. Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 3-20.
Richard's court was important as a cultural force in England's first "golden age" of literature. Members of his coterie were the first audience of poets such as Chaucer and Gower, and it seems likely that his travels were related to the production…
Bennett, Robert Russell.
Mauricetown, N.J.: Maurice Press, 2018.
Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this vocal–piano score, composed by Bennett for Percy E. Fletcher, was edited by Janet Schlein Somers and Paul Mack Somers. Sets MercB to music in three parts: "Captivity," "Rejection," and "Escape,"…
Benoit-Dusausoy, Annick, and Guy Fontaine, ed. Trans. Michael Wooff.
New York and London : Routledge, 2000.
Comprehensive survey of European literatures, writers, genres, motifs, and themes, from Homer to contemporary figures and trends. J. Smith, "Chaucer (c.1340-c.1400)," pp. 142-46, describes Chaucer and his works, discussing him as a humanist and a man…
Benson L[arry] D.
English Studies 42 (1961): 65-77.
Explores the "stylistic rationale" for Chaucer's uses of the historical present tense, identifying the fundamental "connotation of continuing action" of the grammatical form, and assessing its rhetorical, semantic, and tonal effects in various…
Benson, C. David
Philological Quarterly 58 (1979): 16-25.
The letter read by Helen and Deiphobus is an example of "special foreshadowing"; it pertains to King Thoas of Greece (derived by Chaucer from Guido delle Colonne), who later (4.138) will be part of the prisoner exchange that sends Criseyde to the…
Benson, C. David, ed.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991; Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991.
Anthologizes previously published essays and extracts from longer discussions of TC, BD, HF, and PF. Originally published between 1915 and 1986, the essays are arranged chronologically by work, with the majority (twelve of nineteen) dedicated to TC.
Benson, C. David,and David Rollman.
Modern Philology 78 (1981): 275-77.
The three anonymous stanzas that Wynkyn printed at the end of his 1517 edition of the poem suggest that neither the sympathy for Criseyde felt by moderns nor the poet's view of TC as a religious work would have been found in an early reader. Wynkyn…
Benson, C. David.
Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 213-21.
In 1987, an NEH-supported institute titled "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Medieval Contexts and Modern Responses" addressed concerns that Chaucer's poetry was disappearing from the "standard undergraduate curriculum" and discussed ways to "revivify"…
Chaucer's transformations of his sources produced a work that invites multiple and open-ended responses. Benson contrasts TC and its source, Boccaccio's Filostrato; he assesses medieval and modern readership of TC; and he considers the story of Troy…
Benson, C. David.
Modern Language Quarterly 53 (1992): 23-40.
Describes the writers' approaches to their source in Chaucer: Lydgate as a "scholarly commentator" and Henryson as a poet who exploits "Chaucer's innovative literary devices" in an original way. …
Benson, C. David.
John Michael Crafton, ed. Selected Essays: International Conference on Representing Revolution, 1989. (Carrollton): West Georgia College International Conference, 1991, pp. 9-20.
Compares Chaucer's poetry and the so-called Peasants' Revolt of 1381, demonstrating their common unexpectedness, extremism, touches of conservatism, and uniqueness. As is clear from his treatment of the Revolt in NPT, Chaucer was not a political…
Benson, C. David.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 137-44.
Not all of Chaucer's religious tales are alike. In MLT and ClT, Chaucer "transforms the same basic material into two radically different, though equally valid, varieties of religious poetry." A religious romance, MLT "employs great rhetorical…
Benson, C. David.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 1-7.
Darwinian, Freudian, and Marxist approaches to CT have "obscure(d) the historical and intellectual context of the religious tales" (Mel, ParsT, ClT, MLT, PrT, SNT), making them the "most marginalized" of Chaucer's works. Articles in the…
Benson, C. David.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 101-17.
Argues that "Chaucer is as much a religious artist as a comic artist" and that to exclude either fabliaux or religious tales is to reduce the achievement of CT. Examines the common aesthetic of PrT, SNT, MLT, and ClT, which despite their stylistic…
